The New England country-boy of the last generation never heard of
Christmas. There was no such day in his calendar. If John ever came
across it in his reading, he attached no meaning to the word.
If his curiosity had been aroused, and he had asked his elders about
it, he might have got the dim impression that it was a kind of Popish
holiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked as “card-playing,”
or being a “Democrat.” John knew a couple of desperately bad boys who
were reported to play “seven-up” in a barn, on the haymow, and the
enormity of this practice made him shudder. He had once seen a pack of
greasy “playing-cards,” and it seemed to him to contain the quintessence
of sin. If he had desired to defy all Divine law and outrage all human
society, he felt that he could do it by shuffling them. And he was quite
right. The two bad boys enjoyed in stealth their scandalous pastime,
because they knew it was the most wicked thing they could do. If it had
been as sinless as playing marbles, they wouldn't have cared for
it. John sometimes drove past a brown, tumble-down farmhouse, whose
shiftless inhabitants, it was said, were card-playing people; and it is
impossible to describe how wicked that house appeared to John. He almost
expected to see its shingles stand on end. In the old New England one
could not in any other way so express his contempt of all holy and
orderly life as by playing cards for amusement.
There was no element of Christmas in John's life, any more than there
was of Easter; and probably nobody about him could have explained
Easter; and he escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas gifts.
Indeed, he never had any presents of any kind, either on his birthday or
any other day. He expected nothing that he did not earn, or make in
the way of “trade” with another boy. He was taught to work for what he
received. He even earned, as I said, the extra holidays of the day after
the Fourth and the day after Thanksgiving. Of the free grace and gifts
of Christmas he had no conception. The single and melancholy association
he had with it was the quaking hymn which his grandfather used to sing
in a cracked and quavering voice:
“While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground.”
The “glory” that “shone around” at the end of it--the doleful voice
always repeating, “and glory shone around “--made John as miserable as
“Hark! from the tombs.” It was all one dreary expectation of something
uncomfortable. It was, in short, “religion.” You'd got to have it some
time; that John believed. But it lay in his unthinking mind to put off
the “Hark! from the tombs” enjoyment as long as possible. He experienced
a kind of delightful wickedness in indulging his dislike of hymns and of
Sunday.
John was not a model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what his
wickedness consisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor much to lie;
and he despised “meanness” and stinginess, and had a chivalrous feeling
toward little girls. Probably it never occurred to him that there was
any virtue in not stealing and lying, for honesty and veracity were in
the atmosphere about him. He hated work, and he “got mad” easily; but he
did work, and he was always ashamed when he was over his fit of passion.
In short, you couldn't find a much better wicked boy than John.
When the “revival” came, therefore, one summer, John was in a quandary.
Sunday meeting and Sunday-school he didn't mind; they were a part of
regular life, and only temporarily interrupted a boy's pleasures. But
when there began to be evening meetings at the different houses, a
new element came into affairs. There was a kind of solemnity over the
community, and a seriousness in all faces. At first these twilight
assemblies offered a little relief to the monotony of farm life; and
John liked to meet the boys and girls, and to watch the older people
coming in, dressed in their second best. I think John's imagination was
worked upon by the sweet and mournful hymns that were discordantly sung
in the stiff old parlors. There was a suggestion of Sunday, and sanctity
too, in the odor of caraway-seed that pervaded the room. The windows
were wide open also, and the scent of June roses came in, with all the
languishing sounds of a summer night. All the little boys had a scared
look, but the little girls were never so pretty and demure as in this
their susceptible seriousness. If John saw a boy who did not come to the
evening meeting, but was wandering off with his sling down the
meadow, looking for frogs, maybe, that boy seemed to him a monster of
wickedness.
After a time, as the meetings continued, John fell also under the
general impression of fright and seriousness. All the talk was
of “getting religion,” and he heard over and over again that the
probability was if he did not get it now, he never would. The chance did
not come often, and if this offer was not improved, John would be given
over to hardness of heart. His obstinacy would show that he was not one
of the elect. John fancied that he could feel his heart hardening, and
he began to look with a wistful anxiety into the faces of the Christians
to see what were the visible signs of being one of the elect. John put
on a good deal of a manner that he “didn't care,” and he never admitted
his disquiet by asking any questions or standing up in meeting to be
prayed for. But he did care. He heard all the time that all he had to do
was to repent and believe. But there was nothing that he doubted, and he
was perfectly willing to repent if he could think of anything to repent
of.
It was essential he learned, that he should have a “conviction of sin.”
This he earnestly tried to have. Other people, no better than he, had
it, and he wondered why he couldn't have it. Boys and girls whom he
knew were “under conviction,” and John began to feel not only panicky,
but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been anxious for days and days, and
not able to sleep at night, but now she had given herself up and found
peace. There was a kind of radiance in her face that struck John
with awe, and he felt that now there was a great gulf between him and
Cynthia. Everybody was going away from him, and his heart was getting
harder than ever. He couldn't feel wicked, all he could do. And there
was Ed Bates his intimate friend, though older than he, a “whaling,”
noisy kind of boy, who was under conviction and sure he was going to be
lost. How John envied him! And pretty soon Ed “experienced religion.”
John anxiously watched the change in Ed's face when he became one of the
elect. And a change there was. And John wondered about another thing.
Ed Bates used to go trout-fishing, with a tremendously long pole, in a
meadow brook near the river; and when the trout didn't bite right off,
Ed would get mad, and as soon as one took hold he would give an awful
jerk, sending the fish more than three hundred feet into the air and
landing it in the bushes the other side of the meadow, crying out, “Gul
darn ye, I'll learn ye.” And John wondered if Ed would take the little
trout out any more gently now.
John felt more and more lonesome as one after another of his playmates
came out and made a profession. Cynthia (she too was older than John)
sat on Sunday in the singers' seat; her voice, which was going to be a
contralto, had a wonderful pathos in it for him, and he heard it with a
heartache. “There she is,” thought John, “singing away like an angel in
heaven, and I am left out.” During all his after life a contralto voice
was to John one of his most bitter and heart-wringing pleasures. It
suggested the immaculate scornful, the melancholy unattainable.
If ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into a conviction of sin,
John tried. And what made him miserable was, that he couldn't feel
miserable when everybody else was miserable. He even began to pretend
to be so. He put on a serious and anxious look like the others. He
pretended he didn't care for play; he refrained from chasing chipmunks
and snaring suckers; the songs of birds and the bright vivacity of the
summer--time that used to make him turn hand-springs smote him as a
discordant levity. He was not a hypocrite at all, and he was getting to
be alarmed that he was not alarmed at himself. Every day and night he
heard that the spirit of the Lord would probably soon quit striving with
him, and leave him out. The phrase was that he would “grieve away the
Holy Spirit.” John wondered if he was not doing it. He did everything
to put himself in the way of conviction, was constant at the evening
meetings, wore a grave face, refrained from play, and tried to feel
anxious. At length he concluded that he must do something.
One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which several of
his little playmates had “come forward,” he felt that he could force
the crisis. He was alone on the sandy road; it was an enchanting summer
night; the stars danced overhead, and by his side the broad and shallow
river ran over its stony bed with a loud but soothing murmur that filled
all the air with entreaty. John did not then know that it sang, “But I
go on forever,” yet there was in it for him something of the solemn flow
of the eternal world. When he came in sight of the house, he knelt down
in the dust by a pile of rails and prayed. He prayed that he might feel
bad, and be distressed about himself. As he prayed he heard distinctly,
and yet not as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs by
the meadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts; it had in
it a melancholy pathos, as if it were a kind of call to the unconverted.
What is there in this sound that suggests the tenderness of spring, the
despair of a summer night, the desolateness of young love? Years after
it happened to John to be at twilight at a railway station on the edge
of the Ravenna marshes. A little way over the purple plain he saw the
darkening towers and heard “the sweet bells of Imola.” The Holy Pontiff
Pius IX. was born at Imola, and passed his boyhood in that serene and
moist region. As the train waited, John heard from miles of marshes
round about the evening song of millions of frogs, louder and more
melancholy and entreating than the vesper call of the bells. And
instantly his mind went back for the association of sound is as subtle
as that of odor--to the prayer, years ago, by the roadside and the
plaintive appeal of the unheeded frogs, and he wondered if the little
Pope had not heard the like importunity, and perhaps, when he thought of
himself as a little Pope, associated his conversion with this plaintive
sound.
John prayed, but without feeling any worse, and then went desperately
into the house, and told the family that he was in an anxious state of
mind. This was joyful news to the sweet and pious household, and the
little boy was urged to feel that he was a sinner, to repent, and to
become that night a Christian; he was prayed over, and told to read the
Bible, and put to bed with the injunction to repeat all the texts of
Scripture and hymns he could think of. John did this, and said over
and over the few texts he was master of, and tossed about in a real
discontent now, for he had a dim notion that he was playing the
hypocrite a little. But he was sincere enough in wanting to feel, as
the other boys and girls felt, that he was a wicked sinner. He tried to
think of his evil deeds; and one occurred to him; indeed, it often came
to his mind. It was a lie; a deliberate, awful lie, that never injured
anybody but himself. John knew he was not wicked enough to tell a lie to
injure anybody else.
This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before John's class was
to recite in geography, his pretty cousin, a young lady he held in great
love and respect, came in to visit the school. John was a favorite with
her, and she had come to hear him recite. As it happened, John felt
shaky in the geographical lesson of that day, and he feared to be
humiliated in the presence of his cousin; he felt embarrassed to that
degree that he couldn't have “bounded” Massachusetts. So he stood up
and raised his hand, and said to the schoolma'am, “Please, ma'am, I
've got the stomach-ache; may I go home?” And John's character for
truthfulness was so high (and even this was ever a reproach to him),
that his word was instantly believed, and he was dismissed without
any medical examination. For a moment John was delighted to get out of
school so early; but soon his guilt took all the light out of the summer
sky and the pleasantness out of nature. He had to walk slowly, without
a single hop or jump, as became a diseased boy. The sight of a woodchuck
at a distance from his well-known hole tempted John, but he restrained
himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing a woodchuck
was inconsistent with the stomach-ache. He was acting a miserable part,
but it had to be gone through with. He went home and told his mother the
reason he had left school, but he added that he felt “some” better now.
The “some” didn't save him. Genuine sympathy was lavished on him.
He had to swallow a stiff dose of nasty “picra,”--the horror of all
childhood, and he was put in bed immediately. The world never looked so
pleasant to John, but to bed he was forced to go. He was excused from
all chores; he was not even to go after the cows. John said he thought
he ought to go after the cows,--much as he hated the business usually,
he would now willingly have wandered over the world after cows,--and for
this heroic offer, in the condition he was, he got credit for a desire
to do his duty; and this unjust confidence in him added to his torture.
And he had intended to set his hooks that night for eels. His cousin
came home, and sat by his bedside and condoled with him; his schoolma'am
had sent word how sorry she was for him, John was Such a good boy. All
this was dreadful.
He groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper; it would
be very dangerous to eat a morsel. The prospect was appalling. Never
was there such a long twilight; never before did he hear so many sounds
outdoors that he wanted to investigate. Being ill without any illness
was a horrible condition. And he began to have real stomach-ache now;
and it ached because it was empty. John was hungry enough to have eaten
the New England Primer. But by and by sleep came, and John forgot his
woes in dreaming that he knew where Madagascar was just as easy as
anything.
It was this lie that came back to John the night he was trying to
be affected by the revival. And he was very much ashamed of it, and
believed he would never tell another. But then he fell thinking whether,
with the “picra,” and the going to bed in the afternoon, and the loss
of his supper, he had not been sufficiently paid for it. And in this
unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.
And the truth must be told, that in the morning John was no nearer to
realizing the terrors he desired to feel. But he was a conscientious
boy, and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of the
season. He not only put himself away from them all, but he refrained
from doing almost everything that he wanted to do. There came at that
time a newspaper, a secular newspaper, which had in it a long account
of the Long Island races, in which the famous horse “Lexington” was a
runner. John was fond of horses, he knew about Lexington, and he had
looked forward to the result of this race with keen interest. But to
read the account of it now he felt might destroy his seriousness of
mind, and in all reverence and simplicity he felt it--be a means of
“grieving away the Holy Spirit.” He therefore hid away the paper in
a table-drawer, intending to read it when the revival should be over.
Weeks after, when he looked for the newspaper, it was not to be found,
and John never knew what “time” Lexington made nor anything about the
race. This was to him a serious loss, but by no means so deep as another
feeling that remained with him; for when his little world returned to
its ordinary course, and long after, John had an uneasy apprehension
of his own separateness from other people, in his insensibility to the
revival. Perhaps the experience was a damage to him; and it is a pity
that there was no one to explain that religion for a little fellow like
him is not a “scheme.”