Back Home Part 3

"SPARKLING DEWDROPS."

Some people believe that when General Conference a.s.signed them to the Committee on Hymn-Book Revision, power and authority were given unto them to put a half-sole and a new heel on any and all poetry that might look to them to be a little run over on one side. If they felt as I do about the lines that head this article they would have "Sunday"

scratched out and "Sabbath" written in before you could bat an eye. The mere subst.i.tution of one word for another may seem a light matter to a man that has never composed anything more literary than an obituary for the Western Advocate of Sister Jane Malinda Sprague, who was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1816, removed with her parents at a tender age to New Sardis, Was.h.i.+ngton County, Ohio, where, etc., etc.

If he wanted to extract a word he would do it, and never even offer to give the author gas. But I know just how it hurts. I know or can imagine how the gifted poet that penned the deathless lines I have quoted must have walked the floor in an agony until every word and syllable was just to suit him, and so, though I feel sure he meant to write "Sabbath-school," I don't dare change it.

To most persons one word seems about as good as another, Sunday or Sabbath, but when there are young people about the house you learn to be careful how you talk before them. Now, I would not go so far as to say that "Sunday" is what you might call exactly rowdy, but er... but...

er... Let me ill.u.s.trate. If a man says, "It's a beautiful Sunday morning," like enough he has on red-and-green stockings, baggy knickerbockers, a violet-and-purple sweater, a cap shaped like a milk-roll, and is smoking a pipe. He very likely carries a bagful of golf-sticks, or is pumping up his bicycle. But if a man says, "This beautiful Sabbath morn," you know for a certainty that he wears a long-tailed black coat, a boiled s.h.i.+rt, and a white tie. He is bald from his forehead upward, his upper lip is shaven, and his views and those of the late Robert Reed on the disgusting habit of using tobacco are absolutely at one.

Not alone a regard for respectability, but the hankering to be historically accurate, urges me to make the change I speak of.

Originally the inst.i.tution was a Sunday-school, and not very respectable either. I should hate to think any of my dear young friends were in the habit of attending such a low-cla.s.s affair as Robert Raikes conducted.

Sunday-schools were for "little ragam.u.f.fins," as he called them, who worked such long hours on week-days (from five in the morning until nine at night) that if they were to learn the common branches at all it had to be on a Sunday. A ragged school was bad enough in itself, putting foolish notions into the heads of gutter-brats and making them discontented and unhappy in their lot; but to teach a ragged school on Sunday was a little too much. So Robert Raikes encountered the most violent opposition, although from that beginning dates popular education in England.

To be able to read is no Longer a sign that Pa can afford to do without the young ones' wages on a Sat.u.r.day night, and can even pay for their schooling. It is no longer a mark of wealth or even of hard-won privilege, but the common fate of all; to know the three R's, and Sunday is not now set apart for secular instruction. So good and wholesome an inst.i.tution as the Sunday-school was not permitted to perish, but was changed to suit the environment. It is now become the Sabbath-school for the study of the Bible, a Christian recrudescence of the synagogue.

For some eighteen centuries it was supposed that a regularly ordained minister should have exclusive charge of this work. At rare intervals nowadays a clergyman may be found to maintain that because a man has been to college and to the theological seminary, and has made the study of the Scriptures his life-work (moved to that decision after careful self-examination) that therefore he is better fitted to that ministry than Miss Susie Goldrick, who teaches a cla.s.s in Sabbath-school very acceptably. Miss Goldrick is in the second year in the High School, and last Friday afternoon read a composition on English Literatoor, in which she spoke in terms of high praise of John Bunion, the well-known author of "Progress and Poverty." Miss Goldrick is very conscientious, and always keeps her thumbnail against the questions printed on the lesson-leaf, so as not to ask twice, "What did the disciples then do?"

It were a grave error to suppose that no secular learning is acquired in the modern Sabbath-school. I remember once, when quite young, speaking to my teacher, in the interval between the regular cla.s.s work and the closing exercises, about peac.o.c.ks. I had read of them, but had never seen one. What did they look like? She said a peac.o.c.k was something like a b.u.t.terfly. I have always remembered that, and when I did finally see a peac.o.c.k, I was interested to note the essential accuracy of the description.

Also, one day a new lady taught our cla.s.s, Miss Evans having gone up to Marion to spend a Sunday with her brother, who kept a stove store there, and this new lady borrowed two flower vases from off the pulpit and a piece of string from Turkey-egg McLaughlin to explain to us boys how the earth went around the sun. We had too much manners to tell her that we knew that years and years ago when we were in Miss Humphreys's room. I don't remember what the earth going around the sun had to do with the lesson for the day, which was about Samuel anointing David's head with oil--did I ever tell you how I anointed my own head with coal oil?--but I do remember that she broke both the vases and cut her finger, and had to keep sucking it the rest of the time, because she didn't want to get her handkerchief all bloodied up. It was a kind of fancy handkerchief, made of thin stuff trimmed with lace--no good.

The Sabbath-school may be said to be divided into three courses, namely, the preparatory or infant-cla.s.s, the collegiate or Sabbath-school proper, and the post-graduate or Mr. Parker's Bible-cla.s.s.

What can a mere babe of three or four years learn in Sabbath-school?

sneers the critic. Not much, I grant you, of justification by Faith, or Effectual Calling; but certain elementary precepts can be impressed upon the mind while it is still in a plastic condition that never can be wholly obliterated, come what may in after life. Prime among these elementary precepts is this: "Always bring a penny."

Some one has said, "Give me the first seven years of a child's life and I care not who has the remainder." I cannot endorse this without reserve; but I maintain as a demonstrated fact: "Bring up a child to contribute a copper cent, and when he is old he will not depart from it." It was recently my high privilege to attend a summer gathering of representative religious people in the largest auditorium in this country. Sometimes under that far-spreading roof ten thousand souls were a.s.sembled and met together. This fact could be guessed at with tolerable accuracy from the known seating capacity, but the interesting thing was that it could be predicated with mathematical certainty that exactly ten thousand people were present, because the offertory footed up exactly one hundred dollars. What an encouragement to these faithful infant-cla.s.s teachers that have labored unremittingly, instant in season and out of season, saying over and over again with infinite patience, "Always bring a penny," to know that their labor has not been in vain, and that as a people we have made it the rule of our lives always to bring a penny--and no more.

I have often tried to think what a Sabbath-school must be like in California, where they have no pennies. It seems hardly possible that the inst.i.tution can exist under such a patent disability, and yet it does. Do they work it on the same principle as the post-office in that far-off land where you 'cannot buy one postal card because the postmaster cannot make change, but must buy five postal cards or two two-cent stamps and a postal? In other words, does a nickel, the smallest extant coin, serve for five persons for one Sunday or one person for five Sundays? I have often wondered about this.

Subsidiary instruction in the preparatory course consists of sitting right still and being nice, keeping your fingers out of Johnny Pym's eye, because it hurts him and makes him cry, not grabbing in the basket when it goes by, even though it does have pennies in it, coaching in a repertory of songs like: "Beautiful, Beautiful Little Hands," "You in Your Little Corner and I in Mine," "The Consecrated Cross-Eyed Bear,"

"Pa.s.s Around the Wash-Rag"--the grown folks call that "Pa.s.s Along the Watchword" and stories about David and Goliath, Samson and the three hundred foxes with fire tied to their tails, Moses in the bulrushes, the infant Samuel, Hagar in the wilderness, and so forth. The clergy have often objected that these stories, being told at the same period of life with those about Santa Claus, "One time there was a little boy and he had a dog named Rover," the little girl that had hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow, and cheeks as red as blood, because her Ma, who was a queen by occupation, happened to cut her finger with a black-handled knife along about New Year's--the clergy, I say, have often objected that all these matters, being brought to a child's attention at the same period in its life, are likely to be regarded in after years as of equal evidential value. I am not much of a hand to argue, myself, but I should like to have one of these carping critics meet my friend, Mrs. Sarah M. Boggs, who has taught the infant-cla.s.s since 1867, having missed only two Sundays in that time, once, in 1879, when it stormed so that n.o.body in town was out, and once, last winter a year ago, when she slipped off the back porch and hurt her knee. I can just see Sister Boggs laying down the law to anybody that finds fault with the infant-cla.s.s, let him be preacher or who. Why the very idea!

Do you mean to say, sir--I guess Sister Boggs can straighten him out all right.

No less faithful is Mr. Parker, the leading lawyer of the town, who conducts the Bible-cla.s.s. I believe one morning he didn't get there until after the last bell was done ringing, but otherwise his record of attendance compares favorably with Sister Boggs's. Both teachers agree to ignore the stated lesson for the day, but whereas Sister Boggs leads her flock through the flowery meads of narration, Mr. Parker and his cla.s.s have camped out by preference for the last forty years in the arid wilderness of Romans and Hebrews and Corinthians First and Second, flinging the plentiful dornicks of "Paul says this" and "Paul says that"

at each other's heads in friendly strife. Mr. Parker's cla.s.s is also very a.s.siduous in its attendance upon the Young People's meetings, seemingly holding the dogma, "Once a young person always a young person." The prevailing style of hairdressing among the members is to grow the locks long on the left side of the head, and to bring the thin layer across to the right, pasted down very carefully with a sort of peeled onion effect.

There is a whole lot of them, and they jower away at each other all through the time between the opening and the closing exercises, having the liveliest kind of a time getting over about two verses of the Bible and the whole ground of speculative theology.

Immeasurably more impermanent in method and personnel is the regular collegiate department, the Sabbath-school proper. In the early days, away back when sugar was sixteen cents a pound, the thing to do was to learn Scripture verses by heart. If you were a rude, rough boy who didn't exactly love the Sunday-school as much as the hymn made you say you did, but still one who had rather sing it than stir up a muss, you hunted for the shortest verses you could find and said them off. From four to eight was considered a full day's work. But if you were a boy who put on an ap.r.o.n and helped your Ma with the dishes, a boy who always wiped your feet before you came in, a boy that never got kept in at school, a boy that cried pretty easy, a nice, pale boy, with bulging blue eyes, you came to Sabbath-school and disgorged verses like buck-shot out of a bag. The four-to-eight-verse boys sat and listened, and improved their minds. There was generally one other boy like you in the cla.s.s, and it was nip-and-tuck between you which should get the prize, until finally you came one Sunday, all bloated up with 238 verses in your craw, and he quit discouraged. The prize was yours. It was a beautiful little Bible with a bra.s.s clasp; it had two tiny silk strings of an old-gold color for bookmarks, and gilt edges all around that made the leaves stick together at first. It was printed in diamond type, so small it made your ears ring when you tried to read it.

Other faculties than that of memory were called into action in those days by problems like these: "Who was the meekest man? Who was the strongest man? Who was the father of Zebedee's children? Who had the iron bedstead, and whose thumbs and great-toes were cut off?" To set a child to find these things in the Bible without a concordance seems to us as futile as setting him to hunt a needle in a haystack. But our fathers were not so foolish as we like to think them; they didn't care two pins if we never discovered who had the iron bedstead, but they knew that, leafing over the book, we should light upon treasure where we sought it not, kernels of the sweetest meat in the hardest sh.e.l.ls, stories of enthralling interest where we least expected them, but, most of all, and best of all, texts that long afterward in time of trouble should come to us, as it were the voice of one that also had eaten the bread of affliction, calling to us across the chasm of the centuries and saying: "O, tarry thou the Lord's leisure: be strong and He shall comfort thine heart."

In the higher cla.s.ses, that still were not high enough to rank with Mr.

Parker's, the exegetical powers were stimulated in this wise: "'And they sung a hymn and went out.' Now what do you understand by that?" We told what we "understood," and what we "held," and what we "believed," and laid traps for the teacher and tried to corner him with irrelevant texts wrenched from their context. He had to be an able man and a nimble-witted man. Mere piety might s.h.i.+ne in the prayer-meeting, in the cla.s.s-room, at the quarterly love-feast, but not in the Sabbath-school.

I remember once when Brother Butler was away they set John Snyder to teach us. John didn't know any more than the law allowed, and we made him feel it, until finally, badgered beyond endurance, he blurted out that all he knew was that he was a sinner saved by grace. Maybe he couldn't just tell where to find this, that, and t' other thing in the Bible, but he could turn right to the place where it said that though a body's sins were as scarlet, yet they should be white as snow. It was regarded as a very poor sort of an excuse then, but thinking it over here lately, it has seemed to me that maybe John had the root of the matter in him after all.

The comparative scarcity of polemical athletes and the relative plenty of the Miss Susie Goldrick kind of teachers, apparently called into being the Berean Lesson Leaf system, with its Bible cut up into lady-bites of ten or twelve verses, its Golden Topics, Golden Texts, its apt alliterations, like:

S AMUEL EEKS AUL ORROWING

and its questions prepared in tabloid form, suitable for the most enfeebled digestions, see directions printed on inside wrapper. Among the many evidences of the degeneracy of the age is the scandalous ignorance of our young people regarding the sacred Scriptures, which at the very lowest estimate are incontestably the finest English ever written. Those whose childhood antedates the lesson leaf are not so unfamiliar with that wondrous treasure-house of thought. It is not for me to say what has wrought the change. I can only point out that lesson leaves, being about the right size for shaving papers, barely last from Sunday to Sunday, while that very identical Bible with the blinding type that I won years and years ago, by learning verses, is with me still.

Yes, and as I often wonder to discover, some of those very verses that I gobbled down as heedlessly as any ostrich are with me still.

Remain to be considered the opening and closing exercises, princ.i.p.ally devoted, I remember, to learning new tunes and singing old ones out of books with pretty t.i.tles, like "Golden Censer," "Silver Spray," "Pearl and Gold," "Sparkling Dewdrops," and "Sabbath Chimes." I wasn't going to tell it, but I might as well, I suppose. I can remember as far back as "Musical Leaves." There must be quite a lot of people scattered about the country who sung out of that when they were little. I wish a few of us old codgers might get together some time and with many a hummed and prefatory, "Do, mi, Sol, do; Sol, mi... mi-i-i-i," finally manage to quaver out the sweet old tunes we learned when we were little tads, each with a penny in his fat, warm hand: "Shall we Gather at the River?"

and "Work, for the Night is Coming"; and what was the name of that one about:

"The waves shall come and the rolling thunder shock Shall beat upon the house that is founded on a rock, And it never shall fall, never, never, never."

What the proper English tune is to "I think when I read that sweet story of old" I cannot tell, but I am sure it can never melt my heart as that one in the old "Musical Leaves." with its twistful repet.i.tions of the last line:

"I should like to have been with Him then, I should like to have been with Him then, When He took little children like lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with Him then."

I fear we could not sing that without breaking down. As we recall it, we draw an inward fluttering breath, something grips our throats and makes them ache, our eyes blur, and a tear slips down upon the cheek, not of sorrow--G.o.d knows not all of sorrow--but if we had it all to live over again, how differently we--oh, well, it's too late now, but still.

Leafing over my little girl's "Arabian Nights" the other day, when I came to the story of "The Enchanted Horse," I found myself humming, "Land ahead! Its fruits are waving." My father used to lead the singing in Sabbath-school, and when he was sol-fa-ing that tune to learn it, I was devouring that story, and was just about at the picture where Prince What's-his-name rises up into the air on the Enchanted Horse, with his true love hanging on behind, and all the mult.i.tude below holding their turbans on as they look up and exclaim: "Well, if that don't beat the Dutch!"

And another tune still excites in me the sullen resentment that it did when I first heard it. In those days, just as a fellow got to the exciting part in "Frank at Don Carlos's Ranch," or whatever the book was, there was kindling to be split, or an armful of wood to be brought in, or a pitcher of water from the well, or "run over to Mrs. Boggs's and ask her if she won't please lend me her fluting-iron," or "run down to Galbraith's and get me a spool of white thread, Number 60, and hurry right back, because then I want you to go over to Serepta Downey's and take her that polonaise pattern she asked me to cut out for her,"

or--there was always something on hand. So what should one of these composers do--I don't know what ever possessed the man--but go write a Sabbath-school song with this chorus:

"There'll be something to do, There'll be something to do, There'll be something for children to do: On that bright s.h.i.+ning sh.o.r.e, Where there's joy evermore, There'll be something for children to do."

I suppose he thought that would be an inducement!

One of these days America is going to be the musical center of the world. When that day is fully come, and men sit down to write about it, I hope they won't forget to give due credit to the reed organ, Stephen Foster, and the Sabbath-school. The reed organ had a lot to do with musical culture. It is much decried now by people that prefer a piano that hasn't been tuned for four years; but the reed organ will come into its own some day, don't forget. Without it the Sabbath-school could not have been. Anybody that would have a piano in a Sabbath-school ought to be prosecuted.

When music, heavenly maid, was just coming to after that awful lick the Puritans. .h.i.t her, the first sign of returning life was that people began to tire of the ten or a dozen tunes to which our great-grandfathers droned and snuffled all their hymns. In those days there was raised up a man named Stephen Foster, who "heard in his soul the music of wonderful melodies," and we have been singing them ever since--"'Way Down upon the Swanee Ribber," and "Old Kentucky Home," and "Nellie Gray," and the rest. Then Bradbury and Philip Phillips and many more of them began to write exactly the same kind of tunes for sacred words. They were just the thing for the Sabbath-school, but they were more, much more.

You know that when a fellow gets so he can shave himself without cutting half his lip off, when it takes him half an hour to get the part in his hair to suit him, when he gets in the way of s.h.i.+ning his shoes and has a pretty taste in neckties, he doesn't want to bawl the air of a piece like the old stick-in-the-muds up in the Amen corner or in Mr. Parker's cla.s.s. He wants to sing ba.s.s. Air is too high for him anyhow unless he sings it with a hog noise. Oh, you get out! You do, too, know what a "hog noise" is. You want to let on you've always lived in town. Likely story if you never heard anybody in the hog-pasture with a basket of nubbins calling, "Peeg! Peeg! Boo-eel Booee!" A man's voice breaks into falsetto on the "Boo-ee!" Well, anyhow, such a young man as I am telling you of would be ashamed to sing with a hog noise. He wants to sing ba.s.s.

Now the regular hymn-tunes change the ba.s.s as often as they change the soprano, and if you go fumbling about for the note, by the time you get it right it is wrong, because the tune has gone on and left you. The Sabbath-school songs had the young man Absalom distinctly in view. They made the ba.s.s the same all through the measure, and all the changes were strictly on the do, sol and fa basis. As far as the other notes in the scale were concerned, the young man Absalom need not bother his head with them. With do, sol and fa he could sing through the whole book from cover to cover as good as anybody.

When people find out what fun it is to sing by note, it is only a step to the "Messiah," two blocks up and turn to the right, as you might say.

After that, it is only going ahead till you get to "Vogner." Yes, and many's the day you called the hogs. Don't tell me.

Once a month on Sunday evenings there were Sabbath-school concerts.

The young ones sat in the front seats, ten or twelve in a pew. "Now, children," said the superintendent, "I want you all to sing loud and show the folks how nice you can sing. Page 65. Sixty-fi'th page, 'Scatter Seeds of Kindness.' Now, all sing out now." We licked our thumbs and scuffled through the book till we found the place. We scowled at it, and stuck out our mouths at it, and shrieked at it, and bawled at it, and did the very best we knew to give an imitation of two hundred little pigs all grabbed by the hind leg at once. That was what made folks call it a concert.

There were addresses to the dear children by persons that teetered on their toes and dimpled their cheeks in dried-apple smiles as us. Some complain that they do not know how to talk to children and keep them interested. Oh, pshaw! Simple as A B C. Once you learn the trick you can talk to the little folks for an hour and a half on "Banking as Related to National Finance," and keep them on the quiver of excitement. Ask questions. And to be sure that they give the right answers (a very important thing) remember this: When you wish them to say "Yes, sir,"

end your question with "Don't they?" or "isn't it?" When you wish them to say "No, sir," end your question with "Do they?" or "Is it?" When you wish them to choose between two answers, mention first the one they mustn't take, then pause, look archly at them, and mention the one they must take. Thus:

Q. --Now, dear children, I wonder if you can tell me where the sun rises. In the north, doesn't it?

A. --Yes, sir.

Q. --Yes, you are right. In the north. And because it rises in the north every afternoon at three, how do we walk about? On our feet, do we?

A. --No, sir.

Q. --No. Of course not. Then how is it we do walk about? On our ears or--(now the look) on our noses?