August, 1900
[Argosy, Vol. 71, pp. 364–366.]
A LITTLE PILGRIMAGE*
[A Little Pilgrim]
One November it became clear to childish minds in certain parts of Whilomville that the Sunday school of the Presbyterian church would not have for the children the usual tree on Christmas eve. The funds free for that ancient festival would be used for the relief of suffering among the victims of the Charleston earthquake.
The plan had been born in the generous head of the superintendent of the Sunday school, and during one session he had made a strong plea that the children should forego the vain pleasures of a tree and, in glorious application of the Golden Rule, refuse a local use of the fund, and will that it be sent where dire pain might be alleviated. At the end of a tearfully eloquent speech the question was put fairly to a vote, and the children in a burst of virtuous abandon carried the question for Charleston. Many of the teachers had been careful to preserve a finely neutral attitude, but even if they had cautioned the children against being too impetuous they could not have checked the wild impulses.
But this was a long time before Christmas.
Very early, boys held important speech together. “Huh! you ain’t goin’ to have no Christmas tree at the Presbyterian Sunday school.”
Sullenly the victim answered, “No, we ain’t.”
“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 considerately 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 maneuvered.
“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 friend. 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 fat 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.”
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 heartbreaking 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 practiced 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 ot
her 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 reëstablish their self-respect. Behind 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.
August, 1900
[Harper’s Magazine, Vol. 101, pp. 401–404.]
* Whilomville Stories.
AT THE PIT DOOR
The long file of people, two abreast, waiting resignedly for the hour of 7:30 P.M., look round sharply at the open space beside them when the girl with the guitar gives a preliminary strum. They are prepared to welcome anything calculated to chase monotony, for even half-penny comic papers after a time cease to amuse, and those reminiscent of past performances develop, when they pass a certain class, into first-class bores. This is why the guitar girl comes opportunely, and when she lifts up her chin and sings in a raucous voice to a tum-tum accompaniment, the two-abreast crowd listens with all its ears. E 243, at the end of the queue, looks on tolerantly, being a man with musical tastes and consequently of a genial disposition. Here singeth one:
When you meet a nice young person and you feel you’ve seen a worse one,
And you seek a interduction, don’t you know,
You are puzzled how to greet her, tho no lady could be neater,
So very shy and strickly comilfo.
You puzzle all your mind and brains, you take a deuced lot of pains,
You ponder and consider, and you think
It’s a foolish, silly waste of time, take this advice, dear boys of mine,
For all you’ve got to do is—give a wink.
Give a wink, boys—
The long line that reaches to the pit doors finds itself forced to hum the enticing chorus, either in shrill soprano or growling bass, and one young lady by herself, with a pince-nez and opera glasses, screws up her lips to whistle it. The guitar girl gives a second song—a sentimental one this time, with good-byes forever and weeping sweethearts and departing emigrants, and a waltz refrain, and nearly everybody dead and done for in the last verse. Then the guitar girl brings a scarlet plush bag that suggests the offertory, and going down the line, gleans as much as eightpence-half-penny.
A stout man in a tweed cap and loose tweed suit, that cries aloud at elbows and knees for the darning needle; he has a Windsor chair with him, and a slip of carpet, and these he places on the ground with much care and particularity. Throws then his tweed cap on the ground, slips his jacket off, thumps himself on his broad chest, and bows to his audience.
“Lydies and Gentlemen: I propose this evenin’ to clime your kind indulgence whilst I submit to your notice a few feats of strength. I don’t prefess to do anything that’s not done perfectly striteforward, and I invite your attention to watch whether I do anything that can be called trickery. If any one can bowl me out at pretendin’ to do something I don’t do, why I’ll forfeit”—here the stout man slaps an apparently empty pocket—“I will forfeit five golding sovereigns.”
The long line has been a little unconcerned at the acrobat’s lecture; but the mention of as much as five pounds seems to quicken its interest. The heads turn round and watch the stout man acutely.
“I first take up the chair between my teeth—thus.” The Windsor chair is swung to and fro in the air. “I then place the foot of one of its legs on my chin—thus.” The Windsor chair turns lazily around on its perilous axis. “I now place my head between my knees, and I ’old the chair in my mouth—thus.”
The stout man contorts himself into a preposterous position and does a kind of flag-signaling with the Windsor chair. “I now puts the chair one side, and I venture to trespass on your valuable time for a few minutes whilst I show you some feats equal to those”—(the stout man for the first time speaks with acerbity)—“equal to those that so-called acribats at the music ’alls are getting their thirty pun a week for.”
The stout man holds one foot high and dances round on the other foot in the manner of the ladies at the Moulin Rouge; he performs the unattractive “splits,” he stands on his head for a few moments; he walks about on his hands; he does nearly everything that nobody else wants to do. After each achievement he blows a quick kiss to the patient crowd. “Thanking you one and all, lydies and gentlemen, for assisting me by your kind attention, I now ast you to remember that a man’s got his livin’ to make, altho p’raps we may ’ave different ways of doing it. Can you oblige, miss, by starting the subscription list with a copper? If I can only get a good-looking—Thank you kindly, miss. And you, sir.”
A melancholy staring boy on the pavement opposite. It is quite clear that he is about to do something; it is by no means clear what that something is to be. When that stout man has put on his coat and shouldered his Windsor chair and lifted his tweed cap to the crowd politely, the melancholy boy moistens his lips and grasps the lamppost with one hand. Then he whistles. He whistles, truth to say, extremely well, and goes stolidly through the overture to “Zampa” and a frivolous polka, closing with “Rule Britannia” in such a spirit as to make every youth in the waiting line feel that unless he gives the melancholy youth at least a penny he is nothing better than a traitor to his country.
A rattling of bones! A banging of tambourines! A ping-pong of banjos! Six men in straw hats and white canvas suits with scarlet stripes and perspiring blackened faces are in a semicircle exchanging noisy repartee and—when they can think of no repartee—shouting loudly “Ooray!”
“D’you ’member that lil song of yours, Bones, that used to make people cry?”
“Do I ’member?” inquires Bones (in the Ollendorffian manner) “that lil song of mine that used to make people cry? Yes, sir; I do ’member that lil song of mine that used to make people cry.”
“Will you ’blige me by singing of it now?”
Bones is a short boy with a stubbled sandy mustache showing through the lamp-black on his face. He steps out of the semicircle, makes a bow that is almost obsequious, whilst the others clatter and twang through the symphony. Then Bones looks up at the side of the theater, and with a sort of ferocious pathos sings:—
Little Nellie’s joined the ingels,
She has flown to realms above:
Never more shall we ’ere see her;
Gorn’s the little soul we love.
But the mem’ry of her features,
Always wif us will remine,
And the sound of tiny voices,
Lingers in our ears agine.
The semicircle joins in, taking its several parts in a strenuous way.
Gorn, gorn is she, gorn from all earthly strife,
Free from all sorrer.…
The lugubrious purple song has three verses, an
d the number is enough. The line of pit patrons becomes quite depressed and sniffs a good deal, and one lady, borrowing her husband’s handkerchief, weeps openly and without restraint.
“Song and dence!” shouts Tambourine, “entitled, ‘Hev you seen a colored coon called Pete!’ ”
Again a noisy prelude. It is Tambourine himself who steps out this time, and he dances a few steps on the graveled space as earnest of what is to come, and to a red-faced white-capped servant who is gazing intently out of the side window of a neighboring hotel he waves affectionate greetings and hugs his left side as though the sight of the red-faced domestic had affected his heart.
I’m a sassy nigger gal, and me front name it is Sal,
Soft chorus from the semicircle:—
Hev ye seen a colored coon called Pete?
Tambourine continues:—
And the games we darkies play,
in the night and in the day,
Soft chorus as before:—
Hev ye seen a colored coon called Pete
But I want to ask you suthin’ and—
The long straight crowd is beginning to look at its watches. The hour is 7:30 precisely, and what the crowd asks with much impatience is, that if they don’t mean to open the doors at 7:30, what on earth makes them put 7:30 in the paper for? The worst of theaters is that you can never—A sound of moving bolts. A closing up in the ranks of the long line. A warning word from E 243. The song stops and the minstrels hurry forward to the moving crowd with their straw hats outstretched. It is too late. The crowd is so much engaged in feeling for its half-crowns and in keeping a steady eye on the gaping open doorway that it cannot trouble about any more gifts to entertainers.
“ ’Pon me bloomin’ oath,” says Tambourine with much annoyance, “if this ain’t jest like me nawsty luck!”
September, 1900
[The Philistine, Vol. 11, pp. 97–104.]
THE SQUIRE’S MADNESS*