Neighborhood Stories

“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 out his first hymn, I see it was “There is a Calm for Those That Weep” in three flats, and I turned around on the stool, and I says, “Wouldn’t you just as lief play the piece on the opposite page? That’s wrote natural.” He done so, looking some puzzled, and well he might, for the one I mentioned happened to be, “Master, the Tempest is Raging.” I was a kind of a limited organist but then I filled in, vacations and such, anyhow. And it was so I was doing that Summer.

And so they left it to me to kind of plan the order of services for them four Sundays in September that they decided on. That was nice to do – I’d been hankering to get my hands on the services many a time. And a night or two afterwards, our minister come down to talk this over with me. I’d been ironing all that blessed day, and just before supper my half bushel of cherries had come down on me, unexpected. I was sitting on the front porch in the cool of the day, pitting them. The sun wasn’t down yet, and folks was watering lawns and tinkering with blinds and screens and fences, or walking round pinching off dead leaves; and being out there sort of rested me.

Our minister sat down on the top stoop-step. It had been an awful hot day, and he looked completely tuckered out.

“Hot, ain’t it?” says I, sympathetic, – you can sympathize with folks for the weather without seeming to reproach ’em, same as sympathy for being tired out does to ’em.

“Very warm,” says he. “I’ve made,” he says, “eleven calls this afternoon.”

“Oh, did you?” I says. “What was the occasion of them?”

He looked surprised. “Pastoral calls,” he says, explaining.

“Oh,” I says. “Sick folks?”

“Why no, no,” says he. “My regular rounds. I’ve made,” he adds, “one hundred and fourteen calls this month.”

I went on pitting cherries. When I look back on it now, I know that it wasn’t natural courage at all that made me say what I did. It was merely the cherries coming on top of the ironing.

“Ain’t life odd?” says I. “When you go to see folks, it’s duty. And when I go to see folks, I do it for a nice, innocent indulgence.”

He looked kind of bewildered and sat there fanning himself with the last foreign missionary report and not saying anything for a minute.

“What did you find to talk about with ’em?” I says, casual.

“Well,” he said, “I hardly know. The range of interests, I must say, is not very wide. There has been a good deal of sickness in the congregation this Summer – ”

“Yes,” I says, “I know. Mis’ Emmons’s limb has been troubling her again. Mis’ Temples’ headaches have come back. Old Mr. Blackwell has got hold of a new dyspepsia remedy. At the Holmans’ the two twins fell into an empty cistern and got scraped. And Grandma Oxner don’t see any change in the old complaint. I’m familiar with ’em.”

He smiled at that. “They have a good many burdens to bear,” he says, patient. “But – ”

“But,” I says, “don’t it seem wicked to ask a man to set and listen to everybody’s troubles for one hundred and fourteen calls a month, and expect him to feel he’s doing the Lord’s work?”

“The office of comforter – ” he began.

“When,” says I, “was complaints ever lessened by dwelling on ’em – tell me that? Oh,” I says, “it ain’t you I’m blaming, nor the other ministers either. I’m blaming us, that calls a minister to come and help us reveal the word of God to ourselves, and then expect a social call a month, or more, off’n him, once around the congregation – or else be uppish and mebbe leave the church.”

“The office of spiritual adviser always demands – ” he started in, and concluded it as might have been expected.

“How much religion really, really, do they let you talk on these calls?” I ask’ him. “Don’t it seem kind of bad taste if you say much about it? And as a matter of fact, don’t ministers pride themselves nowdays on being all-around men who can talk about everything, from concerts to motion pictures, and this here city gollif? Of course they do. That is, if folks keep off their complaints long enough to leave you prove how really broad your interests are.”

“Yes, I know – well,” he says patient, “they expect the calls. What,” he adds, “had you thought of for the order of the four Sunday services?”

“I thought,” I says, “for the first fifteen minutes or so, we might sing together.”

“A short praise service,” says he, comprehending. “Well – that’s a little out of the order for the Sunday morning service, but it might be indulged.”

“Yes,” I says, dry. “Praise ought not to offend most people. And then I thought of it for what it does to people to sing together for a while. It makes real things seem sort of possible, I always think. After the Doxology, we might start in with ‘America,’ and – ”

“America?” says he.

I waited. I thought the next observation belonged to him.

“We’ve sung ‘America’ at Sunday evening mass meetings,” he says, “but for the opening hymn of the regular morning worship – still, of course it’s in the hymnal. I suppose there is really no objection.”

“That,” says I, “was how I looked at it. There’s no objection. Then the Lord’s prayer – all of us together. And the reading – something read from one heart right to another, wouldn’t it be? And then we might sing again – ‘Love For Every Unloved Creature,’ or something of that sort. I think,” I says, “we’d ought to be very careful what hymns we pick out, for these Sundays. Take just the religious ones, why don’t you?”

“I beg your pardon,” said our minister. “What did you say then?”

“Well, for instance,” I says…

“ ‘The Son of God goes forth to war
A kingly crown to gain.
His blood-red banner streams afar.
Who follows in his train?’

“I call a good deal of that hymn immoral. Think of that gentle soul caring to gain a kingly crown. Think of his having a blood-red banner. Think of him going forth to war. It’s a wicked hymn, some of it.”

“Oh, well,” said our minister, “those things are just figurative. You mustn’t take them too literally, Miss Marsh.”

I looked over at him, across my cherries.

“We’re saying that pretty often these days,” I said. “Sometimes it’s glorious true and sometimes it’s stupid false.”

“Well,” he says, “that needn’t enter into the services for these Sundays. We might of course do well to pick out the hymns with care. What else had you thought of?”

“I thought,” I said, “of having the Sunday School come in then and march down the aisle, singing – not ‘We Are Little Soldiers,’ or anything like that, but ‘I Think When I Read That Sweet Story of Old,’ say. And then have them repeat something – well,” I says, “I found a little verse the other day. I never saw it before – mebbe you have. I’ve been meaning to ask the superintendent how it would be to have the children learn to say that.”

I said it for him:

“ ‘The year’s at the Spring,
The day’s at the morn,
Morning’s at seven,
The hill-side’s dew-pearled.
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn,
God’s in his heaven,