1
In Farmington we had not only those Preachers who had been ordained to
the ministry and so licensed to preach by both God and man, but the
town was overrun with volunteers, Brothers and Sisters who shouted
the word of God whenever they could find an audience, who gave the
testimony at the camp meetings, the protracted meetings, and at those
orgies conducted by the professional evangelist who chased the Devil
from any town that would guarantee him a fat fee. These Preachers and
their allies controlled Farmington to a very large extent, and when
they were defeated, at elections or otherwise, they raised their voices
in howls of denunciation and called upon God to punish the guilty. It
was many years before I learned that a candidate endorsed by a Preacher
was not necessarily called by God to assume the office.
It was essential for any man who wanted to hold public office to
profess religion and be seen at church, and usually the more noise he
made in religious gatherings, the greater his chances of success at the
polls. If any candidate dared to hold views contrary to those of the
godly, a vile whispering campaign was started against him, and his
personal life was raked over and bared with many gloating references to
the Christian duty of the people to punish this upstart. Occasionally
the ungodly or anti-religious element elected a mayor or what not, but
generally religion triumphed and thanks were offered to God, and then
throughout his term the office-holder was harassed by pious hypocrites
seeking favors and special privilege. My father, as county surveyor and
city clerk, was constantly being checked up to determine if he remained
steadfast in the faith.
I do not think that my father was regarded as a first-class Christian
in Farmington; I am sure that in many quarters it was felt that he
was more or less disgracing his ancestry because he did not bound to
his feet at camp meetings and similar gatherings and make a holy show
of himself with hypocritical testimony. He went to church, and until
I was old enough to do pretty much as I pleased, he saw to it that I
went also, and to Sunday school and Epworth League and other places
where the Methodist God could take a peek at my soul. But he was
only passively religious; he showed no tremendous enthusiasm for the
Wesleyan Deity, and he never made a particularly active effort to keep
me in the path that, according to some, leads to spiritual glory.
In a religious sense I was annoyed much less by my father and my
mother than I was by the busybodies who seemed to be appointed by the
Lord to take care of everybody’s business but their own. Most of the
religious instruction that I received came from volunteers, either
relatives of my parents, or Brothers and Sisters whom I encountered
during my pathetic efforts to have a good time. And, of course, from
the Preacher. To many of these I put questions; I asked them to explain
certain things in the Bible and in the church service that I did not
understand, and which seemed to conflict with the little definite
knowledge that I had of life and human beings. Invariably I was told
that the Bible needed no explaining; I was merely to believe it and
have faith.
I was afraid of the Preachers in Farmington, and of the Brothers and
Sisters, desperately afraid of them, because they filled my mind with
horrible pictures of Hell and the roaring fires of old Nick; their
object in talking religion to small boys seemed to be to frighten them
into being good. And I think that most of the other boys were afraid of
them, too, except such brave souls as my cousin, Barney Blue, who was a
“bad boy” and afraid of neither God nor Devil. One of my great moments
was when I heard Barney tell a prying old Brother to go to hell. And
curiously enough, and incomprehensibly to many of the good old people
of Farmington, Barney is to-day exceedingly prosperous and well thought
of in his community.
But there were very few like Barney; most of us trembled in our boots,
even the red-topped ones we were so proud of, when a Preacher or a
Brother or Sister came snooping about, head bowed under its burden of
religious horror, and demanded information as to our conduct and the
condition of our souls. In the cities the cry of the youngsters was
“Cheese it, the cop,” but in Farmington it was “Look out, there’s a
Preacher!” We could not start a game of marbles anywhere in town but
one of them, or else a Brother or Sister, did not pounce upon us and
demand to know if we were playing “for keeps.” And since we invariably
were, and did not know enough to tell the Preacher what was politely
called a fib, the game stopped then and there while we absorbed a
little religion and learned that God abhorred little boys who played
for keeps.
We were told that God had His eye on us when we did such things, and
that our Guardian Angels put black marks in their little books every
time we shot a marble.
“You must give your heart to Jesus,” we were told. “He will not let you
dwell in the Heavenly Mansions if you persist in this sinful practice.”
We used to play marbles in a vacant lot behind the Christian church,
and it was a very fine playground, with a level stretch on which the
marbles rolled beautifully. But we had to give it up, because the lot
was near the home of a Sister, who spent most of her waking hours in
front of her window, staring out through the curtains in a constant
search for sin and scandal. We had no more than drawn the ring and
legged for first shot than she came out on her porch and shouted:
“Are you boys playing for keeps?”
And we answered in unison, politely, as we had been taught:
“Yes, ma’am.”
She stopped the game, swooping down upon us with the glint of the
Heaven-born fanatic in her eye. She told us that we were wicked
and sinful and blasphemous and Heaven knows what else besides to
play for keeps in the very shadow of a House of God. She invariably
threatened us with punishment ranging from spanking to everlasting
torment in Hell, and if we dared to say anything to her other than
the conventional “Yes, ma’am,” she said we were saucy and threatened
to telephone our mothers. Occasionally she did so, and a marble
game behind the Christian church was then followed by the wails of
little boys being led into the woodshed. She performed her war dance
many times, and finally we went to play near the livery stable. The
atmosphere there was not so uplifting, but at least we were in peace,
for the hostlers had no interest at all in our immortal souls, although
they were very much interested in who won the marbles.
2
The livery stables in Farmington were a sort of symbol of the heretical
element of the town. The big Mayberry & Byington barn, down the block
from Braun’s Hotel and Saloon, was a particularly delightful place to
loaf; it was infested by sinners, abandoned wretches who swore horrible
oaths, smoked cigarettes, and drank whisky and gin out of big bottles.
The politicians loafed there at such times as they felt they would not
be seen by the more godly part of our citizenry.
Two of our most celebrated darkies, Uncle Louis Burks and Uncle
Mose Bridges, spent most of their time at the Mayberry barn, and we
considered them quite fascinating, especially Uncle Louis. He regaled
us with tales of the days when, in the South before the Civil War, he
had no duties except be the father of as many children as possible;
that was his job. He estimated the number of his progeny anywhere
from fifty to five hundred, according to the amount of liquor he had
consumed before counting, and we generally gave him the benefit of the
doubt and called it five hundred. We ranked him with the great fathers
of the Bible, and I recall that it seemed to me somewhat strange that
the preachers did not offer Uncle Louis’s achievements as proof of the
truth of certain portions of the Book.
Uncle Mose’s principal claim to our attention was his dog, a sad-eyed
little mongrel that trotted at the end of a string everywhere Uncle
Mose went. We were permitted to play with the dog occasionally, much to
the disgust of our parents, as we invariably went home scratching. Both
Uncle Louis and Uncle Mose were regarded as sinners, partly on account
of their color. It was not believed that a black man could enter the
Kingdom of Heaven, although the deluded creatures had churches and
prayed to God. And then their domestic arrangements were somewhat
haphazard, and Uncle Louis frequently boasted that he did not marry
all the mothers of his children before the War. Both he and Uncle Mose
were familiar figures around Farmington for many years; they did odd
jobs at the homes of the godly, and for their pay received part cash
and part religious lectures and prayers. They thrived on the cash, and
apparently the prayers did not hurt them.
It was at the livery stable, also, that the drummers from St. Louis,
waiting for rigs to take them to the towns of the lead-mining district
around Bonne Terre, Flat River and Elvins, left their stocks of
stories. The coming of a drummer was an event with us; it meant that we
should hear things that were not meant for our little ears, and that
for a little while at least we could revel in the sight of a man given
over to sin and seemingly enjoying it. He used to assure us solemnly
that playing marbles for keeps was not a sin anywhere in the world
but in Farmington, and tell stories, which we regarded as fanciful
untruths, of towns in which little boys did not have to go to Sunday
school.
The drummer came in on the herdic from De Lassus before the interurban
railroad was built, and he was generally a gorgeous spectacle. He was
not welcomed in our best homes, and even his presence in church was not
considered a good omen for the forces of righteousness, so he could
usually be found loafing in front of the livery stable or dozing in a
chair tilted against the wall of the St. Francis Hotel. He brought with
him not only the latest stories, but the most advanced raiment; the
first peg-top trousers ever seen in Farmington adorned the legs of a
shoe drummer traveling out of St. Louis, and they created a furor and
established a style. Soon our most stylish dressers had them.
Besides being the abode of wickedness and the lair of Satan, and
therefore an extraordinarily fascinating place, the livery stable was
also the principal loafing place of a darky who had fits. He was one of
our town characters, and was regarded by myself and the other boys as a
person of remarkable accomplishments. We felt that to be able to have
fits set him above us; we gloated enormously when he suddenly shrieked,
fell to the ground and began foaming at the mouth. Our attitude toward
him was respectful, and he appreciated it. He was, it seemed to me,
proud of his fits. I have known him to rise, finally, brush himself off
and ask, simply:
“Was it a good one?”
Generally we thought it was. This darky became such an attraction
for us that for a long time, when a group of us could find nothing
interesting to do, and when there was for the moment no one in sight to
remind us of our duty to God and the church, it was the custom for one
of us to say:
“Let’s go over to the livery stable and see Tod have a fit.”
We thereupon trooped solemnly to the big barn and gathered in a circle
about the darky, who was generally sitting against the side of the
building whittling on a stick. We watched him silently for a while, and
then someone mustered up courage enough to say:
“Going to have a fit to-day, Tod?”
With the instinct of the true artist, Tod ignored us for a time, intent
upon his whittling. Finally he gave us brief attention.
“Maybe,” he said, and returned to his task.
And then suddenly he uttered a blood-curdling shriek and tumbled
headlong from his chair. We watched, fascinated, uttering little
murmurs of “ah!” as he writhed and moaned, and when it was all over we
settled back with a little sigh of satisfaction. We felt that we had
seen a first-rate performance, and when the darky had a fit in front
of the Post Office, or in the yard of the courthouse, his audience was
increased by as many boys and men as were downtown, shopkeepers leaving
their wares to run across and watch.
There was nothing of callousness in our attitude toward the darky. My
own feeling in the matter was that Tod was having fits for our benefit,
and because he enjoyed it, but at length I came to learn that he could
not help it, that the poor fellow was ill. Then I was sorry for him,
and one day I asked one of our most prominent Brothers why Tod had
fits. He immediately seized upon the question to give me some religious
instruction.
“He has sinned,” said the Brother, “and God is punishing him.”
He elaborated his statement, explaining that Tod had probably neglected
to attend Sunday school, or had not read his Bible, and that he had
thus become a blasphemous sinner and was being properly dealt with.
He pointed out that I, too, might grow up and have fits if I was not
a good boy. Now, I did not want to have fits, and neither did I want
to be a good boy. I wanted to have some fun; I wanted to run about,
and play marbles, and go swimming, and put tick-tacks against people’s
window on Halloween night. I wanted to do all sorts of things that
good boys did not do, yet I most certainly did not want to have fits.
“But, Uncle Si,” I said, “how do you know that God is making him have
fits? And why does God do it?”
“Herbie!” He was shocked. “You are blasphemous! You must not question
the wisdom of the Almighty. I have faith, and I believe in God and the
holiness of His acts. I know that this man must have sinned, or God
would not punish him so.”
I was not prepared to confound this faulty logic; it was not then
the business of small boys to question anything their elders told
them, but to accept without comment the pearls of wisdom that fell
from bewhiskered lips. But it seemed to me small business for God to
be engaged upon. Yet it did not cause me great surprise, for I had
long known that the God who pressed so heavily upon Farmington was a
conception of unutterable cruelty, an omnipotent Being whose greatest
joy lay in singling out the weak and lowly and inflicting horrible
tortures upon them, to the vast and gloating satisfaction of the
Brothers and their kind.
Some time afterward, because I was worried over this torturing and
punishment of the darky whose writhings had now become less an amusing
exhibit than a terrible manifestation of the Almighty, I asked another
Brother how he knew that God had a hand in it. But neither he nor Uncle
Si ever told me. None of them were ever able to tell me how they knew
so well what God wanted and what God did not want; they merely left
with me the impression that on occasion they walked with God and that
God spoke to them and asked their advice on the conduct of the human
race. But the source of their information I could not determine.
I have never found anyone who could satisfy my curiosity on this
point; I never then, or later, found a religious enthusiast who would
admit that he was offering merely his personal interpretation of the
utterances that other men had credited to the Almighty. But there
was nothing that entered the mind of God that the Preachers and the
Brothers and Sisters of Farmington did not know and that they could
not explain and apply to local affairs. They knew precisely what was a
sin and what was not, and it was curious that the sins were invariably
things from which they received no pleasure. Nor was anything which
paid a profit a sin. They knew very well that God considered it a sin
to play cards or dance, but that He thought it only good business
practice to raise the price of beans or swindle a fellow citizen in the
matter of town lots, or refuse credit to the poor and suffering.
3
As I grew older, and began to be skeptical of what I was told, I
became increasingly annoyed not only by the mental mannerisms of these
people, but by their physical mannerisms as well. Not only did they
walk as if their soles were greased, sliding and slipping about, but
they talked as if their tongues were greased also. Their language was
oily; they poured out their words unctuously, with much roundabout
phrasing and unnecessary language. If they wanted to tell about a man
going across the street from the Court House to the Post Office they
would take him up the hill past the Masonic cemetery, with side trips
to Jerusalem and other Jewish centers. If I went downtown and met a man
like Sheriff Rariden, who will always have a place in my affections
because he permitted his son Linn and myself to roam the jail yard and
stare through the bars at the nigger prisoners, he would say:
“How’re you, Herbie? How’re your folks?”
But if I met a Preacher the greeting was this:
“Good afternoon, Herbert. And how are your dear father and mother?”
And then he patted me on the head, pinched my arm, and padded away,
sliding greasily along the pavement, his eagle eye alert for little
boys playing marbles or for other signs of sin. He might have been
skinny and pitifully in need of food, but nevertheless I thought of
him as greasy. He had about him an unwholesome atmosphere; I could not
be comfortable in his presence. I felt that he had to be watched,
and when I became old enough to understand some of the looks that he
bestowed upon the young and feminine members of his flock I realized
that he should have been.
I had not lived very many years before I learned to look upon
Preachers, and their familiars, the Brothers and Sisters, as useless
incumbrances upon an otherwise fair enough earth. But while I hated
all of them, with a few natural exceptions, the one I always hated
most was the current pastor of our Southern Methodist church. He was
my spiritual father, the guardian of my soul and the director of my
life in the hereafter, and he tried to see to it that I went into the
hereafter with proper respect for him and a proper respect for his God.
I had to call him Brother and be very meek and gentle in his presence,
and stand without moving while he patted me on the head, asked me fool
questions, and told me how much God loved little boys and girls. He
called me a “manly little fellow,” which annoyed me exceedingly, and I
have the word of my young nephew that small boys are still annoyed by
it.
But he made it quite clear, out of his profound knowledge of the wishes
of the Almighty, that God did not want little boys and girls to have
a good time. Quite the contrary. God wanted them to do exactly what
the Preacher told them to do; He wanted them to accept the Preacher as
their guide and their philosopher and to believe everything they were
told, without fretting him with unanswerable and therefore blasphemous
questions. He wanted the little boys and girls to spend most of their
time praying to Him to “gimme this and gimme that,” and the rest of it
being little gentlemen and little ladies, solemn and subdued, speaking
only when spoken to and answering promptly when called. God told the
Preacher, who relayed the message on to me very impressively, that it
was a sin to play marbles on Sunday, or to play for keeps at any time;
that it was a sin to roll hoops on the sidewalk in front of the church
or rattle a stick against the picket fence in front of the parsonage.
Everything that I wanted to do, everything that seemed to hold any
promise of fun or excitement, was a sin.
But it was not a sin to saw wood for the Preacher, or to carry huge
armfuls of sticks and fill his kitchen bin, and it was not a sin to
mow his lawn or rake the trash in his back yard. The children of the
godly were permitted to do these things because of the profound love
which the Preacher bore for them; his motto was “Suffer little children
to come unto me, and I will put them to work.” And since by his own
admission the Preacher was a Man of God, we were permitted to perform
these labors for nothing. A boy was paid twenty-five to fifty cents,
enormous and gratifying sums in those days, if he mowed the lawn or
raked the trash for a family given over to sin, but if he did the job
for a Preacher or a devout Brother, he received nothing but a pat on
the back and a prayer, or he could listen to a verse from the Bible
and a lecture on his duty to serve the Lord and, incidentally, the
self-appointed ambassadors of the Lord.
Once when I was about twelve years old our pastor telephoned my mother
and asked that I be sent to his house to help him perform certain
tasks which should have been done by the darky men of all work about
town. But our family did not wish to offend the Preacher, so I did
the work. And it was hard work. I toiled all morning cleaning out the
Preacher’s woodshed and stacking split stove wood in neat piles, and
then I carried in enough to fill two big wooden boxes in the kitchen.
During this time the Preacher sat in his study, holding communion with
God, and I presume, reading the Scriptures. Occasionally he came out
to the woodshed to superintend my work, ordering me to do this and do
that and scolding me because I did not work faster, but he did none of
the work himself. And when I was through he told me to come into his
study and receive payment. I hurried after him, very weary, but with
pleasant visions of a quarter floating before my eyes. I believed that
was the least I should receive, and to me it was a great deal of money;
properly expended at McKinney’s or Otto Rottger’s, it would keep me in
jawbreakers for more than a week, and there might be enough left to buy
a bag of peewees or an agate.
But I did not receive the twenty-five cents. The Preacher closed the
door when we got into his study, and then he commanded me to kneel. He
put a hand on my shoulder, and he said:
“My dear boy, I am going to pray for you. I am going to ask the Lord
Jesus to enter your heart and make you a good boy.”
And then he knelt and prayed somewhat in this fashion: “O Lord Jesus,
bless this little boy who has this day performed labor in Thy behalf,”
etc.
It was all very confusing. I went home somewhat in doubt as to whether
the Preacher or God owned the woodshed.
But labor of little boys was not all that the Preachers got for
nothing. They were inveterate beggars, and all of them had fine, highly
developed noses for chickens and other dainties; it was seldom that
a family could have a chicken or turkey dinner without the Preacher
dropping in. It is true that their salaries were not large, but they
had free use of the parsonage, and they were not in dire circumstances
at all. Yet they always had their hands out, grasping; they were
ecclesiastical tramps begging for a donation. In our town we used to
give showers for them; many families made periodical donations to the
Pastor, and sometimes there were surprise parties, when the Preacher
and his wife were led into a room and shown piles of old clothing,
food and discarded furniture, all of which was sent next day to the
parsonage. The Preacher was always pathetically grateful for these
things; he would kneel in the midst of them and offer a prayer for the
souls of the good people who had thus given him the clutterings of
their cellars and attics, which they had no further use for. He seldom
had enough self-respect to refuse them.
4
The notion was prevalent in Farmington, among the Brothers and Sisters,
that the Preachers were their servants and should peddle God to them
365 days a year. It was felt also that their wives should be constantly
at the Lord’s work; that they should be at home at all times, available
for consultation and prayer meetings, and that when they went abroad
they should dress soberly and walk with due humility. The wife of
Brother Court, one of our Methodist pastors, was severely criticized
for her departure from this formula of conduct. Apparently the Courts
had means other than the salary paid them by the church, and they kept
a maid, which in itself was enough to arouse suspicion that Mrs. Court
was not a true servant of the Lord.
But the straw that broke the religious back of the Courts and hastened
the end of Brother Court’s ministry was the fact that Mrs. Court took a
nap each afternoon. This was considered nothing less than scandalous,
and for a long time our Brothers and Sisters refused to believe that
the wife of a man of God should so far forget herself as to lie abed
when she might be praying or sitting at her front window looking
through the curtains for a sin to happen. But the story persisted, and
was broadcast by a discharged servant who swore that with her own eyes
she had seen Mrs. Court sound asleep at three o’clock in the afternoon.
Finally two Sisters appointed themselves a committee of investigation.
They rang the bell at the parsonage one afternoon, and told the maid
that they had called to join Mrs. Court in afternoon prayer, and,
although they did not say it, backbiting gossip.
“Mrs. Court,” said the maid, “is asleep and cannot be disturbed. Can
you call later?”
They could not. They had barely strength enough to get home, but after
prayer they revived sufficiently to sally forth and carry the awful
news throughout the town. There could no longer be any doubt. The
wife of the Pastor of the Southern Methodist church took a nap in the
afternoon. The Sisters had called, and had been so informed by the
maid, and while a few chronic doubters remained, the vast majority
realized that in a matter involving such serious consequences to Mrs.
Court’s spiritual welfare, a matter that directly affected and almost
destroyed her chances of going to Heaven, the Sisters could not tell a
lie.
So Brother Court soon resigned and accepted a call to a town where
members of his family could sleep when they felt like it, and could
even snore without jeopardizing their immortal souls. Nor did his
successor last very long. He was an Englishman, and spoke in a high
nasal voice, pronouncing his words very distinctly, syllable by
syllable. He was criticized for several reasons. One was that his
favorite phrase was “and an-gels can do no more,” and it was felt that
it was somewhat blasphemous to mention angels so often before mixed
company. And then he spoke from notes, whereas it was a custom of our
Pastors to preach solely out of divine inspiration at the moment of
delivery.
There was much talk about the new Preacher’s notes, and it was felt
that, somehow, he was lacking in devotion to God; many Brothers and
Sisters argued that if he were really a Man of God he would not have
to use notes, but would be inspired and filled with words as he rose
in the pulpit. His finish came the Sunday morning that the wind blew
through an opened window and scattered his notes, so that he had to
leave the pulpit and chase the scraps up and down the aisle before he
could proceed with his discourse. This was regarded as direct evidence
that God had deserted him, and he left town soon afterward.
5
The personalities of the preachers of my home town, impressed as they
were upon my growing, plastic mind, probably will remain with me
always, but I am thankful that for the most part their names elude me.
I remember clearly, however, Brother Jenkins and Brother Fontaine,
of our Southern Methodist church; Brother Nations, of the so-called
Christian church; Brother Hickok, of the Presbyterian church, and,
clearest of all, Brother Lincoln McConnell, the professional itinerant
evangelist who “converted” me with the aid of half a dozen strong-armed
and strong-lunged Brothers and Sisters who dragged and pushed me down
the aisle of the church to the mourners’ bench, where I was surrounded
and overwhelmed by “workers for the Lord.”
Brother Jenkins I recall as a meek, thin little man with a sad smile
and a classical appetite for fried chicken. At the time I was very
much in awe of him, and listened to his every utterance with the
most profound respect. I thought him saintly, and concluded that he
and God were the closest sort of friends, and that the Deity would
not dare launch upon a plan for a new universe or start a new war
without consulting Brother Jenkins. But in truth he was probably only
under-nourished. Brother Jenkins was a demon quoter of platitudes and
Biblical passages; nothing happened that it did not remind him of a
quotation from the Bible.
Brother Fontaine was a plump man who would have been jovial and
possibly likable--that is giving him the benefit of a great doubt--if
he had not been so burdened by the troubles of God and if he had not
been so frightfully aware of the responsibilities of his position
as a recipient and promulgator of Heavenly wisdom and commands. He
officiated at the wedding of my sister, principally because our family
belonged to his church and the presence of another preacher at the
wedding would have deprived Brother Fontaine of a goodly fee and made
an enemy of him for life. Christian charity does not function well when
it hits the pocketbook. I think my sister would have preferred Brother
Hickok, but she yielded to public opinion and Brother Fontaine got the
job. He arrived at the house chewing tobacco, a habit of his which he
disliked intensely in other men, but for which he found justification
for himself in the belief that he walked with the Lord and that it was
tacitly understood he was to have a little leeway.
He was excessively sanctimonious; and so was his wife. We have never
forgiven her for her attitude at the wedding. I recall that she looked
suspiciously from time to time at the groom, and watched the whole
proceeding with an air that said there must of a necessity be something
wrong somewhere; for one thing, there was quite a deal of laughter in
our house that day, and that in itself was a sign that the Lord was
not hovering over the housetop. Immediately after the ceremony Sister
Fontaine paraded up front and began waving her hands back and forth
before my sister’s face, shouting at the top of her lungs: “Praise the
Lord, Sister! Praise the Lord!” We gathered that she thought my sister
should immediately fall upon her knees and thank God that she had at
last acquired a husband, even though Sister Fontaine did not seem to
think much of him. But we were greatly offended; we considered it a
reflection on our family and wholly uncalled for, because my sister
was, in fact, neither old nor homely, and she had had and rejected a
great many first-class matrimonial opportunities.
I had an intense dislike for Brother Fontaine and his ways, and time
has not softened my impression of him. He dearly loved to be the only
man in a feminine gathering, where he could make heavy inroads upon
the cake and ice cream and lay down the law to the adoring Sisters. I
have seldom known a Preacher who was not afflicted with this mania, but
in Brother Fontaine it had developed into a highly acute disease. I
remember that he was always present at our house when the members of
the Ladies’ Aid Society came once each week for their bit of sewing for
the heathen and to enjoy their pleasant afternoon of scandal. He had no
business there; he did not sew and he did not contribute much to the
symposium, but he listened avidly and ate heartily.
It was “Don’t you think so, Brother Fontaine?” and “I fear I must take
issue with you, Sister. The Lord provideth answers for all problems
affecting human conduct.” Fool talk like that.
It was the practice of our Southern Methodist preachers to stand at the
door of the church after every performance and shake hands with the
customers, making such remarks as “Praise the Lord, Sister! Get right
with Jesus, Brother!” I always dreaded this part of the service, and
several young girls told me that they did also. All of the preachers
who did this, and almost all of them did, shook hands with a clammy
pressure that put me in mind of an oyster, and it always seemed to
me that when a lady customer passed through the door the Man of God
invariably found it necessary to sigh.
But although I cannot rate Brother Fontaine very highly among the
servants of the Lord, my younger brother consigned him to even lower
depths. They went fishing together once, at Brother Fontaine’s request,
and Fred appeared at the parsonage with lunch, fishing tackle and
car fare. Brother Fontaine knelt and asked divine guidance for the
expedition, and then they boarded a trolley car and went to De Lassus,
to fish the St. Francis River around Blumeyer’s Ford. Fred paid his
fare.
“You must pay my fare, too, Fred,” said Brother Fontaine. “I am the
minister.”
So Fred paid. There was nothing else that he could do; he was afraid
that if he did not Brother Fontaine would whistle to God to call down
an avenging angel armed with thunderbolts and lightning. Then it
developed that Brother Fontaine had brought neither lunch nor fishing
tackle; he had brought only himself, and being a Man of God that was
sufficient. Perhaps he felt that since his influence with the Almighty
was undoubtedly great enough to make the trip successful, Fred had
no right to expect him to bear any of the expenses or furnish any
equipment. So he used Fred’s tackle and ate Fred’s lunch, and when that
was not enough for him he sent Fred a mile and a half to a farmhouse to
buy a bottle of milk, for which Fred paid and which the reverend one
guzzled without offering to share it.
Throughout the whole day Brother Fontaine alternately prayed and
fished, but there must have been something wrong with his connecting
line to Heaven, for he caught no fish. He finally turned the tackle
over to Fred, with the remark that Fred had not brought the right
sort of worms, and with the further explanation that worms being God’s
creatures as well as fish, God probably did not want the fish to eat
them. Fred fished earnestly; he was ordinarily a good and successful
fisherman, and it was a matter of pride with him not to go home
without a string. But neither did Fred catch any fish, and he became
increasingly annoyed at Brother Fontaine.
The preacher apparently labored under the delusion that Fred required
religious instruction. He told, several times, the story of the loaves
and the fishes, and many other Biblical fairy tales as well. Once, when
Fred was anxiously watching his cork and felt certain that a perch was
nibbling at his hook, Brother Fontaine stopped him to read the Sermon
on the Mount from a Bible which he drew from his pocket. Everything he
saw reminded him of something in the Scriptures. So passed the day, and
when Fred came home that night, with no fish, he ate heavily of supper
and then dared parental wrath by saying:
“No more of these damned preachers for me.”
Brother Nations is probably Farmington’s most illustrious gift to
religion. It is true that he eventually resigned from the ministry and
became Probate Judge and Principal of the High School, but he remained
a steadfast adherent of the Protestant God and a singularly devout and
godly man. I presume he still is, as he is the same Gilbert O. Nations
who in 1924 ran for President as the candidate of what he called the
American party, asking for the votes of the electorate on a pro-Ku Klux
Klan and anti-everything else platform. I am told that he is now the
editor of a magazine devoted to baiting the Catholics.
Once when Brother Nations was principal of the Farmington High School
he whaled me because Barney Blue and I had thrown snowballs at Jake
Schaeffer, the town truckman. I felt that the licking was coming to me
and I bore no malice; only the week before I had thrown lumps of coal
at Pete Anderson’s house across the street and had been warned that the
hurling of anything at all would result in punishment. But after the
thrashing was over, Brother Nations told me that throwing snowballs
at Jake Schaeffer was a sin against God: that Christ had reference to
it when he said: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” I
could not plead that I was without sin, because it had been impressed
on me by every Brother and Sister and Preacher that I met that I was
practically broken out with it. But young and gullible as I was,
Brother Nations’ statement sounded silly.
I could understand that from Jake Schaeffer’s viewpoint I had sinned,
and grievously, because Jake was stooping over when the snowball
struck and I had put a stone in the center of it to make the snow pack
tighter; I was willing to admit that and repent. But what did God care
if two boys smacked snowballs against a soft part of Jake’s person? It
seemed to me that if God had been really interested in the matter He
would have advised Jake Schaeffer not to stoop over when two boys were
abroad with snowballs. Thus He might have prevented a sin. Further, if
God was as intelligent as I had been led to believe, He must have known
that boys cannot resist the temptation to throw snowballs, and since
He made both the boys and the snowballs He was responsible for the sin
committed against Himself. But Brother Nations appeared to believe that
God had permitted me to sin in order that I might taste the joys of
castigatory rebuke. And I did.
Brother Hickok was the only Preacher of those days to whom I gave the
slightest measure of respect. I had a genuine admiration for him, but
it was not because he was a Preacher or because he pretended to any
inside knowledge of the customs of Heaven or the thoughts and wishes of
God. On the contrary, I have heard him admit that there were things in
the Bible he did not understand, and I have heard him admit that there
were passages in it that he did not particularly care for. But I liked
him simply because he chewed tobacco without any effort at concealment,
and played lawn tennis on the courts near our home, and because I
suspected, every time I saw him wallop a tennis ball or bite a chunk
from a slab of plug-cut, that he was Wild Bill Hickok in disguise.
About the time Brother Hickok came to Farmington I acquired a book
devoted to the adventures of Wild Bill, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and
other heroes of the Western plains, and of them all I liked Wild Bill
best. He seemed to me to be everything that a man ought to be. He had
more notches on his gun than any of the others, and it appeared that
he could not so much as sneeze without a redskin biting the dust. I
put the question of identity to Brother Hickok rather bluntly, and
told him I would respect his confidence, but he denied it, although I
gathered the impression that he was a relative of Wild Bill and, of
course, mighty proud of him. But I was not satisfied, and for a long
time I shadowed him in the manner set forth by Old and Young King Brady
in that sterling nickel novel, “Secret Service,” hoping to learn his
secret. However, I never did solve the question to my own satisfaction.
But principally I admired Brother Hickok because he was the only
Preacher I knew who did not proclaim incessantly that he was a Man of
God and therefore entitled to the largest piece of pie, and because he
was the only one who did not seem to be impressed by my relationship
with Bishop Asbury. He didn’t seem to give a damn about the Bishop; his
only ambition, so far as I was concerned, was to beat me at tennis,
which he did. But from the others, and from the Brothers and Sisters,
I got the impression that the right reverend deceased, seated at God’s
right hand between Jesus Christ and St. Peter, perhaps crowding the
latter a bit, had nothing to do but receive messages from the Almighty
touching on my conduct, and relay them to me by whatever Preacher I
happened to meet. For many years I thought that God and the Bishop had
a consultation on my case every night.
I do not think that I shall ever forget Brother Lincoln McConnell,
although I probably should not recognize him if I saw him to-day.
I hope not. But for some eighteen long years I have cherished a
compelling desire to stand him in a corner, minus his band and singers
and his other aids to emotion, and then bind and gag him. After that
I want to talk to him for hours and hours, embellishing my remarks
with such florid words as I have acquired in various military and
journalistic enterprises, and possibly inventing new ones for the
occasion. He was responsible for the most miserable period of my life.
But it was he, too, who definitely kept me from being a Preacher, or
even a Brother, and so, perhaps, I should thank him. If he had let me
alone I might at this moment be calling some other preacher Brother;
I might be an intimate of God, and a walking Baedeker of Heaven; I
might even be gloating over the glories of a Heaven paved with gold and
populated by angels, all female, all beautiful, all amiable. Certainly
I should not be given over to a life of sin; that is to say, I should
not be having a pretty good time with this business of living.
Brother McConnell, as I write, is a pastor of a Baptist church in
Oklahoma City, Okla., with occasional forays onto the Chautauqua
platform, and is a potent force in the life of that abode of
righteousness. But if reports are to be believed, there are even there
those who consider him a blight. He has been the central figure in
several rows that have undoubtedly redounded to the greater glory of
God; he tried to prevent the citizens of his town from seeing one of
the best American plays of recent years because it dealt a bit too
truthfully with certain aspects of religious fanaticism, and he erected
a radio broadcasting station which blanketed the city and forced the
population to listen, willy-nilly, to his sermons and his ponderous
pronouncements against sin.
I once wrote a magazine article in which I discussed a few of the
activities of Brother McConnell, and he put me in my place in an
interview which, it seems to me, shows that he has not changed a great
deal since the time that I first shook hands with him as he leaned over
the mourner’s bench and beseeched me to give my heart to his God. I
give it here. It appeared in the Oklahoma City _News_, on January 27,
1925.
“He is a very small potato.” That was the reply of the Rev. Lincoln
McConnell, First Baptist Church pastor.... “I have some doubt,” said
the Rev. McConnell, “as to whether I should feel honored or otherwise
by the repeated mention of my name in this article by Herbert Asbury
without realizing that this writer cannot possibly have inherited
anything more from his illustrious ancestry than his name.
“I confess that it is rather surprising to me that editors of a
magazine could attach enough importance to such cheap drivel as this
as to give it the position and the space they do.
“The natural assumption is that they believe about religion, the
religion of Christ, what this poor fellow does, and therefore,
actually believe that this ‘weak stuff’ is a contribution to their
cause.
“I remember Farmington, Mo., very well, having been there about
twenty-five years ago. I do not remember Herbert Asbury at all.
“I am not surprised that I do not, as he must have been then somewhat
as he evidently is now--a very small potato--and while I would feel
naturally as interested in his conversion as in anyone else, at the
same time I am forced to admit that it would not be possible for a
man of training and experience to list a man of his evident mentality
very highly, even though he were a professed convert in his meeting.
“I am very sorry that he was not really converted. If the Editor of
the _American Mercury_ cares for things of a really constructive
nature, I can give him the life story of thousands of men and women
whom because of the genuineness of their conversion to Christ in my
own meetings, have given to the world characters of such beauty and
worth as have reflected credit upon themselves and their church and
have proved a blessing to society at large.
“I have never asked people to stand up if they want to go to Heaven.
I think that very ridiculous.”
6
It was these people who taught me of God, and who had dominion over
my spiritual welfare! And not only did they instruct me to worship
their conception of Him; they threatened me with eternal damnation
if I didn’t, and with even more horrible punishment if I ventured to
cast doubt upon the truth and holiness of the Bible. Eternal damnation
meant that I should, in the life to come, hang throughout eternity on
a revolving spit over a great fire in the deepest pit of Hell, while
little red devils jabbed white-hot pokers into my quivering flesh and
Satan stood by and curled his lip in glee. I received the impression
that Satan was the only one actively concerned with religion who was
ever permitted to laugh. God was not, nor His disciples, and that Satan
could and apparently did was sufficient proof that laughter was wicked.
And they described God to me, and told me in minute detail of the
architectural design of Heaven and the furnishings of the Mansions
in the Sky. I do not know where they obtained their information. I
gathered that God was an old man who wore a long white nightgown and
boasted a luxuriant growth of whiskers, with a disposition compounded
of the snarls of a wounded wildcat and the pleasant conceits of a
_must_ elephant. He chewed tobacco--perhaps that impression was due
to the fact that so many of our preachers were addicted to the vile
weed--and He had an enormous head which contained an eye for every
person on earth, and this eye was constantly upon its object. And it
was a vindictive and jaundiced eye, peering into the innermost depths
of the soul and the mind and the heart for some thought or feeling that
might call for punishment.
The descriptions of Heaven and the physical appearance of the angels
varied somewhat, according to whether the tale was told by a preacher
or a Brother, or a Sister. But all of them talked with gusto of streets
paved with gold and of clouds lined with silver, of magnificent
buildings constructed of precious stones, and of angels sitting on
the clouds with no worthier purpose in life than strumming a golden
harp, protected from the weather by no more substantial raiment than
a white nightgown, a halo and a pair of sandals. And whoever told the
tale, there was always that underlying idea of sybaritic magnificence;
Heaven bore no resemblance to the lowly stable in which the founder
of their religion was born, and it was not a somber retreat for the
further development of the soul and the cultivation of those virtues
that are lost sight of upon the earth. As it was described to me in my
youth, and as it is still described on those rare occasions when I can
bring myself to hold converse with a Preacher, Heaven was a celestial
reproduction of the palace of a Babylonian monarch. Nobody worked, and
God’s House abounded with gold and silver and rubies and diamonds,
and on every cloud that rolled down the street was a beautiful woman,
eternally young and amiable. The Heaven that I was taught to aspire to
was a motion picture set on an even grander scale than the creations of
Cecil De Mille.
But even more emphasis was placed, in these tales, on feminine
virginity. It seemed that Heaven was filled with virgins; I have never
heard a Preacher describe an angel without mentioning the fact that the
angel was a virgin, and I have never heard a Preacher describe Mary
simply as the mother of Jesus. She is always the Virgin Mother, and
he pronounces it all in capitals. Even as a boy I was impressed with
the frequency with which the word “virgin” appeared in the discourses
of our Pastor and in the lectures so freely bestowed upon me by the
Brothers. It seemed to me that the word fascinated them; although I
might be trembling with fear that God would strike me dead because I
had not learned my Sunday-school lesson or had forgotten the Golden
Text, I was so impressed that I found time to wonder at the enthusiasm
with which they mouthed it.
It seemed impossible for Preachers or devout Brothers to say “virgin”
as casually as they did other words; they gloated over it, toyed with
it, rolled it about their tongues and tasted the full flavor of it
before it slid drippingly from their lips with an amazing clarity of
pronunciation. Usually they accompanied it with a doleful sigh. I
thought then that the sigh was from excess of piety, and I thought that
their eyes shone and their breath came a little faster from the same
cause, that these things were possibly manifestations of God, and I was
greatly impressed. But I am older now and I know better.
When I became old enough to understand what was meant by virginity,
and to understand that it was something more than a badge of the
angels, I understood also many other things that had hitherto been
mysteries. I knew then what was in the mind of one of the Brothers, an
extraordinarily devout man with an astounding knowledge of the wishes
of God and the manners and customs of Heaven, when he stopped me on the
street one day and asked me what, if anything, had happened on a recent
hay ride to Blumeyer’s Ford and back by members of our social set.
“Did the boys and girls sit close together?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. We had to. We were on a hay wagon.”
“Did you boys sit right up against them?”
I told him we did, and in my youthful innocence I remarked that I had
been compelled to sit so close to one girl that we could hardly tell
our legs apart. The old man drew a sharp breath, sighed and his eyes
glistened. He repeated the word “legs” with gusto, he gloated over it,
and then he said:
“You sat so close to her that your legs touched? Your leg touched hers?
Your leg was right up against her?”
“Yes, sir. I had to.”
“The leg of a young virgin!” mused the old devil. “That was wicked. It
is wicked to think of the legs of a virgin. God will punish you.”
He went away muttering to himself. I was disgusted, not at his ideas,
because I had practically the same thought about virgins that he did,
and so did most of the other boys of the town, but at his manner. Here
was an old man who had set himself up as a mundane representative of
the Lord, who told me whom to worship and how to worship Him, who held
daily communion with God and received messages from Him touching on
my conduct, gloating and trembling because a boy had sat with his leg
against the leg of a girl in the forced confinement of a hay ride. God
knows what is happening to him if he is alive in these days of short
skirts and silk stockings.
Another of our Brothers, a very prominent member of one of our
Protestant churches, kept a store in the business district not far from
the Court House. He was waiting on a customer the day that the first
woman to ride astride in our town cantered down Columbia Street, and
his performance was a town scandal for many years. He caught a glimpse
of the girl through the window, and he abandoned his customer and
rushed to the street, in company with half the county officials who
had been dozing with their feet on their desks, and all of the town
loafers. The Brother followed her for several blocks, missing no detail
of her costume, which was rather bizarre and daring for those days, and
then he went back to his store and his customer.
He stood for a while wrapped in contemplation.
“She was riding like a man!” he said. “Her legs--her legs----”
My experiences in these matters, of course, were principally with
Preachers and Brothers, but I had occasional contacts with the Sisters.
They, too, described God and Heaven, but they did not conceive God as
being quite so old and feeble as the Being worshipped by the Brothers,
and for the most part they populated Heaven with handsome, stalwart
young men, presumably virgins. I recall one exceedingly devout Sister
who expressed the belief that there were no female angels in Heaven,
and I have heard her praying with extraordinary fervor to God, in
effect, to make an exception in her case. Whether she was justified in
this optimistic opinion of herself I never knew, but I assume that she
and the other Sisters, in their discussion of the virginity of angels,
experienced the same sort of vicarious pleasure that seemed to mean so
much to the Preachers and the Brothers.
7
I did not go to many camp meetings; ours was not a camp-meeting
country. We went in more for protracted meetings, and for the stirring
revivals of professional evangelists, held in comfortable church
buildings. Usually I went to camp meeting only because some girl in
whom I was interested had to go. But they were very popular with a
certain type of young man about Farmington, who knew that religious
emotion is very akin to secular emotion; the line of demarcation is
very thin, and most men who have been around religious women very
much know that one emotion can quickly be transformed into the other.
Young girls are much easier prey after they have been overwhelmed by
religion, their nerves upset and their brains whirling with emotion,
and they are then easily persuaded that the Lord will forgive, even
though His earthly agents will not. Of course such a statement could
not be proven, but it is quite likely that more seductions have
occurred at camp meetings, and _en route_ to and from them, than on
all the front porches and lawn swings that were ever manufactured,
although in Farmington for many years a lawn swing was regarded as a
lure of Hell. Even while the service was in progress the buggies around
the meeting tent were filled with men and women petting, or, as we
called it then, spooning.
Strange things happened at these camp meetings, and at the other
gatherings as well, when a forthright religionist saw the light. At one
such holy conclave an old woman, for many years a thorn in the flesh of
the godly, suddenly bounced to her feet and shouted:
“Praise the Lord! My corn hurts! Praise the Lord!”
And this, because it embodied physical suffering and a great deal of
mental torture as well, was accepted as an infallible sign that God had
at last entered her soul. She had been converted, and all the rest of
her life she was a prying, sanctimonious old pest. She used to stop me
on the street and inquire as to the condition of my soul, and ask me
whether I said my prayers at night, and whether I read the Bible, and
she would grab me by the arm and pinch me and demand the Golden Text
of the last Sunday-school lesson. And if by any chance I had forgotten
or did not know, she scolded me and predicted dire things for me in
the life to come. Incidentally, she knew all about the life to come;
it seems that God had appeared to her in a vision, and had described
Heaven to her.
At all of these meetings extraordinary efforts were made to ensnare the
children and convert them to Christianity; the workers for the Lord
were not at all concerned with the fact that the children did not know
what it was all about, that they had no opportunity to choose their own
religion, and with the further and obvious fact that they succumbed to
nothing but fright and a great surge of emotion. That method persists.
The Church still obtains its converts by noise and appeals to primitive
emotion, and by threats, rather than by intelligently implanting a true
and deep-seated conception of God and the heavenly wonders. But to the
religionists a convert is a convert, no matter how obtained; I have
known boys to be thrashed because they would not profess religion.
As with the Catholic Church, the unspoken and always denied slogan of
the Methodists and of the other Protestant sects is “Catch ’em while
they’re young,” but unlike the Catholics the Protestants cannot hold
them. For one thing, they do not put on a good enough show; they do not
understand lighting, and they have no uniforms and no Latin chanters. A
Catholic priest covered by a surplice or what not, and his voice rising
and falling sonorously in the chanting of a bit of Latin, is a very
impressive spectacle, and his appearance lends dignity to his words.
The gentle stare that most of them wear is also effective. As soon as
an embryo Methodist becomes intelligent enough to visualize the sort
of Heaven that the Brothers are preparing for him, he shudders and
forthwith goes to the Devil, while the Catholics fill their converts
with such fear of God and the Pope, or the Pope and God, to put them
in the order of their importance, that very few get away. A renegade
Catholic is almost as rare as a Methodist Preacher who does not think
he is sprouting wings, and that his voice is truly the Voice of God.