“WHAT DID IT ALL AMOUNT TO, ANYHOW?”
Settled, that is, so far as the class of boys in the corner would permit
the use of that term. _They_ had not settled in the least. Two of them
indulged in a louder burst of laughter than before, just as Mrs. Roberts
took her seat. Yet her face was in no wise ruffled.
“Good afternoon,” she said, with as much courtesy as she would have used
in addressing gentlemen. “I wonder if you know that I am a stranger in
this great city? You are almost the first acquaintances that I am making
among the young people, and I have a fancy that I would like to have you
all for my friends. Suppose we enter into a compact to be excellent and
faithful friends to one another? What do you say?”
What were they to say? They were slightly taken back, surprised into
listening quietly to the close of the strange sentence, and then giving
no answer beyond violent nudges and aside-looks. What did she mean?
Was she “chaffing” them? This was unlike the opening of any lesson! It
certainly could not be the first question on the lesson-paper; nor did
it sound like certain well-meant admonitions to “try to improve the
opportunity” and “learn all that they could.” With each of these
commencements they were entirely familiar; but this was something new.
“Do you agree to the compact?” she asked, while they waited, her face
bright with smiles.
“Dunno about that,” said one whom she very soon discovered occupied the
position of a ringleader; “as a general thing, we like to be kind of
careful about our friendships; we might strike something that wasn't
quite the thing with people in our position. You can't be too careful in
a big city, you know.”
It is impossible to give you an idea of the impishness with which this
impudent answer was jerked out, to the great amusement of the others,
who laughed immoderately.
It suited Mrs. Roberts to treat the reply with perfect seriousness and
composure.
“That is very true,” she said, courteously; “but at the same time I
venture to hope that since you know nothing ill of me as yet, you will
receive me into a sort of conditional friendship, with the understanding
that I remain your friend until I am guilty of some conduct that ought
to justify you in deserting me. I am sure you cannot object to that; and
now, if we are to be friends, we should know each other's names. I am
Mrs. Evan Roberts, and I live at No. 76 East Fifty-fifth Street. I shall
be glad to see you at my house whenever you would like to call on me.
Now, will one of you be kind enough to introduce himself and the class?
Perhaps you will introduce me to your friends?”
She looked directly at the ringleader.
“Certainly! certainly, mum!” he replied, briskly. “This is Mr. Carrot
Pumpkins, at your service, mum--this fellow on my left, I mean; rather
a queer name, I dare say you think. It all came of his being fond of
sitting astride of a pumpkin when he was a little shaver, and of his
hair being exactly the color of carrots as you can see for yourself. And
this fellow on my right is Mr. Champion Chawer, so called because he can
make the biggest run on tobacco of any of the set, taking him day in and
day out. That fellow at your elbow is 'Slippery Jim.' We don't call him
'Mister,' because he doesn't stay long enough in one place to have it
tacked on to him. He is such a slippery scamp that an eel is nowhere,
compared to him.”
During this rapid flow of words the listeners, who evidently admired
their leader, became so convulsed with laughter as to lose all vestige
of respectability, and Mr. Durant's disturbed face appeared in view.
“Boys, this is perfectly disgraceful!” he said, speaking in sharp and
highly-excited tones,--“perfectly disgraceful! I don't know why you wish
to come here to disturb us in this way Sabbath after Sabbath! But we
have really endured enough. There is a policeman at the foot of the
stairs, and he can easily call others to his help; so now if you wish to
remain here you must behave yourselves.”
During the deliverance of this sentence some of the boys gave mimic
groans, one of them whistled, and others kept up a running comment:--
“A policeman! oh good! that's little Duffer, I know! We've seen him
before! Wouldn't mind giving him a chase to-day, just for exercise, you
know, mum.”
“I say, boys, let's cut and run, the whole caboodle of us. We can
jump these seats at one bound, and take the little woman along on our
shoulders for a ride! Shall we do it?” This from the leader, who in time
came to be known as “Nimble Dick.”
“Bah! no!” replied a third; “let's stick it out and see what she's got
to say; she's a new party. Besides, we can't give her the slip in that
way; we're friends of hers, you know.”
“Mrs. Roberts,” said the distressed Mr. Durant, in a not very good
undertone, “I think you will have to give it up. They are worse than
usual this morning. We have endured much from them, and I must say that
my patience is exhausted. Will you not take the seat at the other end of
the room?”
“Not unless they wish me to.”
The people who had known Flossy Shipley well would have detected a
curious little quiver in her voice, which meant that she was making a
strong effort at self-control; but a stranger would hardly have observed
it.
“Do you wish me to go away, young gentlemen?”
The scamps thus appealed to, looked at one another again, as if in doubt
what to say. This again was new ground to them. Policemen they were
accustomed to. At last Nimble Dick made answer:--
“No, I'm bound if we do; it comes the nearest to looking like a lark of
anything that we have had in a long time. I say, Parson, go off about
your business and let us alone. We was having a good time getting
acquainted till you come and spoiled it. We'll be as sober as nine
deacons at a prayer-meetin'. And look out how you insult this young
woman; she's a friend of ours, and we're bound to protect her. No asking
of her to change her seat; she's going to sit right here to the end of
the chapter.”
Mr. Durant looked his willingness to summon the police at once, but Mrs.
Roberts' voice, evenly poised now, took up the story:--
“Thank you; then I will stay. And since it is getting late, suppose we
lose no more time. There was something about which I wanted to tell
you. But a few evenings ago I attended a gathering where I saw some very
singular things. A gentleman in the party was tied with a strong rope,
hands and feet, as firmly as two men could tie him,--people who knew how
to tie knots, and they did their best; yet while we stood looking at him
he shook his hand free and held it out to them. How do you think it was
done?”
“Sham knots!” said one.
“No, for my husband was one of the gentlemen who tied him, and he
assured me that he tied the rope as firmly as he could. Besides, more
wonderful things than that were done. I tied my own handkerchief into at
least a dozen very hard knots, and gave it to him, and I saw him put it
in a glass of water, then seize it and shake it out, and the knots were
gone. I saw him take two clean glasses, and pour water from a pitcher
into one, and it seemed to turn instantly to wine; then he poured that
glass of wine into the other empty glass, and immediately it turned back
to water, or seemed to. Dozens of other strange things he did. I should
really like to tell you about them all. I will, at some other time; but
just now I think you would like to know _how_ he did them.”
“_How_ he did them!” “As if you could tell!” “_Can_ you tell?” “Pitch
in, mum; I'd like to hear that part myself!” These were some of the
eager answers.
Had the little teacher, under the embarrassments of the occasion, taken
leave of her senses? Actually she was bending forward, opened Bible
turned face downward on her knee, engaged in describing in somewhat
minute detail the explanations of certain slight-of-hand performances
which she had recently seen! What idea of the sacredness of the office
of teacher, and the solemnity of the truths to be taught, had she?
The boys were listening, their heads bent forward all around her. What
of that? They would have listened equally well to a graphically-told
story of a Fourth Avenue riot, and been equally benefited, you think?
They did not know just when the speaker slipped from the events of last
week to the events of more than three thousand years ago. Indeed, so
ignorant were they of all past history, that they were not even aware
that she went back into the past; for aught they knew, she might have
gone, on Wednesday of last week to see the man who could untie knots by
magic, and on Thursday to see the men who could drop canes on the ground
that would appear to turn into wriggling serpents. But there was one
statement that proved too much for their credulity.
“You could not imagine what occurred next,” said the bright-faced
teacher. “The cane or rod that the first man had dropped, actually
opened its mouth and swallowed the other rods that seemed to be
serpents, and was left there alone in its triumph!”
“Oh, bosh!” said Nimble Dick, contempt expressed in the very curve of
his nose, “that's too steep; I don't believe a word of it! These fellows
can do lots of queer things; I've seen 'em perform, myself; but they
never made a live thing yet; I've heard folks that know, say so.”
“Precisely what I wanted to reach,” said Mrs. Roberts, with animation.
“You are right, they never did; and you have discovered just the
difference between them and the one man of whom I have been telling you.
_He_ worked by the power of God; he distinctly stated that he did; and
that God really turned his rod into a serpent, and allowed it to swallow
the imitations of life, and then turned it back again into a rod, to
show that nothing was beyond his power.”
“Did you see the thing done?” questioned a young skeptic, running his
tongue into his cheek in a skillful way, and distorting his whole face
with a disagreeable leer. He began to suspect that he was being cheated
into listening to a Bible story.
Mrs. Roberts was prompt with her answer:--
“Oh, no, I did not, neither did I see the great fire that you had in
this city about a year ago. At that time I was a thousand miles away;
and it so happens that I have never talked with any person who did see
it, yet I know there was a great fire, and many buildings were burned,
and lives lost. It has been proved to me.”
“Oh, well,” said skeptic number two, while number one retired into
silence to speculate over this answer, “fires are common enough things;
anybody can know that they happen; but it ain't such a common affair to
see a stick turn into a serpent and swallow up other serpents. I've seen
them fellows make things that looked like snakes, myself; I could
most swear to it that I'd seen them wriggle; but they never did no
_swallowing_.”
“That is, they did not give unmistakable signs that they were alive. But
do you think it too strange a thing for God to do? Surely he can make
life! How is it that you are here, breathing, talking, thinking, if
there is no power anywhere to make life?”
“Oh, I came from a tadpole,” said the boastful young scientist, putting
his thumbs under his arms, and affecting an air of great wisdom. “I know
all about that; I was there, and see the things wriggle.”
Evolution staring her in the face in a corner class in a mission
school;--a class that had been gathered from the slums! Mrs. Roberts did
not know that these are the very places in which to find it in all its
coarseness. Yet she made haste to meet the boy on his own ground.
“Very well, if you choose to take that view of it. Was not the tadpole
alive? Where did the _life_ come from? You insist that the story I
have been telling you is untrue because you know that none of these
sleight-of-hand performers have ever, or _can_ ever make actual life!
That it is an impossible thing for human beings to do. Yet when I tell
you that _God_ did it you refuse the statement. How are you going to
account for life? If, in its very lowest forms, it cannot be made by men
who have given all their time to the study of the marvellous, how is
it that it is everywhere about us, unless I am correct, and there is a
Power that can produce life?”
Not a boy among them had heard the term “evolution;” knew anything
about “the survival of the fittest.” They were entirely ignorant of
“protoplasm” or “bioplasm;” yet not one of them but had caught the
meaning of some of these terms as they had been translated for them into
the vernacular of the city slums; not one in the class but perceived
that their champion arguer had been met on his own ground and
vanquished. Not with an outburst of horror; he had not even been
informed that he was irreverent. Nimble Dick delighted in making each
teacher tell him this; he had merely been replied to in the calmest of
argumentative tones, and called upon to account for the facts in his
own statements, and had been unable to do so. The crowd broke into a
derisive laugh, and were noisy, it is true, and brought troubled frowns
to the face of their superintendent, and made the flush on Alfred Ried's
face deepen; yet if both these anxious watchers had known it, it was
worthy of note that the laugh had been at the expense of one of their
number, and not at their teacher.
“Well, go on,” interposed the youngest and quietest of the group. “Tell
us some more about your old fellow with his serpents. Did they stay
swallowed, and what did it all amount to, anyhow?”
Thus challenged, Mrs. Roberts gave her whole heart to the business of
giving, in as dramatic a manner as she could, the closing scenes in the
act performed in Egypt so long ago, carefully avoiding any reference
to time, and mentioning no names, using only modern terms, and an
exceedingly simple conversational form of language. She was, however,
presently interrupted with a question:--
“When did all this happen? And why don't somebody do something like it
nowadays?”
Ignoring the first question, Mrs. Roberts adroitly gave herself to the
second.
“Why don't you find your pleasure in tumbling around on the floor,
playing with a bright-colored marble or two as you did when a child? The
world was in its childhood when God taught the people in this way. He
has given them just as wonderful lessons since, but lessons more suited
to men and women who have learned to think and reason. We don't like to
be always treated as children.”
Whether they really dimly understood the meaning or not is possibly
doubtful, yet it appealed to their sense of dignity in so indirect a
way, that they did not themselves realize what inclined them to quiet
for a moment, while she finished her sentence earnestly. In the midst
of the quiet the closing-bell rang, and the seven young scamps seemed
at once to take into their hearts seven other spirits worse than
themselves, and behaved abominably during the closing exercises, and
tumbled out of the door over each other, in the wildest fashion, the
moment the signal was given, halting only to say, in the person of their
leader:--
“You be on hand next Sunday; we like your yarns first rate.”
Mrs. Roberts, with glowing cheeks, and eyes behind which there were
unshed tears, made her way to the desk where Mr. Durant was standing,
and spoke quickly:
“There is a difference between others who have tried it and myself, Mr.
Durant. The sentence in Mr. Ried's account that gave me courage was,
'Every one has failed, so far; people are unwilling to take the class a
second time.' I have failed, but I want to try again.”