Our Church-Garden.
ONE needs no other evidence that Maurice Mapleson is working a
wonderful transformation in this parish than is afforded by the
change which has been made in the external appearance of the church.
It is true that Miss Moore always was a worker. But I do not believe
that even Miss Moore could have carried out her plan of a church
garden under Mr. Work. And Mr. Work was a good minister too.
When I first came to Wheathedge the Calvary Presbyterian church was
externally, to the passer-by, distinguished chiefly for the severe
simplicity of its architecture, and the plainness, not to say the
homeliness, of its surroundings. It is a long, narrow, wooden
structure, as destitute of ornament as Squire Line's old fashioned
barn. Its only approximation to architectural display is a square
tower surmounted by four tooth-picks pointing heavenward, and
encasing the bell. A singular, a mysterious bell that was and is. It
expresses all the emotions of the neighborhood. It passes through
all the moods and inflections of a hundred hearts. To-day it rings
out with soft and sacred tones its call to worship. To-morrow from
its watch-tower it sees the crackling flame in some neighboring barn
or tenement, and utters, with loud and hurried and anxious voice,
its alarm. Anon, heavy with grief, it seems to enter, as a
sympathising friend, into the very heart experiences of bereaved and
weeping mourners. And when the rolling year brings round
Independence day, all the fluctuations of feeling which mature and
soften others are forgotten, and it trembles with the excitement of
the occasion, and laughs, and shouts, and capers merrily in its
homely belfry, as though it were a boy again.
Pardon the digression. But I love the dear old bell. And its voice
is musical to me, albeit I sometimes fancy, like many another
singer's it is growing weak and thin with age.
The surroundings of the church were no better than the external
aspect. The fence was broken down. The cows made common pasture in
the field-there is an acre of ground with the church, I believe-till
the grass was eaten so close to the ground that even they disdained
it. A few trees eked out a miserable existence. Most of them,
girdled by cattle, were dead. A few still maintained their "struggle
for life," but looked as though they pined for the freedom of the
woods again. Within, the church justified the promise of its
external condition. The board of trustees are poor. Every man had
been permitted to upholster his own pew. Some, without owners, were
also without upholstering. In the rest, the only merit was variety.
The church looked as though it had clothed itself in a Joseph's coat
of many colors; or rather, its robe presented the appearance of poor
Joe Sweaten's pantaloons, which are so darned and pieced and mended
that no man can guess what the original material was, or whether any
of it is left. There was but one redeeming feature-the bouquet upon
the pulpit. Every Sunday, Sophie Jowett brought that bouquet. As her
father had a large conservatory, the bouquet was rarely missing even
in winter. As she has admirable taste it was always beautiful even
when the flowers were not rare. She had done her work very quietly,
had asked no permission, had consulted with no one. One Sabbath the
bouquet appeared upon the pulpit. After that it was never missing,
except one Sunday when Miss Sophie was sick, and for three weeks in
the Fall, when she was away from home.
Such was the condition of the church at Wheathedge when I bought my
house.
Last spring Miss Sophie was married. There were more tears and less
radiance than usual at that wedding. Mr. Line said that he never
could supply the place in the Sunday-school. Mr. Work came up from
New York to marry them. His voice was tenderer than usual when he
pronounced the marriage ceremony. The first Sabbath after that
wedding the pulpit was without flowers. Was there any who did not
miss them, and in missing them did not miss her? It took the last
ornament from our church, which thenceforth looked desolated enough.
When Maurice Mapleson came the bouquet came back. But it was made
mostly of wild flowers. I think his wife began it. Perhaps it was
this which suggested to Miss Moore's fertile brain the idea of a
church-garden.
At all events one Wednesday after prayer-meeting Miss Moore and Mrs.
Biskit came to me. "We want a dollar from you," said Miss Moore.
"What for?" said I. Not that I thought of questioning Miss Moore's
demand,--no one ever does that; but because I naturally liked to know
what my money was going to do.
"We are going to start a church-garden," said she. "The trustees
have given us the ground, and we want to raise about ten dollars for
a beginning."
I gave her the dollar and thought no more about it; indeed, I should
have accounted the scheme quite chimerical if there had been any one
at the head of it except Miss Moore.
However, the next week, as I was passing the church, I saw Miss
Moore and Mrs. Biskit at work in the churchyard. A little plot had
been spaded up at one side, one or two walks laid out, and they were
busy putting in some flower seed. I thought of offering my services.
But as my agricultural education was neglected in my youth, and as
my knowledge of gardening is very limited, I passed on.
My chance came pretty soon. When Miss Moore has anything to do for
the church every one gets an opportunity to help.
It could not have been more than two or three days later, when, as I
passed, I perceived that she had already increased her stock of
gardeners. Half a dozen young men were working with a will. She had
half of the minister's Bible-class engaged. Two of them had brought
a load of gravel from down under the hill as you go to the Mill
village. They were shoveling this out at the front gate, while some
others were spreading it in a broad walk up to the church-door. A
great pile of sods lay right by the side of the growing gravel-heap.
Deacon Goodsole, in his shirt sleeves, was raking over the ground
preparing it for grass-seed. "Rather late for grass-seed," he had
remonstrated, but the inexorable Miss Moore had replied, "Better
late than never." Four or five of the boys, who had used the church
common as a ball-ground, were enlisted-a capital stroke of policy
that. Among them was Bill Styles, who prides himself on throwing a
stone higher and with surer aim than any other boy in Wheathedge,
and had demonstrated it by stoning all the glass out of the tower
windows. A melancholy-looking cow, transfixed with astonishment, had
stopped in the middle of the road to look with bewilderment upon
their invasion of its ancient territory. I leaned for a moment on
the tottering fence and looked, equally bewildered, on the busy
scene.
But Miss Moore never suffers any one to look on idly where she is
laboring. "Ah! Mr. Laicus," said she, cheerily, "you are just the
man we want. That cow will come in through these gaps in the fence
and undo our work in an hour after we leave it. I wish you would get
hold of somebody and fix it up." With that she was off again, and I
was in for an office.
Deacon Goodsole afterwards told me confidentially that he was caught
in the same way.
Now, though I am no gardener, I am a bit of a carpenter. So, after
taking the dimensions of the fence, mentally, I started off for the
material, which Mr. Hardcap gave, and, with the aid of a volunteer
or two, I succeeded in so far filling the breach that the melancholy
cow gave up her little game, and walked philosophically away.
To make a long story short, the result of Miss Moore's energetic
endeavors was seen the next Sabbath, in part, in an entirely new
aspect of affairs, which has been constantly improving since. The
board of trustees, moved thereto partly by the energies of Miss
Moore, partly by those of their Baptist neighbors who have just got
into a new church, have commenced to build a new fence. A graveled
walk, free from dust in drought and from mud in rainy weather, leads
up to the church-door. A border of sod on either side melts
gradually away into the beginning of a lawn of grass which will be
fuller and better next year than this. On a couple of fan shaped
lattices, in which I take a little pride as my own handiwork, a
honey-suckle on one side of the church-door and a prairie rose on
the other are planted. In imagination I already see them reaching
out their tendrils in courtship over the door. I should not wonder
if next Spring should celebrate their nuptials. Some ivy, planted by
Miss Moore, on the eastern side of the church promises in time to
embosom it in green. A parterre of flowers in the rear, has already
helped to furnish the pulpit every Sunday with a bouquet, and, Miss
Moore declares, will, another summer, give the minister a bouquet on
his study table all the week, and messengers of beauty to add to the
comfort of many a sick-room. And in the Fall Deacon Goodsole and I
with half a dozen young men from the pastor's Bible-class are going
up into the woods for some maples to set out in the place of the
dead sticks which served only as monuments of the departed.
But Miss Moore is in a quandary. She does not know what to do with
her ten dollars. All the work was given. Even Pat Maloney, Roman
Catholic though he is, would not take anything for spading up the
ground for "our church garden."
I am a conservative man. But I do wish Miss Moore could be chairman
of our board of trustees for a year or two.