Chapter XL (6)

One day I was sitting in the apparently deserted library, looking over the new books which were always kept on a side shelf, at the entrance to one of the alcoves, when I heard a heavy, most disconsolate sigh, coming from a hidden corner in the rear of the room. The sigh was followed by the rustling of book leaves. I continued my investigation of the new books, but was once more interrupted by that same, prolonged sighing. It was just such a sigh as Dante must have heard proceeding from the lips of those unfortunate creatures who stood in neither hope nor despair. I decided to investigate, and, for that purpose, went down the alcove from which the sighing seemed to have come, and there, with his back turned to me, seated at one of the reference tables, with his head resting woefully on his spread out arms, sat Amos Tucker, an upper-classman.

I hesitated to approach him, at first, and pretended that I had come into the alcove for a book. Then again the sigh proceeded from the limp heap at the table, and, throwing all restraint to the winds, I went to the table, touched Amos on the shoulder, and said,

“Are you in trouble, Tucker?”

He raised his tearful, grey eyes to me, and said,

“They say I’m not fit to be a preacher!”

I sat down beside him, for from his manner I knew that he welcomed me to be his confidant.

“Who says so? Any of the students?” I asked.

“No, it wouldn’t matter if it came from them: the church says so!”

“What church is that, Tucker?”

He sat up in his chair and replied,

“I have just started to preach, this year. I have been out for two Sundays in a little place where they give me seven dollars, out of which I have to pay a dollar and a half for expenses. It’s not that I care a snap about the money, though, but I want a place to call my parish. I feel that I ought to preach. Well, I’ve got a letter from the committee this morning, telling me that they will have to get along without me; that they cannot have me any longer for their minister.”

“What reasons do they offer?”

“That’s it!” he responded, with a catch in his voice, “they have had the bravery to tell me the exact reason. It is this: they tell me--oh, hadn’t you better read for yourself,” and he handed me the last page of a letter, explaining,

“It’s all on that one page: all that you want to know.”

I read:

“You can never make a preacher, we feel--excuse us for telling you so frankly--you have no voice, you do not read well, your grammar is poor, your themes are not interesting. Your last Sunday morning’s talk on ‘Conscience’ was beyond our understanding. Several good supporters have threatened to forego their subscriptions if we have you another Sunday. Will you kindly suggest some one to come to us next Sunday and oblige, yours in Christian sincerity, etc.”

“Blunt, isn’t it?” he half smiled.

“The idea of asking you to send them somebody, after that!” I gasped.

“Oh,” he sniffed, “it’s all in Christian sincerity, you know!”

“Well,” I added, “there are other places, Tucker. Cheer up!”

Then a most discouraging change came into his eyes, he nodded his head, and replied, with vigor,

“The trouble of it is, Priddy, what they say is all true, every word of it! I have a terrible voice and can’t seem to get my words out. I don’t know much about grammar; never had much of a chance on the farm. I’m not quick to learn like so many here. I have to plod and plod and plod. As for interesting sermons, why, if they aren’t interesting I do the best I can!”

I wanted to ask him, then, why he persisted in entering the ministry, but I couldn’t find courage to do so, but he had read my thoughts, for he said, immediately,

“You wonder why, if I know all this, I enter the ministry, and fight against hope? Well, I’ll tell you. I have felt, right along, that I might break down my handicaps. At least I thought I would give myself a thorough trial, no matter how bitter the disappointment of failure might be. I didn’t mind losing two or three places at first, if I could finally master myself. It was a sort of inherent vanity of mine that I could succeed. But this--this seems to be a judgment on me, I guess. I think I’ll pack up and go out and become--oh, anything that pays day wages. At least, I can try to be a good layman!”

“Why don’t you try it another year?” I suggested. “Things might turn.”

“How can I stay here if I can’t earn some money by preaching?” he asked. “If no church will take me, why, I shall have to leave the Seminary.”

“I wouldn’t leave before having a good talk with some of the professors,” I suggested. “I think you have the sort of a spirit which will finally prevail, Tucker.”

“Oh,” he replied, “I haven’t got much spirit--now--after that letter. They might have borne with me a month or two longer--perhaps I should have surprised them.” Then he laughed, bitterly. “You can’t guess why I came into the library with my troubles, Priddy, can you?”

“No.”

“You see this!” and he indicated a large, open book, on which his tears had been falling. It was a huge, ancient tome, with metal bands and chipped leather binding. The leaves were yellowed, and from them came a dampish odor of musty age. It was a Latin edition of “The Book of Martyrs” opened at the page where the fanciful wood-cut showed heaps of flaming fagots, blazing in Smithfield market, directly under the bare feet of a woman, tied to a stake and holding to her breast a crying infant.

“There is a story about here,” went on Tucker, with a smile, “to the effect that a former student in the Seminary, when discouraged, would come into the library and pore over these dismal, grewsome pictures, and persuade himself that his own sufferings were trivial when compared with the sufferings of these martyrs! I thought I’d come and try it, too, but it only intensified my own misery!” He shut the great book with such an explosion that the dust issued from it and gleamed in the rays of the sun which streamed in through the window.

“But I’d stay on till the end, Tucker,” I persisted. “It’s worth trying--if you feel that you have a call to preach!”

“I have the call clearly enough,” he insisted, evidently cheered by my confidence in him. “If I could only persuade others of it, though, I should feel happier.”

“Probably you’ll have another chance to preach before you expect it,” I said, in conclusion, and left him with the intention of speaking in his behalf to some of the students, who might be able to encourage him in a substantial manner.

I went, quite naturally, to Burner, the upper-classman who had manifested an interest in my arrival. The big student heard my version of Tucker’s experience without comment, and then, after a moment of thought, answered,

“Don’t you bother yourself any further about him. I’ll do all I can. This is an upper-classman’s work, and it needs, too, some fine work by the professors. It wouldn’t take much to drive Tucker off. By the way, don’t mention to him about your conversation with me. I’m sure he’s got the stuff in him for a preacher. He needs practical encouragement and he shall have it. You just watch!”

Two days later, while I was in the gymnasium, practising alone with the basket-ball, Tucker appeared on the floor in his gymnasium clothes, and, apparently, in a very happy frame of mind. As he stood opposite to me and caught the ball as I threw it to him, he said,

“Priddy, I’m going to preach on Sunday; another chance to botch it.”

“Good for you,” I declared. “Where are you to preach?”

“For Burner,” Tucker explained; “he wants a Sunday off. Do you know whether he preaches from manuscript or not, Priddy?”

“I think that he does read--I know he does. I recollect to have heard him declare that it was only by reading that one could get logical sequence: his pet hobby.”

Tucker held the ball in the air for a second and sighed, audibly. “That makes it somewhat easier for me, Priddy. You see, even if I ramble on with notes, so long as I don’t read my sermon word for word, the congregation will give me credit for it, and I may have a chance. Anyway, I mean to keep on, even if I am rebuffed again.”

The following Sunday morning, while Burner was shaving, he said to me,

“I hope that Tucker has a sermon with some logic in it. Anyway, he will get back encouraged. Deacon Herring will see to that!” He turned his face from the glass and smiled at me through the lather.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“I have written a letter to my deacon--about Tucker and the tight place he’s in,” explained Burner. “Told him all the facts and asked him to work with us to save a good man for the Lord’s cause. After his sermon, no matter how good or ill it is, Deacon Herring will go up to Tucker with a radiant face, tell him how glad they are to have him along, and invite him to preach the following Sunday. Meanwhile the deacon will forward to me a carefully written, frank criticism of Tucker, from which we can diagnose his troubles, fairly, and then get some of the professors to work on his case. Oh,” and Burner’s face was gleaming, “I guess if there’s any good points under Tucker’s skin, we’ll uncover them!”

It was an unusual edition of Tucker who returned the following day. I walked with him, arm in arm over to the Commons.

“There, Priddy,” he chattered, “at last I’ve found somebody who thinks I’m called to preach. They want me to supply Burner’s pulpit again next Sunday! He’s to have another day off. Tired, he told me. That’s the best sort of appreciation, isn’t it?” he added.

Burner said nothing to me or any one else about the personal sacrifice he made in giving up two Sundays to the discouraged Tucker, but I knew that the money he gave up was much needed. Burner, meanwhile, received the diagnosis from his deacon, and reported matters to one of the professors to whom Tucker looked with great reverence and respect. The result of this came out in a diplomatic invitation, sent by the professor, for Tucker to come and have a talk about his affairs--a perfectly natural request for the professor to make.

It did not take the professor long--armed as he was by Burner’s report-to get from Tucker a statement of his situation. Finally, the professor set himself to work, not only on the written sermons of Tucker, but also on his enunciation, his gestures, and his habits of thought.

“The professor’s helping me wonderfully,” exclaimed Tucker to me one day, as we took a walk into the outskirts of the city. “He’s landed ker-plunk on my worst faults, just as if he could read me like a book. You’d laugh at the sort of mournful stuff I’ve been giving from the pulpit! It’s quite plain to me now. I’ve been too depressing. That’s been one thing. No wonder the people didn’t want some of the stuff I’ve been guilty of giving. It’s optimism they want, Priddy, _optimism_! The professor’s proved that, all right! Just you wait till next Sunday, when I preach for Burner. I’m to have a sermon, entitled, ‘Rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice!’”

“What have you been preaching on, Tucker?” I asked.

He smiled, as one who could afford now to smile at past faults.

“Judgment, and Conscience, and the Inheritance of Penalty, and such-like,” he said. “Heavy, eh?”

“I’ve no doubt you had some good ideas on those subjects, Tucker, though, as you say, they are a trifle doleful, one after the other.”

“Got thinking in a groove, Priddy, that’s what the professor thought. But, of course, I’ve other faults. I don’t speak up--just whisper: no life or action. But,” he went on with a confidential smile, “I’m working hard on that, too. Mean to brighten up on those things next Sunday; though reformation can’t come in a day or a week.”

The next Monday a most encouraging report came to Burner from his deacon. Among other things, the old man said in his letter,

“There were not many out to hear him, for they had not cared for his preaching of the previous Sunday: but to those of us who had heard him the first time, his second appearance was startling. First of all, he seemed to have confidence. That was the striking thing. Then, in his effort to make himself heard he kept on a high-pitched note, which was somewhat monotonous, but more effective than his former timid whispering as if he were afraid of bursting the ear-drum of a gnat which sat on his desk. He fanned the air like a windmill in an effort to remedy lack of action: but that was a good sign. It argues well for the young man when he gets on the middle ground. But his sermon! He really gave us a cheering word; that made most of the others, who were there, like him. Personally, he would be glad to know in what a different way I have taken the application of his sermon, to ‘rejoice, and again--rejoice.’ I wish him the best of success. There is hope for him. I am getting one or two people, who told me they like what he had to say about rejoicing, to write notes of appreciation to him.”

“Twenty dollars well spent!” concluded Burner, with a smile. “At the rate, he is going Tucker will have a church of his own, over which he will cast his blessing. He has confidence--now!”

Late in the spring, Tucker found himself enjoying somewhat of a local reputation among us, for he was a decided success, by that time, on his preaching expeditions. He said to me,

“Priddy, the other people think I’ve got a call--now. I had a narrow escape, didn’t I?”

_Chapter XXIV. Burner, a Searcher After Truth. How a May-Pole Subdued a Tribe of Little Savages_

Burner, the upper-classman, though not my roommate, and by his upper-class privileges under no sentimental obligations to me, became my constant companion. He was a tall, thick-set man with a very heavy black moustache, much older than myself and dominated by a very heavy but sincere temperament. He had been a real estate agent and a country auctioneer up to his thirtieth birthday. Then he had studied for three years, privately, with a high-school principal, and later he had come to the Seminary to put himself under training for the ministry.

Burner almost frightened me by his hunger and thirst after knowledge, for in him I looked upon the epic grandeur of a mind, long starved, completely awake. All the outstanding, amazing, bewildering intellectual problems of the Universe and God, had solutions which Burner, with a sense of his limitations, sought to master. I had seen students of books before, prize scholars, in Evangelical University, but I had never beheld the workings of an awakened, mature mind. Books and the teachings of the masters were merely the starting points, the paths of departure, for Burner. He sought his path to God and God’s mind by his own charts. He was his own authority in thought, an independent ship under full sail exploring unmapped territory. He would sit in his Morris chair, in a secluded corner of his room, with his bony fingers propping up his gaunt chin, and with blazing eyes try to think out, in his own words, from a synthesis of his own observations, why God permitted evil. One night he rushed into my room with almost fanatical eagerness and compelled me to listen while, from a newspaper item which told of a father who had given some of his blood to his sickly child, he gave an eloquent theory of the Divine Fatherhood, suggested by that analogy. All his studies, in language, science, and philosophy were focussed upon his thought of God. They were not merely a discipline, or parts of a necessary curriculum, but the means to an end, the roads over which he went to a completer knowledge of his faith. The most unrelated and even trivial items of truth aroused his mind to action and set him at work on the most intricate and abstruse doctrines. He was critical down to the fine points of sharpening a pencil: he was intolerant of those who got their conclusions from text books.

“I’m doing my own thinking,” was his favorite sentence, “basing it on careful reading and minute information and nearly always I find that I get conclusions, after hard thought, that I might have secured, second-hand, from books. But oh, Priddy, what a treat it is to be in the Seminary, filling in the mind after it has been starved all these years!”

“It must be a tremendous inspiration to you, Burner,” I said, “you seem to enjoy it so!”

“Enjoy it!” he gasped. “I revel in it! Just think how blank my mind was when I came here! I thought they wouldn’t take me. I had never been to college, and had little preparation. When they did take me and give me my chance, I resolved to make up for lost time, Priddy. Other seminaries would have refused me, and I should never have gone into the ministry. Of course it is the biggest inspiration that has ever come to me. It is my first real chance!”

I soon learned that I had found in the East what I had found in Evangelical University, a professional school that was willing to bend to the service of the ambitious but unprepared student. But in the Seminary there was more point and breadth to the teaching; the studies were more thorough, intellectually more satisfying; so, with Burner and with many others who, like myself, had never been to college, I began the exciting adventure into disciplined truth.

It was rich fare to which I was invited, during that first year: the tough meat, Hebrew, which even moderately digested, meant exegetical strength in Old Testament lore, the tenderer portions of Greek which nourished one’s New Testament appetite; entrées of psychology and philosophy; well-baked and spiced Church history, and a various dessert of special lectures comprising every viand from the art of preaching to nerve-stirring appreciations of social movements.

The social life of Evangelical University had been so narrow that I was ready to appreciate the broadness of that permitted us in the Seminary. The professors had us in their homes for teas and dinners. The intimate touch between us and our teachers formed part of the discipline of those years. There was hardly any sign of that academic aloofness which I had always supposed to be characteristic of eastern institutions. I ran into the room of a sick classmate one Saturday morning, only to find him being nursed by the professor of theology. The utmost freedom of thought was given us in the speculations of the classrooms. It was an atmosphere where bigotry and dogmatism could not live overnight. Our lives, by being linked to that of the Seminary, began to be linked to the life of the city; for the churches and the people showed us many thoughtful courtesies, took us into their circles, and made many winter evenings merry and profitable.

I still had to rely upon my own efforts for money, but the days of loading brick, raking lawns, making furnace fires, were gone now, and I was enabled to earn money in a more professional way. I was given the task of organizing some children for one of the smaller churches of the city. One hundred of them met me on Sunday afternoons, in the body of the church, where for an hour we tried to get along harmoniously together and incidentally learn some concrete definitions of the Kingdom of God. I tried to preach through pictures on a blackboard and through objects like keys and nails, knives and flowers. Many of the little ones were not used to church etiquette, so I had to wander away from the Kingdom of God many times to instruct some of them concerning the necessity of taking off caps in church, of the inhumanity of pulling one another’s hair braids, of the injudiciousness of poking pins in one another’s necks. Often, too, when the neighborhood, after a Sunday feast of mutton and peas, was enjoying its mid-afternoon slumbers, some of the boys would whirl the church bell and make startled men and women imagine it was the fourth alarm of a fire. I had to correct that practise. We held several socials during the year, socials of a unique character. My assistants would keep the door locked in the little chapel until the oil lamps had been lifted out of danger. The popcorn and candy would be put on tables in heaps and the signal of admission given. Into the room the horde of yelling, scrambling children would come and fill it with all manner of wild romping. The refreshments would be given, there would follow another wild frolic, and at half-past eight the children would go home persuaded that they had had “a dandy time! Three helpings of popcorn and all the lemonade you could drink!”

When the first of May arrived, I announced a picnic for the children, and though the day was cold, more than our actual membership appeared--with individual lunches. When we arrived at the grove I had to stand guard over the lunches until the noon hour. Then, after an afternoon of disordered fun and fight, I managed to secure order on the way home by permitting the children to hold the ribbons of the May-pole and to trail behind in orderly procession, singing, as we entered the residential section of the city, very piously and earnestly, “Onward, Christian Soldiers!”

Meanwhile the arched elms on the seminary campus leafed out and shaded the walks with cool shadows. The students met after supper, threw off their coats, and played ball until darkness. The robins began to perch on my bedroom window ledge and waken me by their dulcet flutings long before breakfast. The fumes of burning leaves came through the open windows from the campus. It was spring and it was graduation time for the seniors.

It was the season of the year when at Evangelical University the students, like Thropper, would be planning to earn money during the coming vacation by taking subscriptions for “The Devil in Society” and similar objects; but my summer was to be one full of inspirational and serviceable possibilities. It had been arranged for me, by the seminary president, that I should take two schoolhouses in a far-away district and preach during the long vacation. At last I was to actually enter upon my chosen profession.

_Chapter XXV. At the Heart of Human Nature. A Confidential Walk with a Dollar Bill at the End of it. A Philosophical Observation from the Stage-Driver_

A four hours’ journey by train, each minute going farther and farther away from thickly settled country, and then I found myself waiting on a depot platform for the stage-driver who was to conduct me to Upper and Lower Village, twelve miles from the railroad.

I looked around and when my eyes lighted on a wooden-legged man, seated on the front seat of a democrat wagon, I knew that I had found the conveyance. I went over to him and said,

“Are you going to Upper and Lower Village?”

He aimed some colored expectoration over his horse’s ear, watched it alight upon a fluttering piece of paper, and then, satisfied with his marksmanship, he said, gruffly,

“Ef you’re th’ Elder, why, I got a seat. Jump in!”

The day was excessively hot, and we sat under the full glare of the sun. We left the little railroad village and plunged on through the churned-up swirls of choking dust straight into the isolation of this world, into a part of New England where whole townships have not even yet attained unto the dignity of names, but like prisoners with their suffrage taken from them, must be known by mere numbers.

The forests had been leveled, and there were innumerable acres of deforested land covered with rusty branches which had been left after the choppers had trimmed the logs. After several miles, we came to wide stretches of plain, covered with blueberry bushes.

A dip in the road, and we had plowed through the last inch of dust: the wheels of the democrat rattled merrily over the stone road of Lower Village. Word had been telephoned from the first farm we had passed that “the new Elder was on the stage with Bill.” The women boldly stood at their doors watching; from behind many windows I saw intent faces engaged in taking a comprehensive glance at me. I maintained a stolid attitude, and pretended not to be aware of the intense and continuous surveillance to which I was subjected. We thundered over a wooden bridge, went up a steep hill, and drew rein at a long veranda, which “Bill” informed me was the “Office, whar you git down.”

A tall, timid octogenarian, in shirtsleeves, whose thick trousers were drawn up tightly above soil-daubed shoes, introduced himself as “the deacon” and conducted me to a little house down a lane which ended in a pasture. The hot air of the day was fragrant with the odor of sweet-smelling foliage. Crows were screaming in the distance over the tops of some burnt pines. A woman, tall and thin and pale, welcomed me with all the hospitality with which a mother would welcome a son. I knew from that moment that I had a pleasant summer before me.

The two villages were nothing more than single rows of houses on either side of a main road. That road went inland for miles and miles through immeasurable solitudes, where no man dwelt. We were at the end of the world, apparently.

Then began my missionary experience. I was passed from home to home, sometimes staying but three days in one place: the object being both economical and social. The cost of my board, under this arrangement, was very light on each household, and as each hostess was not satisfied unless she gave the “Elder” the very best cooking she could produce, my short stay did not permit any embarrassment to the menu. But more especially this arrangement made it possible for me to know nearly every family in my parishes intimately, as the association with the families at the table was the means of establishing more than a perfunctory friendship. They learned some of my shortcomings, and I was made aware of their needs. When, in the latter part of the summer, I was boarding in Upper Village, in the shadow of the mountain, and went down to Lower Village for a Wednesday evening meeting, one of the households expected me to creep into the house with the eldest son, go into the pantry and “steal” huge slices of blueberry cake. This done, the husband and wife would come into the kitchen, have a hearty laugh, and before I started back for my boarding-place, we would have our serious talk over matters of faith and life.

There were few well-to-do farmers in the community. The distance was too great from the railroads for the injection of much social life. The winters were filled with days when life was grim. Had it not been for the telephone and the mail, the life of that back-road would have been without any great attractions. But the very isolation of the villages, and the absence of many social opportunities through the winter, like a church and preaching, made these farmers the prey of traveling fanatics, who imported here and there the most fanciful conceptions of religion and sought, by all manner of persuasion, to turn people into Mormons and “New Lights,” “Holy Ghosters” and “Disciples.” It did not take long to see that some of these perversions had taken root in some homes, and I found myself having to attempt the feat of constructing a positive and less fanatical doctrine: a feat which at the time I did poorly enough, but which I took pleasure in attempting. But it was not formal doctrine or intellectual discriminations which those parishes needed as much as it was a social man, to impart into their midst, after the austere winter, a joke, a song, a story, and a friendly hand-clasp. If I had preached no sermon, but merely gone from home to home, from field to field, telling men and women and children that I was their friend, I believe that I should have accomplished the major part of the needed ministry.

The meetings were held in the upper rooms of two very solidly constructed schoolhouses four miles apart. Our meetings had to be announced in two kinds of time, for some set their clocks by the sun, while others set them by the Standard, sent over the telephone wires. The dim, chalky atmosphere of the rooms was always colored by rich green ferns and assortments of wild flowers. Even though the flowers were bunched in the necks of mustard bottles, tumblers, and cream jugs, and not always arranged according to Japanese art, yet the thought that the sense of beauty in religion found expression even in wild flowers apologized for all else. When the hob-nailed boot and the plow, year in and out, are uprooting and crushing field flowers, it marks the high tide of esthetic appreciation when the wearers of the hob-nailed boot and guiders of the plow take pains to pick those flowers and add them to their hymns, their prayers, and sermons in praise to God.

No small, narrow opportunity was mine, such as in my gloomier moments I had ascribed to a country pastor. Preaching a sermon formed but a fraction of my duty. There were young men and women who sought advice about the outside world, and their business chances in it. There were business colleges, academies, hospitals, and mills to propose to the restless ones, who, like young birds, were to try life on their own wings.

Entwined in the pastoral work, were many social pleasures that made my body strong and rested my nerves: adventures over the high hills for soul-subduing vistas of mountains and lakes; trout fries by the side of meadow brooks; picnics by the river; visits to bark-peeling camps, over corduroy roads, and encampment on a lake shore where at night the wild birds gave voice and were interpreted to us by a guide.

The golden-rod lined the dusty road at last, and the purple flowers took the place of the lighter summer ones, and it was time for me to return to the Seminary. The services were crowded that last Sunday; mothers brought their babies and did not care if the little ones did compete with me, in voice. I knew what was in the faces, as they looked intently on me, as I preached. They were thinking that this would probably be the last preaching they would hear until the following summer, unless some stray, itinerant evangelist strolled that way and opened up the schoolhouse for an evening. There were many tearful farewells, and then the people went out into the night. It was a clear night of stars and chill. As I left the schoolhouse, having bade good-bye to the janitor, for I was due to leave on the next morning’s stage, a young farmer stepped out from the deep shadow of an oak near the flag-staff and accosted me with,

“Say, Elder, do you care to go up the road a piece?”

I responded that I should enjoy a walk and a chat with him.

While we walked between two walls of trees, our way dimly outlined by the faint flicker of the stars, my friend said,

“I’m one of the bashful sort, Elder. You know that; but I didn’t want you to leave without having me tell you how much you have helped my folks this summer. The time you come in our house and played and sang at the organ for us, and cheered us up with a laugh, why it made things different in our house. Since mother died, we’ve been having a hard row to hoe, and you don’t know how much we’ve appreciated the cheering up you give us. It gets terrible lonesome out here through the winter, and I want to thank you for all that you’ve done!”

We took a long walk through the night, paying no attention to distance; but sharing confidences in true brotherly fashion. Then we turned about and when we came to the crossroad, in front of the schoolhouse, we clasped hands, and as he hurried, without another word, into the darkness towards his motherless home, I felt something crisp in the palm of my hand. When I returned to my room and had a light I found that he had given me a dollar bill for a thank offering.

The next morning I had my baggage on the stage, this time for a return. Bill, with his wooden leg, greeted me, for by this time we were old friends. The word of parting was given at the post-office, and the democrat rattled down the grade and over the bridge. This time a continuous flutter of handkerchiefs and aprons, and a continuous hearty shout from the men and boys, followed our passage through the two villages and then we drove into the dusk of the road through the blueberry barrens, Bill aiming expectoration at every soap sign within reach, and confiding in me, on the way, the fact that he had loved once and “lost,” which he seemed to take in a very philosophical mood, for he concluded with this phrase, “You can’t get the hang of wimmen, anyhow!”

_Chapter XXVI. The Strange Adventure of Burner into Nothing, and How my Own Mind Got into Trouble, and How my Faith was Strengthened under the Chapel Window_

On my return to the Seminary I found Burner in the throes of intellectual despair. The big fellow was sitting in his room, half buried in the depths of the green Morris chair, his bony fingers prodded into his working brows.

“What’s wrong, Burner?” I demanded.

“I’ve been thinking back too far,” announced the serious fellow.

“Thinking back too far?” I gasped.

“Yes,” he muttered. “I’ve nothing to stand on, now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve thought away all substance--now!” he moaned, in despair. “I can’t even conceive a God!”

“Burner!”

“Horrible, isn’t it, Priddy?”

“What do you mean--explain, so that I can get this thing by its head,” I suggested.

Burner seriously gathered himself together in his chair, sipped from a glass of water, and then began,

“Probably I do too much thinking; maybe that’s what’s the matter, Priddy. When I left here, last June, and went out for the summer, I began to try to think through substance; I thought I might do it, sometime. I got to thinking about it, when I took my walks over the hills, and kept thinking about it, but, somehow, I couldn’t get my thought back of the material. When I got back here, last week, I was sitting in this chair, when all of a sudden I did think back of God; and conceived all reality as being so immaterial that nothing exists: no, nothing!” he shouted, “not even--God!”

“Can’t you think back again--to him?” I demanded, making an effort to be of some assistance and comfort to the disconsolate man.

Burner stood on his feet, and paced the floor, excitedly, and said as he gestured with his hands,

“I’ve got to be honest--with truth, no matter how far it leads me!”

“Yes!”

“Just think how horrible it is; I’ve thought back till I’ve struck nothing--nothing!”

“Come, it’s not so bad as that, Burner, is it?”

“I shan’t be able to preach, to study, to believe anything!” he declared. “How can I when there is nothing to preach, to study, or to believe?”

I could not conceive a more pathetic restraint on a man who sought to get his living by preaching and study.

“Perhaps some of the professors might help you back--at least as far as a belief in God,” I suggested, timidly.

“Oh, if I only could get back there,” he pleaded, “I would pray about the matter, but I can’t pray to nothing, can I?”

I began then to realize how much a dilemma a philosophical honesty could create.

“You are too serious, Burner,” I proposed. “You ought to take some things for granted; not seek to explain everything, you know.”

He looked at me through astonished eyes,

“I will take nothing for granted that cannot bear the test of logic!”

“There,” I cried exultantly, “your intellectual adventures have brought you into German Rationalism: that’s just what’s the matter with you, Burner. You’re not the first one that has been caught. It is a passing experience. Keep on thinking, old fellow, you’ll come back after a time. It looks serious now, but it’s only a phase. Read the biographies of some of the saints; it will help you back to a positive faith, I’m sure.”

So I left him with that comfort, hoping that he would not leave the Seminary in his intellectual excitement, for I felt sure that his Rationalism or Agnosticism or whatever form of mind he was in, would pass and give way to something with more color and inspiration in it.

Our studies for the second year were more practical and philosophical than those we received during the first year. I was ready to appreciate the value of the studies more after my summer’s experience as a missionary. The intellectual honesty and sincerity of Burner was indicative of the spirit which one of the professors, who later left us, engendered in us. One incident will illustrate the temper of his art of teaching. Our class, in its first year, had approached this man’s recitation with a feeling of fear, for his astute mind and his impassive manner in the classroom, and withal, his absolute fearlessness in bringing up the other side of an affirmative, had not reacted in his favor. Even before we knew him, we had him placarded, in our minds, as an unbeliever! One day when we came into his class we found that some one had written on the blackboard, the professor’s name with this legend after it:

“Professor ---- Atheist!”

When he came into the classroom, and saw that, I thought he would burst into tears; a look of patient wonder came into his eyes, and he merely said to me,

“Mr. Priddy, will you kindly take the eraser and give us a clean blackboard!”

Our first class under this teacher was one in psychology. We met and his first question was,

“What are we to study?”

Instantly one of my classmates replied,

“Psychology!”

“What is psychology?”

My classmate, who had read the definition in the day’s lesson replied, confidently,

“‘The study of the mind and the processes of the mind,’ sir.”

“Ah, and what do you mean by the mind? What do you know about the mind? Have you ever seen one?”

My classmate stammered,

“Why--eh, no, sir.”

“Then perhaps some one else will inform me what we are here for?”

No one was willing.

“Then you will return to your rooms, gentlemen,” said the professor, without a trace of a smile, “and come tomorrow at the same hour and tell us what we are to study during the year. I really must know. We cannot get along until I do.”

The next day, some of us met, before the class and conspired to teach that professor his lesson. We memorized the definitions and the explanations so that it would be impossible for us to slip. Then we entered the classroom.

“What are we here for, gentlemen?” began the professor.

Instantly the answer came from the corner,

“To study psychology, sir.”

“Will any one tell me what is meant by psychology?”

“‘A study of the mind and the processes of the mind, as such,’” responded another student.

“‘As such.’ What is meant by that, sir?”

One of my classmates undertook to explain that “as such” meant that the “states of the mind” were to be studied as “states of the mind,” and not as--eh--

“Mince pies?” asked the professor, with a slight, serious elevation of his eyebrows.

For the next five minutes he went around the class involving each one of us in our own ignorance until it was impossible for him to get a reply to any one of his questions.

“Too bad,” he muttered, seriously. “I really don’t see how we are to get on. This won’t do. You had better go back to your rooms and come tomorrow and see if we can let in any daylight on this matter. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

We resolved that we would not study a single word for the morrow; but that we would go into the class and have no information to offer. We would see how the professor would like that!

The following afternoon, pursuant to this plan, when the professor had greeted us, his first question was,

“What are we to study? Can any one tell me?” It brought no response.

He looked around the room in great astonishment and went from man to man, asking,

“Can you tell me?” and each time getting a decided and belligerent negative.

Then a smile of satisfaction lighted up his sober face and he said,

“There, gentlemen. Now that you have made up your minds that you know nothing about psychology, I am ready to begin to teach you!” and from then to the end of the year we sat under instruction that was masterly, inspiring.

This spirit of thoroughness and critical honesty was needed during the second year, for we were constructing a personal faith: a task more serious than the mere acquisition of historic facts or encyclopædic knowledge. But the teachers were patient, kindly, and watched us let conservative and traditional habits of mind go, not in any spirit of intolerance. There were many times, that year, when I found myself almost duplicating Burner’s misery, by sitting in my room and wondering, after I had let go my traditional habits of thought about God and the Bible, what I should do without faith. But as one conception went, another, larger conception came, and I found a nobler faith than I ever had before. The self-distrust and miserable vacancy of doubt, were, as I had blunderingly told Burner, mere phases towards a positive faith. One winter morning, after a night of mental struggle, during which I suffered fully as much as I had ever suffered from any physical hardship, I went out on the campus to walk about in the crisp air. The students had just gone into the chapel for morning prayers. I stopped under the windows and heard the drone of the parlor organ. Then, on the quietness of the morning, the manly melody came to my ears: a hymn resonant with a man’s faith, and bringing peace to my doubts. “Oh, Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” they were singing, a monkish, monastic tinge to it, coming from male throats,--only the tenor was too boyish for a monk, too thrillingly rampant in its ambitious soaring after God over the high notes. But it soothed me and I went in the strength of that hymn for many days.

_Chapter XXVII. The Wonderful Summer on the Pleasure Island_

My next opportunity of earning money for my education came in a call to preach on Sundays in a little church sixty miles from the Seminary at a fashionable summer resort. The compensation to be ten dollars a week: compensation for three days’ absence from the Seminary, one hundred and twenty miles of travel and expenses, and the nervous exertion of preaching twice and teaching a Sunday-school class, not excluding pastoral work whenever opportunity should offer!

These weekly journeys began when I arose on Saturday morning at five o’clock, drank a hastily prepared cup of cocoa, and hurried off to the station for the six o’clock train. Then the train would start on its way through the snowdrifts, puffing and gasping down white aisles through rows of stiff, stately pines whose hands held puffy clouds of snow, and then followed a slow passage through miles of birches bending low under the weight of wet snow like robed saints humbled by too great a weight of glory. The railway trip was followed by a steamer journey of eight miles through a heavy, sad sea which never seemed to have any light in it, and in whose icy surface pretty grey and mottled gulls were not afraid to dip their palpitating breasts. The steamer put me ashore on an island whose centre was loaded with a serried row of little mountains. At the landing I found a stage and drove for eight miles over the island to my parish. The stage horse rushed us down dipping roads that threaded between precipitous mountain sides, whose summits were desert rocks and at whose feet had crumbled cliff after cliff of red rock, spread out like a rusty iron yard. Then the road became a climb until some highlands were attained and we sped through a little fishing village which nestled close to a mysterious, secluded cove, guarded by stern, fretted cliffs, a place where Stevenson would have had a cave of smugglers or the anchorage of a rakish pirate craft. Then came a turn in the road, where, behind a fringe of thick, old gold birches and in the midst of some dead oak stumps, nature had placed a cathedral pile of gigantic slabs of stone, one on another, as if to show to man what the angels of strength could do once they started to build with stone. Next followed a bewildering ride over a spiral road up a steep hill on which stood aristocratic summer homes. At a lookout where the road took a sudden dip, one saw the cold ocean far down below with its heavy, listless breakers pounding wearily against the iron cliffs, as if saying, “Why do the poets insist on our ceaselessly trying to shatter this cliff? I wish they would let us rest through the winter, till the summer visitors come: then I will pound like Vulcan’s hammer to please them!” In the distance, little dismal islands stood in the sea like burnt dumplings in gravy. Over them the gulls were screaming and wailing, adding to the solitude and the winter’s dreariness. Then the stage slanted down the hill and after a long, twisting ride drew up before the village post-office, where I met my host and was duly welcomed as the new minister.

Back and forth, week after week, returning to the Seminary on Monday evenings, I accomplished my journeys faithfully. Each week besides my studies I had to plan for the church. There was little time for idleness, for the hours of recreation were taken up in travel. On these trips I took a book and tried to have it read on my return.

But my reward was near at hand. The summer arrived, and with it an inflow of wealth, honor, and leisure to my parish. A wonderful transformation came over the island--the Pleasure Island. Boards were unscrewed from cottage windows. The dead grass gave way to green carpets. Lifeless sticks budded with colored foliage. The dead sea and the listless waves became animated with restless energy. The sun kissed the roads into smoothness and lined the highways with flowers. Fresh painted steamers, with flying banners, whistled into the wharves and unloaded crowds of visitors. Steam yachts lay at anchor in the cove. The white wings of yawls and catboats were dipping in the breeze. The mountain paths had been re-charted and were filled with adventurers. The pine groves and the quiet cliffs lured tired men and women to their restful silences. Trout fishers rubbed oil of camphor over their faces to restrain the ambitious stings of flies and mosquitoes, and sought the brook pools where Walton’s classic trout waited to be played with. My little rustic church became filled with city people, who not only sat in the pews, but sang in the choir, decorated the pulpit with flowers and grasses, and served on responsible committees.

Then, too, my rest and opportunity came, for we had a list of distinguished clergymen and professors who were to occupy my pulpit every Sunday morning, for the resort was very rich in clerical talent of a willing and gracious sort. We had so much professional talent indeed, that one morning near the post-office I beheld two bishops, two university presidents, two professors, and a world-famous author standing on less than two square yards of ground!

We left the doors and the windows of the church open while the noted men preached, and their voices had to vie with the song birds who perched on the waving trees outside the windows. The sea tang blew across the church, the sweetest of summer incense.

I had little enough to do, for the people were too busy with pleasure to be at home: they wanted me to sit on the cliffs with books and take a rest--on a salary.

But there came calls to preach on some of the outlying islands to which I was carried on different Sunday afternoons in a launch.

Then they all left us, tanned, virile, rested: the whole community took itself to the decks of the island steamers and was carried to the trains. The tennis courts were closed. The shutters were fastened over the display windows of the flower stand. Many pews were empty in my little, rustic church. The flowers and shrubs were bedded in straw. Soon the snow and frost and bleakness of winter would spread over the island. My second pastorate ended, too, for I had received a call to supply a larger church much nearer to the Seminary, a church where I intended to preach after my graduation from the Seminary.

_Chapter XXVIII. How a Parsonage Suggests a Wife. The Convincing Revelations of a Phrenologist Who Examined the Students’ Bumps_

On the return to the Seminary, to enter upon my senior year, the first men I missed were Burner and Tucker, who had graduated the previous summer. Burner wrote me a very interesting letter from the precincts of a prominent New England university to the effect that he was a member of the junior class of that institution, that on Sundays he preached in a very delightful country town; that he was having a rich feast in college fare; the courses in animal psychology, metaphysics, especially in relation to the fundamentals of faith, holding the fullest fascination for him. Tucker, able at last to do a preacher’s work, not only to his own personal taste, but also to the gratification of his parish, was giving himself, sacrificially, to the work of dignifying the life of the people who had called him. He wrote me that he felt his special work in life to have two phases to it: that he should remain unmarried in order that, like a monk, he could do God’s work with singleness of purpose, and that he should go only to struggling, discouraged parishes where the small salaries and the hardships formed a sufficient missionary challenge: parishes in which he should labor until they were transformed and able finally to pay a salary on which a permanent, married man could settle among them and give them the fullest, freest service.

“I am setting myself,” concluded Tucker, “to be a mortgage-lifter, parsonage-getter, and salary-raiser for other ministers who are to follow me!”