A crucial struggle with her father, to which both Tillie and Miss
Margaret had fearfully looked forward, came about much sooner than
Tillie had anticipated. The occasion of it, too, was not at all what
she had expected and even planned it to be.
It was her conversion, just a year after she had been taken out of
school, to the ascetic faith of the New Mennonites that precipitated
the crisis, this conversion being wrought by a sermon which she heard
at the funeral of a neighboring farmer.
A funeral among the farmers of Lancaster County is a festive occasion,
the most popular form of dissipation known, bringing the whole
population forth as in some regions they turn out to a circus.
Adam Schank's death, having been caused by his own hand in a fit of
despair over the loss of some money he had unsuccessfully invested, was
so sudden and shocking that the effect produced on Canaan Township was
profound, not to say awful.
As for Tillie, it was the first event of the kind that had ever come
within her experience, and the religious sentiments in which she had
been reared aroused in her, in common with the rest of the community, a
superstitious fear before this sudden and solemn calling to judgment of
one whom they had all known so familiarly, and who had so wickedly
taken his own life.
During the funeral at the farm-house, she sat in the crowded parlor
where the coffin stood, and though surrounded by people, she felt
strangely alone with this weird mystery of Death which for the first
time she was realizing.
Her mother was in the kitchen with the other farmers' wives of the
neighborhood who were helping to prepare the immense quantity of food
necessary to feed the large crowd that always attended a funeral, every
one of whom, by the etiquette of the county, remained to supper after
the services.
Her father, being among the hired hostlers of the occasion, was outside
in the barn. Mr. Getz was head hostler at every funeral of the
district, being detailed to assist and superintend the work of the
other half dozen men employed to take charge of the "teams" that
belonged to the funeral guests, who came in families, companies, and
crowds. That so well-to-do a farmer as Jake Getz, one who owned his
farm "clear," should make a practice of hiring out as a funeral
hostler, with the humbler farmers who only rented the land they tilled,
was one of the facts which gave him his reputation for being "keen on
the penny."
Adam Schunk, deceased, had been an "Evangelical," but his wife being a
New Mennonite, a sect largely prevailing in southeastern Pennsylvania,
the funeral services were conducted by two ministers, one of them a New
Mennonite and the other an Evangelical. It was the sermon of the New
Mennonite that led to Tillie's conversion.
The New Mennonites being the most puritanic and exclusive of all sects,
earnestly regarding themselves as the custodians of the only absolutely
true light, their ministers insist on certain prerogatives as the
condition of giving their services at a funeral. A New Mennonite
preacher will not consent to preach after a "World's preacher"--he must
have first voice. It was therefore the somber doctrine of fear preached
by the Reverend Brother Abram Underwocht which did its work upon
Tillie's conscience so completely that the gentler Gospel set forth
afterward by the Evangelical brother was scarcely heeded.
The Reverend Brother Abram Underwocht, in the "plain" garb of the
Mennonite sect, took his place at the foot of the stairway opening out
of the sitting-room, and gave expression to his own profound sense of
the solemnity of the occasion by a question introductory to his sermon,
and asked in a tone of heavy import: "If this ain't a blow, what is it?"
Handkerchiefs were promptly produced and agitated faces hidden therein.
Why this was a "blow" of more than usual force, Brother Underwocht
proceeded to explain in a blood-curdling talk of more than an hour's
length, in which he set forth the New Mennonite doctrine that none
outside of the only true faith of Christ, as held and taught by the New
Mennonites, could be saved from the fire which cannot be quenched. With
the heroism born of deep conviction, he stoically disregarded the
feelings of the bereaved family, and affirmed that the deceased having
belonged to one of "the World's churches," no hope could be entertained
for him, nor could his grieving widow look forward to meeting him again
in the heavenly home to which she, a saved New Mennonite, was destined.
Taking advantage of the fact that at least one third of those present
were non-Mennonites, Brother Underwoeht followed the usual course of
the preachers of his sect on such an occasion, and made of his funeral
sermon an exposition of the whole field of New Mennonite faith and
practice. Beginning in the Garden of Eden, he graphically described
that renowned locality as a type of the Paradise from which Adam Schunk
and others who did not "give themselves up" were excluded.
"It must have been a magnificent scenery to Almighty Gawd," he said,
referring to the beauties of man's first Paradise. "But how soon to be
snatched by sin from man's mortal vision, when Eve started that
conversation with the enemy of her soul! Beloved, that was an
unfortunate circumstance! And you that are still out of Christ and in
the world, have need to pray fur Gawd's help, his aid, and his
assistance, to enable you to overcome the enemy who that day was turned
loose upon the world--that Gawd may see fit to have you when you're
done here a'ready. Heed the solemn warning of this poor soul now laying
before you cold in death!
"'Know that you're a transient creature,
Soon to fade and pass away."
"Even Lazarus, where [who] was raised to life, was not raised fur never
to die no more!"
The only comfort he could offer to this stricken household was that HE
knew how bad they felt, having had a brother who had died with equal
suddenness and also without hope, as he "had suosode hisself with a
gun."
This lengthy sermon was followed by a hymn, sung a line at a time at
the preacher's dictation:
"The body we now to the grave will commit,
To there see corruption till Jesus sees fit
A spirit'al body for it to prepare,
Which henceforth then shall immortality wear."
The New Mennonites being forbidden by the "Rules of the Meeting" ever
to hear a prayer or sermon by one who is not "a member," it was
necessary, at the end of the Reverend Abram Underwocht's sermon, for
all the Mennonites present to retire to a room apart and sit behind
closed doors, while the Evangelical brother put forth his false
doctrine.
So religiously stirred was Tillie by the occasion that she was strongly
tempted to rise and follow into the kitchen those who were thus
retiring from the sound of the false teacher's voice. But her
conversion not yet being complete, she kept her place.
No doubt it was not so much the character of Brother Underwocht's New
Mennonite sermon which effected this state in Tillie as that the
spiritual condition of the young girl, just awakening to her womanhood,
with all its mysterious craving, its religious brooding, its emotional
susceptibility, led her to respond with her whole soul to the first
appeal to her feelings.
Absorbed in her mournful contemplation of her own deep "conviction of
sin," she did not heed the singing, led by the Evangelical brother, of
the hymn,
"Rock of Ages, clept for me,"
nor did she hear a word of his discourse.
At the conclusion of the house services, and before the journey to the
graveyard, the supper was served, first to the mourners, and then to
all those who expected to follow the body to the grave. The third
table, for those who had prepared the meal, and the fourth, for the
hostlers, were set after the departure of the funeral procession.
Convention has prescribed that the funeral meal shall consist
invariably of cold meat, cheese, all sorts of stewed dried fruits,
pickles, "lemon rice" (a dish never omitted), and coffee.
As no one household possesses enough dishes for such an occasion, two
chests of dishes owned by the Mennonite church are sent to the house of
mourning whenever needed by a member of the Meeting.
The Mennonites present suffered a shock to their feelings upon the
appearance of the widow of the deceased Adam Schunk, for--unprecedented
circumstance!--she wore over her black Mennonite hood a crape veil!
This was an innovation nothing short of revolutionary, and the brethren
and sisters, to whom their prescribed form of dress was sacred, were
bewildered to know how they ought to regard such a digression from
their rigid customs.
"I guess Mandy's proud of herself with her weil," Tillie's stepmother
whispered to her as she gave the girl a tray of coffee-cups to deliver
about the table.
But Tillie's thoughts were inward bent, and she heeded not what went on
about her. Fear of death and the judgment, a longing to find the peace
which could come only with an assured sense of her salvation, darkness
as to how that peace might be found, a sense of the weakness of her
flesh and spirit before her father's undoubted opposition to her
"turning plain," as well as his certain refusal to supply the
wherewithal for her Mennonite garb, should she indeed be led of the
Spirit to "give herself up,"--all these warring thoughts and emotions
stamped their lines upon the girl's sweet, troubled countenance, as,
blind and deaf to her surroundings, she lent her helping hand almost as
one acting in a trance.