"Huh!" scoffed the other denomination, "we are goin' to have the
all-firedest biggest tree that you ever saw in the world."
The little Presbyterians were greatly downcast.
It happened that Jimmie Trescott had regularly attended the
Presbyterian Sunday-school. The Trescotts were consistently
undenominational, but they had sent their lad on Sundays to one of the
places where they thought he would receive benefits. However, on one
day in December, Jimmie appeared before his father and made a strong
spiritual appeal to be forthwith attached to the Sunday-school of the
Big Progressive church. Doctor Trescott mused this question
considerably. "Well, Jim," he said, "why do you conclude that the Big
Progressive Sunday-school is better for you than the Presbyterian
Sunday-school?"
"Now--it's nicer," answered Jimmie, looking at his father with an
anxious eye.
"How do you mean?"
"Why--now--some of the boys what go to the Presbyterian place, they
ain't very nice," explained the flagrant Jimmie.
Trescott mused the question considerably once more. In the end he
said: "Well, you may change if you wish, this one time, but you must
not be changing to and fro. You decide now, and then you must abide by
your decision."
"Yessir," said Jimmie, brightly. "Big Progressive."
"All right," said the father. "But remember what I've told you."
On the following Sunday morning Jimmie presented himself at the door
of the basement of the Big Progressive church. He was conspicuously
washed, notably raimented, prominently polished. And, incidentally, he
was very uncomfortable because of all these virtues.
A number of acquaintances greeted him contemptuously. "Hello, Jimmie!
What you doin' here? Thought you was a Presbyterian?"
Jimmie cast down his eyes and made no reply. He was too cowed by the
change. However, Homer Phelps, who was a regular patron of the Big
Progressive Sunday-school, suddenly appeared and said, "Hello, Jim!"
Jimmie seized upon him. Homer Phelps was amenable to Trescott laws,
tribal if you like, but iron-bound, almost compulsory.
"Hello, Homer!" said Jimmie, and his manner was so good that Homer
felt a great thrill in being able to show his superior a new condition
of life.
"You 'ain't never come here afore, have you?" he demanded, with a new
arrogance.
"No, I 'ain't," said Jimmie. Then they stared at each other and
manoeuvred.
"You don't know _my_ teacher," said Homer.
"No, I don't know _her_" admitted Jimmie, but in a way which
contended, modestly, that he knew countless other Sunday-school
teachers.
"Better join our class," said Homer, sagely. "She wears spectacles;
don't see very well. Sometimes we do almost what we like."
"All right," said Jimmie, glad to place himself in the hands of his
friends. In due time they entered the Sunday-school room, where a man
with benevolent whiskers stood on a platform and said, "We will now
sing No. 33--'Pull for the Shore, Sailor, Pull for the Shore.'" And
as the obedient throng burst into melody the man on the platform
indicated the time with a fat, white, and graceful hand. He was an
ideal Sunday-school superintendent--one who had never felt hunger or
thirst or the wound of the challenge of dishonor; a man, indeed, with
beautiful flat hands who waved them in greasy victorious beneficence
over a crowd of children.
Jimmie, walking carefully on his toes, followed Homer Phelps. He felt
that the kingly superintendent might cry out and blast him to ashes
before he could reach a chair. It was a desperate journey. But at last
he heard Homer muttering to a young lady, who looked at him through
glasses which greatly magnified her eyes. "A new boy," she said, in an
oily and deeply religious voice.
"Yes'm," said Jimmie, trembling. The five other boys of the class
scanned him keenly and derided his condition.
"We will proceed to the lesson," said the young lady. Then she cried
sternly, like a sergeant, "The seventh chapter of Jeremiah!"
There was a swift fluttering of leaflets. Then the name of Jeremiah, a
wise man, towered over the feelings of these boys. Homer Phelps was
doomed to read the fourth verse. He took a deep breath, he puffed out
his lips, he gathered his strength for a great effort. His beginning
was childishly explosive. He hurriedly said:
"_Trust ye not in lying words, saying The temple of the Lord, the
temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these._"
"Now," said the teacher, "Johnnie Scanlan, tell us what these words
mean." The Scanlan boy shamefacedly muttered that he did not know. The
teacher's countenance saddened. Her heart was in her work; she wanted
to make a success of this Sunday-school class. "Perhaps Homer Phelps
can tell us," she remarked.
Homer gulped; he looked at Jimmie. Through the great room hummed a
steady hum. A little circle, very near, was being told about Daniel in
the lion's den. They were deeply moved. At the moment they liked
Sunday-school.
"Why--now--it means," said Homer, with a grand pomposity born of a
sense of hopeless ignorance--"it means--why it means that they were in
the wrong place."
"No," said the teacher, profoundly; "it means that we should be good,
very good indeed. That is what it means. It means that we should
love the Lord and be good. Love the Lord and be good. That is what it
means."
[Illustration: "THE PROFESSIONAL BRIGHT BOY OF THE CLASS SUDDENLY
AWOKE"]
The little boys suddenly had a sense of black wickedness as their
teacher looked austerely upon them. They gazed at her with the
wide-open eyes of simplicity. They were stirred again. This thing of
being good--this great business of life--apparently it was always
successful. They knew from the fairy tales. But it was difficult,
wasn't it? It was said to be the most heart-breaking task to be
generous, wasn't it? One had to pay the price of one's eyes in order
to be pacific, didn't one? As for patience, it was tortured martyrdom
to be patient, wasn't it? Sin was simple, wasn't it? But virtue was so
difficult that it could only be practised by heavenly beings, wasn't
it?
And the angels, the Sunday-school superintendent, and the teacher swam
in the high visions of the little boys as beings so good that if a boy
scratched his shin in the same room he was a profane and sentenced
devil.
"And," said the teacher, "'The temple of the Lord'--what does that
mean? I'll ask the new boy. What does that mean?"
"I dun'no'," said Jimmie, blankly.
But here the professional bright boy of the class suddenly awoke to
his obligations. "Teacher," he cried, "it means church, same as
this."
"Exactly," said the teacher, deeply satisfied with this reply. "You
know your lesson well, Clarence. I am much pleased."
The other boys, instead of being envious, looked with admiration upon
Clarence, while he adopted an air of being habituated to perform such
feats every day of his life. Still, he was not much of a boy. He had
the virtue of being able to walk on very high stilts, but when the
season of stilts had passed he possessed no rank save this
Sunday-school rank, this clever-little-Clarence business of knowing
the Bible and the lesson better than the other boys. The other boys,
sometimes looking at him meditatively, did not actually decide to
thrash him as soon as he cleared the portals of the church, but they
certainly decided to molest him in such ways as would re-establish
their self-respect. Back of the superintendent's chair hung a
lithograph of the martyrdom of St. Stephen.
Jimmie, feeling stiff and encased in his best clothes, waited for the
ordeal to end. A bell pealed: the fat hand of the superintendent had
tapped a bell. Slowly the rustling and murmuring dwindled to silence.
The benevolent man faced the school. "I have to announce," he began,
waving his body from side to side in the conventional bows of his
kind, "that--" Bang went the bell. "Give me your attention, please,
children. I have to announce that the Board has decided that this year
there will be no Christmas tree, but the--"
Instantly the room buzzed with the subdued clamor of the children.
Jimmie was speechless. He stood morosely during the singing of the
closing hymn. He passed out into the street with the others, pushing
no more than was required.
Speedily the whole idea left him. If he remembered Sunday-school at
all, it was to remember that he did not like it.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Archaic and inconsistent punctuation, spelling, and syntax have been
retained.