Читать книгу The Gentleman from Everywhere - James Henry Foss - Страница 13

Dear old fathers and mothers! Of all the people in this world, they look through the rubbish of our imperfections, and see in us the divine ideal of our natures, love in us not perhaps the men we are, but the angels we may be in the evolution of the "sweet by and by," like the mother of St. Augustine, who, even while he was wild and reckless, beheld him standing clothed in white a ministering priest at the right hand of God.

They see through us as Michel Angelo saw through the block of marble, declaring that an angel was imprisoned within it. They are soul artists. They can never acknowledge our faults, only our divine possibilities; so, when I left the academy, my parents, with strong yearning and with tears, entreated me to become a minister. I had not the heart to disappoint them and as one hypnotized, on a Sabbath morning during that summer, the clergyman immersed me in the river, while a wondering crowd watched from the shore. The very waters seemed to protest, for as I gasped for breath at the cold backward plunge, I imbibed copious draughts of the briny deep, and was well-nigh strangled. I survived the ordeal, and that afternoon preached in the church to nearly the entire population of the town on the "Final state of the impenitent dead."

Oh, the terrors of this my first sermon, horrors to preacher as well as to "preachees." As I sat in the pulpit beside our pastor, listening to the tremulous tones of the organ which followed the prayer, and gazing at the sea of upturned faces, they seemed taunting me with all the wild pranks of my boyhood, and crying "Oh fool and hypocrite."

All my schoolmates were there shaking with ill-concealed merriment. Every pore poured forth perspiration, and my hair seemed to stand on end like quills upon the back of the fretful porcupine. I thought of the experience of the first sermon by a theological student which I had recently read in a comic paper, and I trembled lest history was to repeat itself.

This theologue, like many of his cloth, was possessed of the insane impression that he was gifted with the sublime inspiration of eloquence, and being invited to preach on his return to the old home for vacation, he selected the somewhat startling text "and the dumb ass opened his mouth and spake." On this elevating theme he wrote a sensational sermon and committed it to memory in order that he might electrify his audience with eye power as well as by verbal flow of soul. The awful day arrived, but when the young apostle arose to preach, stage fright banished from his mind all but the thrilling text.

"My friends," said he, "we are informed by the holy book that this dumb ass opened his mouth and spake." Then pulling his hair in desperation, he repeated the text several times, when he was interrupted by the disgusted pastor, who jumped to his feet and shouted:

"Well, friends, as the dumb ass has nothing to say, let us pray."

This awful example well nigh converted me into another specimen of this historic animal, but at last the pent up cave of the winds was opened, and a gust of sound came forth which so stunned the listening ears of my hearers that they dazedly mistook it for eloquence.

I painted to them the picture of the incorrigible sinner "on flames of burning brimstone tossed, forever, oh forever lost." I did not intend to be a hypocrite; but drifted with the revival tide.

I discoursed often that summer to audiences that crowded the church to the doors. I was but fifteen years of age, and was called: "The wonderful boy preacher."

One Sunday the village crank came to hear me, honoring the occasion by wearing a new stove-pipe hat of prodigious proportions, which he deposited on the seat as he arose during prayer. When the amen was pronounced, perhaps paralyzed by the fervor, he sat down upon said stove-pipe, crushing it to a pie, then leaped from the wreck uttering a blasphemous yell which convulsed the crowd with laughter, and thus broke up the meeting without the benediction and passing of the contribution-box, much to the delight of all who "steal their preaching" on all possible occasions.

I soon found that however anxious people were to save their souls, they were unwilling to part with their "filthy lucre" to buy through tickets to the celestial city, consequently, that winter being impecunious, I was constrained to accept the offer of my cousin, the "prudential committee," to teach the district school in Barrington, N.H., for the generous stipend of $14 per month and what board I could secure by going from house to house of my pupils.

On arriving there I was ushered into the imposing presence of the Free-will Baptist minister for examination; then I was made aware that although I had plenty of Greek and Latin, I was woefully uninstructed in the rudiments of our mother tongue, and was saved only by the fact that my cousin was the largest contributor to the dominie's salary.

The reverend superintendent had prepared an appalling array of "posers" in accordance with the laws of the state, but my cousin at my urgent request, assured him that I was an alumnus of one of the greatest institutions in the world, that I was a clergyman of his own denomination, that it was a waste of time to examine so distinguished a scholar, that dinner was ready, and the hungry dominie was seduced to the table where he partook of so much solid and liquid good cheer, that he quite forgot his official duty, and gave me the required certificate: thus I was saved from utter destruction.

In this isolated country town the coming of the schoolmaster in his tour of boarding around, was the great social event of the year to each family in this Barrington, so called from the numerous children which the mothers bear. The fatted pig was invariably killed in his honor, and he was regaled with fried pork, roast pig, broiled hog, sausages, and doughnuts reeking with swine fat ad nauseam, galore. The teacher was thus made bilious, dyspeptic and so ugly, that he tried to get even with his carnivorous tormentors by making it "as hot" as possible for their offspring.

At the opening of the school, this long and lank fifteen year old pedagogue faced sixty pupils from the "a, b, c, tot" to the brawny twenty-one-year-older, spoiling for a fight. When I assayed to take a seat, the half-sawed-off hind legs of the chair gave way, and I fell heels in air upon the dirty floor amid the yells and cat-calls of this tumultuous army; then the stalwart ringleader came forward to throw me into the snow bank, where my predecessor was nearly smothered with his head under the snow and his feet uplifted to heaven.

I quickly pulled a concealed ruler, and with a blow on the head, knocked the young giant sprawling, then utilizing all my athletic training, I tripped and banged his followers till they fled pell-mell to their benches. Finally, I hypnotized my audience with great eloquence, stating that I would give them teaching or clubbing as they might prefer. My sweet sixteen, black-eyed girl cousin gave efficient aid, winning the girls to my side; they secured the alliance of their sweethearts, and the victory was complete.

I soon found that some of the bright country lads and lasses knew more than myself about the "three R's," but by getting a key to the arithmetic, and trimming the midnight candle I managed to keep ahead of the game.

In this strictly agricultural town, I found every type of the genuine unadulterated yankee stock. When I called on Mrs. Jones to furnish her share of the perambulating schoolmaster's provisions, she remarked, "I can eat you, but I can't sleep you, because I have no spare bedroom." With feigned terror, I said that I feared I would not be a very toothsome subject for a cannibal, thereupon she gave me the glad hand, "come right in, my poor thing, and we will fat you up for our Thanksgiving dinner." I entered, and ate my hog and doughnuts with gladness of heart, for she was the most buxom, joyous, and hospitable Betsy imaginable.

It was she who cheered the house and the hearth more than all the Christmas fires, an old-fashioned, thoroughly good woman, entirely happy without the aid of diamonds, finery, or long-tailed gowns to trail through the mud and sweep the streets. It was extremely refreshing to see this really sensible, natural human being, as rare in this age as an oasis in the desert.

Her husband came in smiling, a veritable brother Jonathan, hale and hearty, though tired, for he had arisen from bed at three o'clock that morning, milked a dozen cows, done chores enough to kill a dozen dapper city clerks, and then tramped beside his oxen through the deep snow, taking a load of wood to sell in Dover nearly twenty miles away.

This load he had labored hard for two days to cut on the mountainside, and it brought him the munificent sum of three dollars, yet he was happier than any multi-millionaire I ever saw. There were stumps he had dug out, and rocks he had picked on his farm, enough to fence his hundred acres almost sky-high; but even then he said he had to shoot his corn and potatoes out of a gun to get them through the stones into the ground.

This family was the life of every husking-bee, where each red ear of corn led to rollicking fun, resounding smacks on rosy cheeks, and of paring-bees when even numbered apple-seeds were the match-makers for bachelors and maids. They often took prizes in my spelling-matches, when the bashful swains were allowed to clasp hands with their sweethearts, which led to many lifelong hand and heart clasps in this good old-fashioned town where there were no despairing old maids nor lone, lorn, grouty unmated men.

They went every Sunday to whittle sticks, swap jack-knives and horses, and to listen to the white-haired parson who led them by the resistless rhetoric of a blameless life, as well as by his heartfelt prayers and exhortations in those "ways which are ways of pleasantness and those paths which are paths of peace."

"One hot summer's day," the farmer told me, "the elder was preaching to a very drowsy crowd after a hard week's work in the hayfield, when suddenly he stopped and shouted: 'Fire! Fire!' at the top of his lungs. 'Where? where?' cried some ex-snorers jumping to their feet. 'In hell,' cried the indignant parson, 'for those who sleep under the sound of the gospel.'"

This model minister was dear to every heart, for it was he who had blessed them when they first saw the light of day, had baptized them when first his kindly teachings had awakened their aspirations to walk in the straight and narrow way. It was he who married them when they found each the alter ego, to whom they could say:

"Thou art all to me love for which my heart did pine

A green isle in the sea love, a fountain and a shrine."

It was he who had lifted their souls on the breath of prayer, when their loved ones had "fallen asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep, from which none ever wake to weep."

They loved him though they gave him from their scanty earnings but $400 a year, and half the fish he could catch, yet they liberally supplied his larder with their sweetest butter, freshest eggs, and the choicest cuts from their flocks. When a city minister once said to him: "You have a poor salary, brother," he at once replied: "Ah, but I give them mighty poor preaching, you know."

Grand old man, he followed closely in the footsteps of his Master, and accomplished much more good than many famous ones who wander far from the precepts of the lowly Nazarene, and deliver featureless sermons to unresponsive, gaily-attired Dives under the arches of great cathedrals.

But the trail of the serpent is everywhere found, even in this sequestered spot. There was, in the outskirts of the town, the inevitable rumshop, fed, it was said, by an illicit still in the woods, and there as usual Satan held high carnival among families dead in trespasses and sins. There we assayed to hold temperance prayer-meetings, but they loved darkness rather than light, and we cast our pearls before swine, who turned and rent us.

On one occasion we tried to hold services in the little old deserted schoolhouse, and found it, much to our surprise, packed with the inhabitants of Sodom; a more villainous looking crowd I never saw not even in darkest New York. Beetle-browed, mop-haired men, whose faces, if tapped, would apparently give forth as much fire-water as a rum barrel.

For a short time they listened to the singing: but when the aged minister attempted with earnest words to inspire to a better life it seemed as if all the fiends from heaven that fell, had pealed the banner cry of hell. Then a decayed cabbage struck him full in the face, ancient and unfragrant turnips and potatoes filled the air, our little band crowded around to shield him, but unmercifully assailed, we were obliged to wield the chairs vigorously over their heads to fight our way to the door.

One of our number left to guard the sleigh, luckily had it ready, in we jumped and drove for our lives, pursued by invectives too horrible to mention.

This attack was inspired by the keeper of the den of iniquity as he feared he would be deprived of his evil gains, and that night he rewarded them with unlimited free drinks until they drowned their consciences in a prolonged debauch.

One of my patrons became my implacable enemy because I gave his chip-of-the-old-block son some much merited discipline. This man, Sampson by name, was the most malignant fellow I ever saw. One night when with my pupils I was enjoying a skating party, he appeared with some "sodomites" threatening to chuck me under the ice, and they might have succeeded but for two of my friends who, when the enemy were close upon my heels, suddenly stretched a rope across their path which tripped them up, nearly breaking their heads in the concussion with the ice.

On another occasion, several of us crawled into a long hole to explore a cave in the woods. While laboriously making our way on all fours, carrying torches, we were suddenly horrified by fiendish hisses. Visions of snakes danced before our minds, the girls shrieked, the torches fell in our frantic scramble and we were left in Stygian darkness. A mocking, demoniacal laugh was heard, winged creatures dashed against our faces scratching and lacerating.

After much confusion and terror, we succeeded in relighting our torches, and found ourselves in a wizard-like cave. The bats, for such were our assailants, fled away like lost spirits, grotesque shapes were seen formed from the rocks by dripping waters during long ages, fantastic icicles like the stalactites and stalagmites of the famous Mammoth Cave hung suspended from the arching roof, but a resistless longing to reach the air of heaven urged us on, and we crawled to the opening through which we entered. I was in the advance, and on reaching the entrance was horrified to find it nearly closed by a large rock, and behind it appeared the malignant face of Sampson, who danced in Satanic glee, laughing and shouting.

"I've got you rats in a hole, and there you'll stay till you die!" he shouted.

We knew our enemy too well to expect any mercy, and painfully made our way backwards to the main cavern. None had ever explored it further. I at last saw a glimmer of light, and drawing nearer I discovered an opening to the upper world through which, with great exertions, we dragged ourselves back to the sweet air of heaven. The delight of the reaction was exquisite like that of escaping from paradise lost to paradise regained.

When the ferocious Sampson heard of our deliverance, he fled, and was never heard of again, yet this demon in human form had a twin brother who was one of the best men in the town.

"From the same cradle's side, from the same mother's knee,

One to long darkness and the frozen tide, and one to the peaceful sea."