Ester Ried Yet Speaking Part 2

"No, I'm bound if we do; it comes the nearest to looking like a lark of anything that we have had in a long time. I say, Parson, go off about your business and let us alone. We was having a good time getting acquainted till you come and spoiled it. We'll be as sober as nine deacons at a prayer-meetin'. And look out how you insult this young woman; she's a friend of ours, and we're bound to protect her. No asking of her to change her seat; she's going to sit right here to the end of the chapter."

Mr. Durant looked his willingness to summon the police at once, but Mrs.

Roberts' voice, evenly poised now, took up the story:--

"Thank you; then I will stay. And since it is getting late, suppose we lose no more time. There was something about which I wanted to tell you. But a few evenings ago I attended a gathering where I saw some very singular things. A gentleman in the party was tied with a strong rope, hands and feet, as firmly as two men could tie him,--people who knew how to tie knots, and they did their best; yet while we stood looking at him he shook his hand free and held it out to them. How do you think it was done?"

"Sham knots!" said one.

"No, for my husband was one of the gentlemen who tied him, and he a.s.sured me that he tied the rope as firmly as he could. Besides, more wonderful things than that were done. I tied my own handkerchief into at least a dozen very hard knots, and gave it to him, and I saw him put it in a gla.s.s of water, then seize it and shake it out, and the knots were gone. I saw him take two clean gla.s.ses, and pour water from a pitcher into one, and it seemed to turn instantly to wine; then he poured that gla.s.s of wine into the other empty gla.s.s, and immediately it turned back to water, or seemed to. Dozens of other strange things he did. I should really like to tell you about them all. I will, at some other time; but just now I think you would like to know _how_ he did them."

"_How_ he did them!" "As if you could tell!" "_Can_ you tell?" "Pitch in, mum; I'd like to hear that part myself!" These were some of the eager answers.

Had the little teacher, under the embarra.s.sments of the occasion, taken leave of her senses? Actually she was bending forward, opened Bible turned face downward on her knee, engaged in describing in somewhat minute detail the explanations of certain slight-of-hand performances which she had recently seen! What idea of the sacredness of the office of teacher, and the solemnity of the truths to be taught, had she?

The boys were listening, their heads bent forward all around her. What of that? They would have listened equally well to a graphically-told story of a Fourth Avenue riot, and been equally benefited, you think?

They did not know just when the speaker slipped from the events of last week to the events of more than three thousand years ago. Indeed, so ignorant were they of all past history, that they were not even aware that she went back into the past; for aught they knew, she might have gone, on Wednesday of last week to see the man who could untie knots by magic, and on Thursday to see the men who could drop canes on the ground that would appear to turn into wriggling serpents. But there was one statement that proved too much for their credulity.

"You could not imagine what occurred next," said the bright-faced teacher. "The cane or rod that the first man had dropped, actually opened its mouth and swallowed the other rods that seemed to be serpents, and was left there alone in its triumph!"

"Oh, bos.h.!.+" said Nimble d.i.c.k, contempt expressed in the very curve of his nose, "that's too steep; I don't believe a word of it! These fellows can do lots of queer things; I've seen 'em perform, myself; but they never made a live thing yet; I've heard folks that know, say so."

"Precisely what I wanted to reach," said Mrs. Roberts, with animation.

"You are right, they never did; and you have discovered just the difference between them and the one man of whom I have been telling you.

_He_ worked by the power of G.o.d; he distinctly stated that he did; and that G.o.d really turned his rod into a serpent, and allowed it to swallow the imitations of life, and then turned it back again into a rod, to show that nothing was beyond his power."

"Did you see the thing done?" questioned a young skeptic, running his tongue into his cheek in a skillful way, and distorting his whole face with a disagreeable leer. He began to suspect that he was being cheated into listening to a Bible story.

Mrs. Roberts was prompt with her answer:--

"Oh, no, I did not, neither did I see the great fire that you had in this city about a year ago. At that time I was a thousand miles away; and it so happens that I have never talked with any person who did see it, yet I know there was a great fire, and many buildings were burned, and lives lost. It has been proved to me."

"Oh, well," said skeptic number two, while number one retired into silence to speculate over this answer, "fires are common enough things; anybody can know that they happen; but it ain't such a common affair to see a stick turn into a serpent and swallow up other serpents. I've seen them fellows make things that looked like snakes, myself; I could most swear to it that I'd seen them wriggle; but they never did no _swallowing_."

"That is, they did not give unmistakable signs that they were alive. But do you think it too strange a thing for G.o.d to do? Surely he can make life! How is it that you are here, breathing, talking, thinking, if there is no power anywhere to make life?"

"Oh, I came from a tadpole," said the boastful young scientist, putting his thumbs under his arms, and affecting an air of great wisdom. "I know all about that; I was there, and see the things wriggle."

Evolution staring her in the face in a corner cla.s.s in a mission school;--a cla.s.s that had been gathered from the slums! Mrs. Roberts did not know that these are the very places in which to find it in all its coa.r.s.eness. Yet she made haste to meet the boy on his own ground.

"Very well, if you choose to take that view of it. Was not the tadpole alive? Where did the _life_ come from? You insist that the story I have been telling you is untrue because you know that none of these sleight-of-hand performers have ever, or _can_ ever make actual life!

That it is an impossible thing for human beings to do. Yet when I tell you that _G.o.d_ did it you refuse the statement. How are you going to account for life? If, in its very lowest forms, it cannot be made by men who have given all their time to the study of the marvellous, how is it that it is everywhere about us, unless I am correct, and there is a Power that can produce life?"

Not a boy among them had heard the term "evolution;" knew anything about "the survival of the fittest." They were entirely ignorant of "protoplasm" or "bioplasm;" yet not one of them but had caught the meaning of some of these terms as they had been translated for them into the vernacular of the city slums; not one in the cla.s.s but perceived that their champion arguer had been met on his own ground and vanquished. Not with an outburst of horror; he had not even been informed that he was irreverent. Nimble d.i.c.k delighted in making each teacher tell him this; he had merely been replied to in the calmest of argumentative tones, and called upon to account for the facts in his own statements, and had been unable to do so. The crowd broke into a derisive laugh, and were noisy, it is true, and brought troubled frowns to the face of their superintendent, and made the flush on Alfred Ried's face deepen; yet if both these anxious watchers had known it, it was worthy of note that the laugh had been at the expense of one of their number, and not at their teacher.

"Well, go on," interposed the youngest and quietest of the group. "Tell us some more about your old fellow with his serpents. Did they stay swallowed, and what did it all amount to, anyhow?"

Thus challenged, Mrs. Roberts gave her whole heart to the business of giving, in as dramatic a manner as she could, the closing scenes in the act performed in Egypt so long ago, carefully avoiding any reference to time, and mentioning no names, using only modern terms, and an exceedingly simple conversational form of language. She was, however, presently interrupted with a question:--

"When did all this happen? And why don't somebody do something like it nowadays?"

Ignoring the first question, Mrs. Roberts adroitly gave herself to the second.

"Why don't you find your pleasure in tumbling around on the floor, playing with a bright-colored marble or two as you did when a child? The world was in its childhood when G.o.d taught the people in this way. He has given them just as wonderful lessons since, but lessons more suited to men and women who have learned to think and reason. We don't like to be always treated as children."

Whether they really dimly understood the meaning or not is possibly doubtful, yet it appealed to their sense of dignity in so indirect a way, that they did not themselves realize what inclined them to quiet for a moment, while she finished her sentence earnestly. In the midst of the quiet the closing-bell rang, and the seven young scamps seemed at once to take into their hearts seven other spirits worse than themselves, and behaved abominably during the closing exercises, and tumbled out of the door over each other, in the wildest fas.h.i.+on, the moment the signal was given, halting only to say, in the person of their leader:--

"You be on hand next Sunday; we like your yarns first rate."

Mrs. Roberts, with glowing cheeks, and eyes behind which there were unshed tears, made her way to the desk where Mr. Durant was standing, and spoke quickly:

"There is a difference between others who have tried it and myself, Mr.

Durant. The sentence in Mr. Ried's account that gave me courage was, 'Every one has failed, so far; people are unwilling to take the cla.s.s a second time.' I have failed, but I want to try again."

CHAPTER III.

"ANYTHING UNCOMMON ABOUT ME?"

Though they rushed out with even more noise than usual, every boy of them knew that the noise was to cover a certain sense of shame-facedness, because they had actually been beguiled into listening quietly for a few minutes to earnest words.

Directly they had reached the privacy of the street they became quieter.

"I say, boys," said Nimble d.i.c.k, "is that an awful green one, or a new kind?"

"New, I should say," replied one of the younger boys; "she ain't like anything that's been in that room since we got acquainted with it. I don't know her style, myself."

"What do you take it she meant by that stuff about being friends, and telling us where she lived, and all that?"

"Dunno what she meant; but she ain't _green_, you may bet your head on that. I'll tell you what I think, boys: I b'lieve she knows what she is about, every time."

What this sage conclusion amounted to, one not acquainted with the dialect of the street might have been at a loss to understand, but the rest of the party received it in grave silence and nods of the head, as though it were a thought that needed careful investigation. In common parlance, Jerry Tompkins had expressed the opinion that Mrs. Roberts had some point to gain in being so uncommonly polite and attentive to them, and they were curious to know what the motive could possibly be.

They considered the important question in silence until they reached the next corner; then Nimble d.i.c.k, tossing back his head as one who had thrown off an abstruse problem, and would have none of it, said:--

"Well, what next? We've got through with that fun for to-day. What are you going to do, boys? Say we go around to Poke's, and see what is going on there?"

To this proposition there was eager agreement from all the party save one; he maintained a somewhat moody silence.

"What say, Dirk?" the leader asked, addressing him; "are you ready for Poke's?"

"No; I don't think I'll go around, just now."

"What, then? If you've got something better on hand, why don't you let a fellow know? We're not dying for Poke's place."

"I haven't got a thing on hand; only I don't care about going there."