Neighborhood Stories. Gale Zona
got in the habit of it, they see everybody else going, and they go. And it give us an idea.”
“What was that?” says I, encouraging, for I never see where she was driving on at.
“The same situation can be brought about in Friendship Village,” says she. “If only everybody sees everybody going to church, everybody else will go!”
I sat trying to figger that out. “Do you think so?” says I, meantime.
“I am sure so,” she replies, firm. “The question is, How shall we get everybody to go, till the example becomes fixed?”
“How, indeed?” says I, helpless, wondering which of the three everybodys she was thinking of starting in on.
“Now,” she continues, “we have talked it over, the Reverend and I, and we have decided that you’re the one to help us. We want you to help us think up ways to get this whole village into church for, say, four Sundays or so, hand-running.”
I was trying to see which end to take hold of.
“Well-a,” I says, “into which church?”
The minister’s wife stared at me.
“Why, ours!” says she.
“Why into ours?” I ask’ her, thoughtful.
“My goodness,” says she, “what do you s’pose we’re in our church for, anyway?”
“I’m sure,” says I, “I don’t know. I often wonder. I’m in our particular one because my father was janitor of it when I was a little girl. Why are you in it?”
She looked at me perfectly withering.
“I,” she says cold, “was brought up in it. There was never any question what one I should be in.”
“Exactly,” says I, nodding. “And your husband – why is he in our special church?”
“My dear Calliope,” says she, regal, “he was born in it. His father was minister of it – ”
“Exactly,” I says again. “Then there’s Mame Holcomb, her mother sung in our choir, so she joined ours. And Mis’ Toplady, they lived within half a mile of ours out in the country, and the other churches were on the other side of the hill. So they joined ours. And the Sykeses, they joined ours when they lived in Kingsford, because there wasn’t any other denomination there. But the rest of the congregation, I don’t happen to know what their reasons was. I suppose they was equally spiritual.”
The minister’s wife bent over toward me.
“Calliope Marsh,” says she, “you talk like an atheist.”
“Never mind me,” I says. “Go on about the plan. Everybody is to be got into our church for a few Sundays, as I understand it. What you going to give them when you get them there?”
She looked at me kind of horror-struck.
“Calliope,” says she, “what has come over you? The Reverend is going to preach, of course.”
“About what?” says I, grim. “Describin’ the temple, and telling how many courts it had? Or giving us a little something exegitical – whatever that means?”
For a minute I thought she was going to cry, and I melted myself. If I hadn’t been preserving all the morning, I wouldn’t never have spoke so frank.
“Honest,” I says, “I don’t know what exegitical does mean, but I didn’t intend it insulting. But tell me this – just as truthful as if you wasn’t a minister’s wife: Do you see any living, human thing in our church service here in the village that would make a living, human young folk really want to go to it?”
“They’d ought to want to go to it,” says she.
“Never mind what they’d ought to want,” says I, “though I ain’t so clear they’d ought to want it, myself. Just as truthful as if you wasn’t a minister’s wife – do you?”
“No,” says she, “but – ”
“Now,” I says, “you’ve said it. And what is true for young is often true for old. If you want to meet that, I’m ready to help you. But if you just want to fill our church up full of folks, I don’t care whether it’s full or not – not that way.”
“Well,” she says, “I’m sure I only meant what was for the best in my husband’s work – ”
I put out my hand to her. All of a sudden, I saw her as she was, doing her level best inside the four walls of her – and I says to myself that I’d been a brute and, though I was glad of it, I’d make up for it by getting after the thing laying there underneath all the words.
For Friendship Village, in this particular, wasn’t any different from any other village or any other town or city of now. We had fifteen hundred folks and we had three churches, three ministers at Eight Hundred Dollars apiece annually, three cottage organs, three choirs, three Sunday School picnics in Summer, three Sunday School entertainments in Winter, three sets of repairs, carpets, conventions and delegates, and six stoves with the wood to buy to run ’em. And out of the fifteen hundred folks, from forty to sixty went to each church each Sunday. We were like that.
In one respect, though, we differed from every other town. We had Lavvy Whitmore. Lavvy was the town soprano. She sung like a bird incarnate, and we all got her for Sunday School concerts and visiting ministers and special occasions in general. Lavvy didn’t belong to any church. She sort of boarded round, and we couldn’t pin her down to any one choir.
“For one reason,” she said, “I haven’t got enough clothes to belong to any one choir. I’ve been driven distracted too many times looking at the same plaid waist and the same red bird and the same cameo pin in choirs to do it for anybody else. By kind of boarding round the way I do, I can give them all a change.”
The young minister over to the White Frame church – young Elbert Kinsman – he took it harder than the rest.
“How are your convictions, Miss Lavvy?” he had once been heard to say.
“My convictions?” she answered him. “They are that there isn’t enough difference in the three to be so solemn and so expensive over. Especially the expensive,” she added. “Is there now?”
“No,” young Elbert Kinsman had unexpectedly replied, “I myself don’t think there is. But – ”
“The only thing is,” Lavvy had put in irreverent, “you can’t get rid of that ‘but,’ and I have!”
“You send for Lavvy,” I says now to our minister’s wife. “She’ll think of something.”
So there we were, with a kind of revival on our hands to plan before we knew it, because our minister’s wife was like that, much more like that than he was. He had a great deal of emphasis, but she had a great deal of force.
Going home that morning, I went a little out of my way and come round by Shepherd’s Grove. Shepherd’s Grove lays just on the edge of the village, not far from the little grassy triangle in the residence part – and it always rests me to go there. Walking through it that morning I remember I thought:
“Yes, I s’pose this kind of extry effort must be all right – even Nature enters into it real extensive. Every Summer is an extry effort – a real revival, I guess. But oh,” I says to myself, wishful, “that’s so spontaneous and unanimous! I wish’t folks was more like that…”
I was filling in for organist while ours was away on a vacation to her husband’s relatives. That sounds so grand and I’d ought to explain that I can only play pieces that are written in the natural. But by picking out judicious, I can get along through the morning and evening services very nice. I don’t dare ever attempt prayer-meeting, because then somebody is likely to pipe up and give out a hymn that’s in sharps or flats, without thinking. I remember one night, though, when I just had to play for prayer-meeting being the only one present that knew white notes from black. There was a visiting minister. And when he give