Neighborhood Stories

ves and I’d stood on my feet till they was ready to come off. But as soon as I got the last crock filled, I chang

of me. It wasn’t the season for missionary barrels or lumberman’s literature—the season for them is house-cleaning time when we don’t know what all to do with the truck, and we take that way of getting rid of it and, same time, providing a nice little self-indulgence for our consciences. But this was the dead o

r’s wife, “I s’pose you wonder wha

I says graceful, “I’m perfectly contented t

hing but home wear, and long-sleeved cotton under-wear that was always coming down over her hands, in July or August, and making you feel what a grand thing it is to be s

sband the Reverend—“has been visiting in the City, as you know. And while

, wondering w

ews were filled with attentive, intelligent people. Outside, the two sides of the street were lined with their automobiles. And this

” says I, fo

ts about it. Then what made folks go? The Reverend and I talked it over. And we’ve decided it isn’t because they’re any better tha

couraging, for I never see

ship Village,” says she. “If only everybody sees e

hat out. “Do you think s

question is, How shall we get everybod

dering which of the three everybodys

decided that you’re the one to help us. We want you to help us think up ways to

see which end

says, “into

r’s wife st

urs!” s

s?” I ask’ he

what do you s’pose we’re i

’m in our particular one because my father was janit

t me perfect

up in it. There was never any que

. “And your husband—why is

regal, “he was born in it. H

n 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, becau

s wife bent o

says she, “you tal

s to be got into our church for a few Sundays, as I underst

me kind of h

s come over you? The Reverend

and telling how many courts it had?{61} Or giving us

I melted myself. If I hadn’t been preserving all

me this—just as truthful as if you wasn’t a minister’s wife: Do you see any living, human thing in our

o want to go to

I ain’t so clear they’d ought to want it, myself. Just

ays she

. If you want to meet that, I’m ready to help you. But if you just want to fill

I only meant what was for th

side the four walls of her—and I says to myself that I’d been a brute and, though I was glad

rs 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, ca

g like a bird incarnate, and we all got her for Sunday School concerts and visiting ministers and special occasions i

n distracted too many times looking at the same plaid waist and the same red bird and the same cameo pin

te Frame church—young Elbert Kinsm

ns, Miss Lavvy?” he had

enough difference in the three to be so solemn and so expensi

unexpectedly replied, “I myse

ut in irreverent, “you can’t get

now to our minister’s wife.

it, because our minister’s wife was like that, much more like that than he

’s Grove lays just on the edge of the village, not far from the little grassy triangle in the resid

extensive. Every Summer is an extry effort—a real revival, I guess. But oh,” I says to my

ely 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{65} Those That Weep” in three flats, and I turned a

wo 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 i

p-step. It had been an awful hot day,

hize with folks for the weather without seeming to repro

’ve made,” he says, “ele

ays. “What was the

. “Pastoral calls,”

ays. “Sic

ounds. I’ve made,” he adds, “one hun

that it wasn’t natural courage at all that made me say what I

e folks, it’s duty. And when I go to see fol

nning himself with the last foreign missionar

to talk about with

s, I must say, is not very wide. There{67} has been a

ck. Old Mr. Blackwell has got hold of a new dyspepsia remedy. At the Holmans’ the two twins fell into an empt

e a good many burdens to bea

isten to everybody’s troubles for one hundred and fourteen cal

of comforter

other ministers either. I’m blaming us, that calls a minister to come and help us reveal the word of God to ourselves, and th

s demands—{68}—” he started in, and co

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 t

ect the calls. What,” he adds, “had you though

he first fifteen minutes or

“Well—that’s a little out of the order for the S

or what it does to people to sing together for a while. It makes real things seem sort

a?” say

the next observati

but for the opening hymn of the regular morning worship—still, of

rom 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.

said our minister. “W

instance,

of God goes

y crown

ed banner s

ows in h

aring to gain a kingly crown. Think of his having a blood-red banner.

things are just figurative. You mustn’

at him, acro

days,” I said. “Sometimes it’s gloriou

for these Sundays. We might of course do well to pick

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 oth

it fo

ar’s at t

’s at t

g’s at

ide’s dew-

k’s on

l’s on t

in his

ht with t

true for everybody, and help me to help make it true. Amen,’ That,” I says, “mi

id. “Not have them re

can interest and occupy them. Which

that are in church send t

ys, “and have somebody in charge, and have quiet e

” he says, “that wou

d: ‘But that would be a revolution.’ And the next minute we’re harping away on kee

hat else?” say

ight off, the sermon—and no hymn after that at all, but let the sermon end with

ty a bowl of my pitted fruit, and when I c

forgotten a very important thing.

some work for God. I’d take a collection then. The rest of the time I’d have th

him about the services that it was his job to do. And though I was miserabl

chimneys. She was a pretty little thing—little, but with black eyes that mentioned her thoughts before ever any of the rest of her agreed to announce ’em. And plenty of thoughts, too, Lavvy had. She wasn’t one of the girls that is turned out by the thousands, that woul

Sundays in September, when we have special services to get everybody to go

the White Frame church for the four S

to tell me that they’re going

to make an extra effort to get fo

four Sundays can’t be regularly copyrighted by us, can they?

s Lavvy. “It’s the rest of ’em wants it.

I says, “he loves folks. I

t on trim

e, “they’ve spoke for me to sing for the

hey haven’t! What on earth

body to go, so’s everybody’ll s

ays. “That makes me

hose four Sundays. I ain’t going to be here. I don’t know yet where I’m going, but I’ll go o

great good notion to get my

I might have known that I was, by the chip-shouldered way I had talked to our minister—still, it wasn’t till there by the lamps that I come to a

urches was afraid we’d get their folks away from them, and they says they’d make an extra effort to get folks out, as well. They fell into the same hope—to “fill up” the churches, and see if we couldn’t get folks started

ome along the next thing, as regular as three coming after two—we begun sort of running one another to see who could get the most folks. At first we sent out printed invitations addressed to likely spots; then we took to calling to houses by committees, and delivering invitations in person. Now and then rival vi

rick walk—ain’t it funny how, when men goes out with a proposition for raising pew-rent, or buying a new furn

’t give you a cent. If it’s work, I’m drove to death as i

he least foreign to me, I s’pose,—though it happened

s, “it’s some ideas we want off’n

d it, assisted

in church attendance which we are hoping to stimulate,

what I had been longing for, and gr

e superintendent, clearing his throat. I guess he knew how that word “community” al

says. “Yes! I

e of particular blessing and fellowship,”{78} sa

imple soul, I

, “to do anything in the world

we have come to you. Now,” says he, “the idea is this: We thou

or?” s

esent in the three churches will be kept track of and totaled at the end of the month. And, at the end of the month, the chu

and; and I set down in it, and thought. And the thing that come to me was them early days, them first days when the first Christians were trying to plan ways that they could meet, and hoping and longing to be together, and finding caves and wild places where they could gather in safety and talk about their wonderful new knowledge of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and the divine ex

his only in Friendship Village? Or is it like this out in the

the extra September services, and that they would have to get somebody else to play{80} the organ for all four Sundays. They was both grieved—and I

e that it is going to be a time of awakening if we

, in those first days, they had to argue that. Bu

s wife, “we have so depended on you.

” I says—and coul

Sykes was there,

people to be present, no money-begging for expenses. No anything except

And all the way up Daphne Street I went saying{81} it over: “No anything except giving pe

lbert Kinsman, minister of the Whi

nownst, “can you imagine Jesus of Na

young minister reached

d only, “and he was ve

r words ringing in my ears: “Lighten mine eyes—lig

ing inside, was a little hint of yellow, a look of brown, a smell in the wind maybe—that let you know it was something{82} else besides. It wasn’t that the time was any less Summer. It was just that it was Summer and a little Autumn too. But I always say that you can’t think Autumn without thinking Winter; and you can’t think Winter wi

emember: “As Pants the Hart,” and “Glory Be to God in the Highest,” and like that. I did it that first Autumn Sunday morning, with my windows open and the muslin curtains blowing

n I was all through. Then I got my vegetables ready for dinner, and made me a little dessert, and still it was not quite ten o’clock. So then I give it u

y go and that I couldn’t tell which of the churches they’d be going to, and I wondered how they co

e as this for me. Ever. Nor no re

omething to me. They meant something now. I loved to hear them.{84} Pretty soon they stopped, and there was just the tramp of feet on the board walk. I sat there where I was, without moving, the quarter of an hour until the bells began again. And when the bells began again it seemed as if they rang right there in the room with me, but soft and distant too,—from a long way off where I wasn’t any more. Always it had been then, at

together in search of you. It is our invisible church from the old time. Why then—when men read things into the visible church that never belonged there, when there has crept into and clung th

e thing that kept pouring through my mind was that I wasn’t the only one. But that all over, in other towns at that very hour, there were those whose h

we do to mak

. Before each little church the steps, the side-walk, and out in the street, were thronged with people, and people were flowing out into the open spaces. And in a minute I sensed it: There wasn’t room. There wasn’t room—for there were fifteen hundred people living in Friendship Village, and all the l

we do to mak

o him, and I said two words. And in a minute those two words went round, and they spoke them in the crowd, and they announced them inside our church, and s

pieces, but it was large enough. The three ministers went up there together, and round the base of the bandstand came gathering the three choirs, and in a

rate sermons up there before us, all prepared, careful, by three separate ministers, in three separate manses, for three separate congregations. But the thing seemed to settle

at we are clinging to nobody can tell why, or of whose will. I mean the division of unreason in the household of love. For me the folly and the waste and the loss of efficiency of denominationalism have forever

een sounding in my heart for long; and that I had heard it trying to speak from the hearts of others; and that it wasn’t only in Friendship Village, but it was all over the world that people are ready and wait

lent prayer. You can not stand still in the woods and empty out y

a good many of us had thought

wideness in

deness of t

done as she had said—gone into the wood{89}—“where better things are.” And there we had come to find them too. She came down the green aisles, singing; and we were all singing—I wish I might have been where I could