Domesday Book Part 10

In a week, At Sunday service Percy Ferguson Stood in the pulpit to confess his sin, The Murray jury sat and fed their joy For hearing Ferguson confess his sin.

This is the way he did it:

"First, my friends, I do not say I have betrayed the trust My friends have given me. Some years ago I thought to make provision for my wife, I wished to start some certain young men right.

I had another plan I can't disclose, Not selfish, you'll believe me. So I took My savings made as lecturer and writer And put them in this venture. I'm ashamed To say how great those savings were, in view Of what the poor earn, those who work with hands!

Ashamed too, when I think these savings grew Because I spoke the things the rich desired.

And squared my words with what the strong would have-- Therein Christ was betrayed. The end has come.

I too have been betrayed, my confidence Wronged by my fellows in the enterprise.

I hope to pay my debts. Hard poverty Has come to me to bring me back to Christ."

"But listen now: These years I lived perturbed, Lest this life which I grew into would mould Young men and ministers, lead them astray To public life, sensation, lecture platforms, Prosperity, away from Christ-like service, Obscure and gentle. To those souls I owe My heart's confession: I have loved my books More than the poor, position more than service, Office and honor over love of men; Lived thus when all my strength belonged to thought, To work for schools, the sick, the poor, the friendless, To boys and girls with hungry minds. My friends, Here I abase my soul before G.o.d's throne, And ask forgiveness for the pious zeal With which I smote the soul of Alma Bell, And smudged the robe of Elenor Murray. G.o.d, Thou, who has taken Elenor Murray home, After great service in the war, O grant Thy servant yet to kneel before the soul Of Elenor Murray. For who am I to judge?

What was I then to judge? who coveted honors, When solitude, where I might dwell apart, And listen to the voice of G.o.d was mine, By calling and for seeking. I have broken The oath I took to take no purse or scrip.

I have loved money, even while I knew No servant of Christ can work for Christ and strive For money. And if anywhere there be A n.o.ble boy who would become a minister, Who has heard me, or read my books, and grown Thereby to cherish secular ideas Of Christ's work in the world, to him I say: Repent the thought, reject me; there are men And women missionaries, here, abroad, And nameless workers in poor settlements Whose latchets to stoop down and to unloose I am unworthy."

"Gift of life too short!

O, beautiful gift of G.o.d, too brief at best, For all a man can do, how have I wasted This precious gift! How wasted it in pride, In seeking out the powerful, the great, The hands with honors, gold to give--when nothing Is profitable to a servant of the Christ Except to shepherd Christ's poor. O, young men, Interpret not your ministry in terms Of intellect alone, forefront the heart, That at the end of life you may look up And say to G.o.d: Behind these are the sheep Thou gavest me, and not a one is lost."

"As to my enemies, for enemies A clergyman must have whose fault is mine, Plato would have us harden hearts to sorrow.

And Zeno roofs of slate for souls to slide The storm of evil--Christ in sorrow did For evil good. For me, my prayer is this, My faith as well, that I may be perfected Through suffering."

That ended the confession.

Then "Love Divine, All Love Excelling" sounded.

The congregation rose, and some went up To take the pastor's hand, but others left To think the matter over.

For some said: "He married fortunate." And others said: "We know through Jacob Bangs he has investments In wheat lands, what's the truth? In any case What avarice is this that made him anxious About the comfort of his wife and family?

The thing won't work. He's only middle way In solving his soul's problem. This confession Is just a poor beginning." Others said: "He drove out Alma Bell, let's drive him out."

And others said: "you note we never heard About this speculation till it failed, And he was brought to grief. If it had prospered The man had never told, what do you think?"

But in a year as health failed, Ferguson Took leave of absence, and the silence of life Which closes over men, however noisy With sermons, lectures, covered him. His riffle Died out in distant waters.

There was a Doctor Burke lived at LeRoy, Neurologist and student. On a night When Merival had the jury at his house, Llewellyn George was telling of his travels In China and j.a.pan, had mutual friends With Franklin Hollister, the cousin of Elenor, And son of dead Corinne, who hid her letters Under the eaves. The talk went wide and far.

For David Borrow, sunny pessimist, Thrust logic words at Maiworm, the juryman; And said our life was bad, and must be so, While Maiworm trusted G.o.d, said life was good.

And Winthrop Marion let play his wit, The riches of his reading over all.

Thus as they talked this Doctor Burke came in.

"You'll pardon this intrusion, I'll go on If this is secret business. Let me say This inquest holds my interest and I've come To tell of Elenor's ancestry." Thus he spoke.

"There'll be another time if I must go."

And Merival spoke up and said: "why stay And tell us what you know, or think," and so The coroner and jury sat and heard:--

DR. BURKE

You've heard of potters' wheels and potters' hands.

I had a dream that told the human tale As well as potters' wheels or potters' hands.

I saw a great hand slopping plasmic jelly Around the low sides of a giant bowl.

A drop would fly upon the giant table, And quick the drop would twist up into form, Become h.o.m.onculus and wave its hands, Brandish a little pistol, shoot a creature, Upspringing from another drop of plasm, Slopped on the giant table. Other drops, Flying as water from a grinding stone, Out of the giant bowl, took little crowns And put them on their heads and mounted thrones, And lorded little armies. Some became Half-drooped and sickly things, like poisoned flies.

And others stood on lighted f.a.ggots, others Fed and commanded, others served and starved, But many joined the throng of animate drops, And hurried on the phantom quest.

You see, Whether you call it potter's hand or hand That stirs, to no end, jelly in the bowl, You have the force outside and not inside.

Invest it with a malice, wanton humor, Which likes to see the plasmic jelly slop, And rain in drops upon the giant table, And does not care what happens in the world, That giant table.

All such dreams are wrong, My dream is wrong, my waking thought is right.

Man can subdue the giant hand that stirs, Or turns the wheel, and so these visions err.

For as this farmer, lately come to town, Picks out the finest corn seeds, and so crops A finer corn, let's look to human seed, And raise a purer stock; let's learn of him, Who does not put defective grains aside For planting in the spring, but puts aside The best for planting. For I'd like to see As much care taken with the human stock As men now take of corn, race-horses, hogs.

You, Coroner Merival are right, I think.

If we conserve our forests, waterways, Why not the stream of human life, which wastes Because its source is wasted, fouled.

Perhaps Our coroner has started something good, And brought to public mind what might result If every man kept record of the traits Known in his family for the future use Of those to come in choosing mates.

Behold, Your moralists and churchmen with your rules Brought down from Palestine, which says that life Though tainted, maddened, must not be controlled, Diverted, headed off, while life in corn, And life in hogs, that feed the life of man Should be made better for the life of man-- Behold, I say, some hundred millions spent On paupers, epileptics, deaf and blind; On feeble minded, invalids, the insane-- Behold, I say, this cost in gold alone, Leave for the time the tragedy of souls, Who suffer or must see such suffering, And then turn back to what? The hand that stirs, The potter's hand? Why, no--the marriage counter Where this same state in Christian charity Spending its millions, lets the fault begin, And says to epileptics and what not:-- "Go breed your kind, for Jesus came to earth, And we will house and feed your progeny, Or hang, incarcerate your murderous sp.a.w.n, As it may happen."

And all the time we know As small grains fruit in small grains, even man In fifty matters of pathology Transmits what's in him, blindness, imbecility, Hysteria, susceptibilities To cancer and tuberculosis. Also The soil that sprouts the giant weed of madness-- There's soil which will not sprout them, occupied Too full by blossoms, healthy trees.

We know Such things as these--Well, I would sterilize, Or segregate these shriveled seeds and keep The soil of life for seeds select, and take The church and Jesus, if he's in the way, And say: "You stand aside, and let me raise A better and a better breed of men."

Quit, shut your sniveling charities; have mercy Not on these paupers, imbeciles, diseased ones, But on the progeny you let them breed.

And thereby sponge the greatest waste away, And source of life's immeasurable tragedies.

Avaunt you potter hands and potter wheels!

G.o.d is within us, not without us, we Are given souls to know and see and guide Ourselves and those to come, souls that compute The calculus of beauties, talents, traits, And show us that the good in seed strives on To master stocks; that even poisoned blood, And minds in chemic turmoils, mixed with blood And minds in harmony, work clean at last-- Else how may normal man to-day be such With some eight billion ancestors behind, And something in him of the blood of all Who lived five hundred years ago or so, Who were diseased with alcohol and pork, And poverty? But oh these centuries Of agony and waste! Let's stop it now!

And since this G.o.d within us gives us choice To let the dirty plasma flow or dam it, To give the channel to the silver stream Of starry power, which shall we do? Now choose Between your race of drunkards, imbeciles, Lunatics and neurotics, or the race Of those who sing and write, or measure s.p.a.ce, Build temples, bridges, calculate the stars, Live long and sanely.

Well, I take my son, I could have prophesied his eyes, through knowing The color of my mother's, father's eyes, The color of his mother's parent's eyes.

I could have told his hair.

There's subtler things.

My father died before this son was born; Why does this son smack lips and turn his hand Just like my father did? Not imitation-- He never saw him, and I do not do so.

Refine the matter where you will, how far You choose to go, it is not eyes and hair, Chins, shape of head, of limbs, or shape of hands, Nor even features, look of eyes, nor sound Of voice that we inherit, but the traits Of inner senses, spiritual gifts, and secret Beauties and powers of spirit; which result Not solely by the compound of the souls Through conjugating cells, but in the fusion Something arises like an unknown X And starts another wonder in the soul, That comes from souls compounded.

Coroner You have done well to study Elenor Murray.

How do I view the matter? To begin Here is a man who looks upon a woman, Desires her, so they marry, up they step Before the marriage counter, buy a license To live together, propagate their kind.

No questions asked. I'll later come to that.

This couple has four children, Elenor Is second to be born. I knew this girl, I cared for her at times when she was young-- Well, for the picture general, she matures Goes teaching school, leaves home, goes far away, Has restlessness and longings, ups and downs Of ecstasy and depression, has a will Which drives her onward, dreams that call to her.

Goes to the war at last to sacrifice Her life in duty, and the root of this Is m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic (though I love the flower), Comes back and dies. I call her not a drop Slopped from the giant bowl; she is a growth Proceeding on clear lines, if we could know, From cells that joined, and had within themselves The quality of the stream whose source I see As far as grandparents. And now to this:

We all know what her father, mother are.

No doubt the marriage counter could have seen-- Or asked what was not visible. But who knows About the father's parents, or the mother's?

I chance to know.

The father drinks, you say?

Well, he drank little when this child was born, Had he drunk much, it is the nerves which crave The solace of the cup, and not the cup Which pa.s.ses from the parent to the child.

His father and his mother were good blood, Steady, industrious; and just because His father and his mother had the will To fight privation, and the lonely days Of pioneering, so this son had will To fight, aspire, but at the last to growl, And darken in that drug store prison, take To drink at times in anger for a will That was so balked.

Well, then your marriage counter Could scarcely ask: What is your aim in life?

You clerk now in a drug store, you aspire To be a lawyer, if you find yourself Stopped on your way by poverty, the work Of clerking to earn bread, you will break down, And so affect your progeny. So, you see, For all of that the daughter Elenor Was born when this ambition had its hope, Not when it tangled up in hopelessness; And therefore is thrown out of the account.

The father must be pa.s.sed and given license To wed this woman. How about the mother?

You never knew the mother of the mother.

She had great power of life and power of soul, Lived to be eighty-seven, to the last Was tense, high voiced, excitable, ecstatic, Top full of visions, dreams, and plans for life.

But worse than that at fifty lost her mind, Was two years kept at Kankakee, quite mad, Grieving for fancied wrongs against her husband Some five years dead, and praying to keep down Desire for men. Her malady was sensed When she began to wander here and there, In shops and public places, in the church, Wherever she could meet with men, one man Particularly to whom she made advances Unwomanly and strange. And so at last She turned her whole mind to the church, became Religion mad, grew mystical, believed That Jesus Christ had taken her to spouse.

They kept her in confinement for two years.

The rage died down at last, and she came home.