A Circuit Rider's Wife Part 1

A Circuit Rider's Wife.

by Corra Harris.

CHAPTER I

I AM CHOSEN INSTEAD OF THE PRAYER MEETING VIRGIN

If you will look back over the files of the "Southern Christian Advocate," published at the time in Macon, Georgia, you will find the following notice--by a singular coincidence on the page devoted to "obituaries": "Married--Mary Elizabeth Eden to William Asbury Thompson.

The bride is the daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Eden, of Edenton; the groom is the son of the late Reverend Dr. and Mrs. Asbury Thompson, and is serving his first year in the itinerancy on the Redwine Circuit. We wish the young people happiness and success in their chosen field."

"Chosen field" had reference to the itinerancy, not matrimony. And that was my "obituary" if I had only known it. For after that, if I was not dead to the world, I only saw it through the keyhole of the Methodist Discipline, or lifted and transfigured by William's sermons--a straight and narrow path that led from the church door to the grave.

But now, after an absence of thirty years, I am addressing this series of letters to the people of the world concerning life and conditions in another, removed from this one by the length of long country roads, by the thickness of church doors, and by the plate gla.s.s surface of the religious mind. They will record some experiences of two Methodist itinerants and whatever I think besides, for they are written more particularly to relieve my mind of a very great burden of opinions.

For William has been promoted. He has received his LL. D. in the Kingdom of Heaven by this time if there are any degrees or giving of degrees there, along with Moses and Elijah, and I doubt if there is a more respected saint in that great company. We buried him a year ago in the graveyard behind Redwine Church.

I was born in Edenton, a little white-and-blue town in Middle Georgia, and my name was recorded in the third generation of Edens on the baptismal registry of St. John's Church there. William was born somewhere in a Methodist parsonage, and his name is probably written on the first page of the oldest predestination volume in Heaven. In Edenton the "best families" attended the Episcopal Church. It was a St. John's, of course, though why this denomination should be so partial to that apostle is a mystery, for his autobiography, as recorded in the New Testament, reads more like that of a campmeeting Methodist than any other disciple's. As a child its presence there at the end of the shaded village street was real to me, like my mother's.

I did not repent in it as one must do in a Methodist or Baptist church, but I grew up in it like a daughter in the house of the Lord. As a girl on Sabbath mornings I entered it with all the mincing worldliness of my young mind unabashed. Later I was "confirmed" in it and experienced some of the vanity of that high spiritual calm which attends quick conversions in other churches. And to this day there is something ineffably sweet and whimsically inconsistent to me in an Episcopal saint. The fastidious stamina of their spirituality which never interferes with their worldliness is so satisfyingly human.

Piety renders them increasingly graceful in manners and appearance. In Heaven I believe Episcopalian saints will be distinguished from all others by stiff ruffs worn around their redeemed necks.

But all was different in the church to which William belonged, and in which he had been brought up for three generations. The "best families" are never in the majority there. You will find, instead, besides a few "prominent members," the poor, the simple-minded, the ne'er-do-wells morally, who have always flocked to the Methodist fold for this pitying reason, because they find that, if fallen, it is easier to rise in grace according to the doctrines of that church.

So, while William's father and further fathers had been engaged in the tedious mercy of healing and rehealing these lame, indigent souls according to various hallelujah plans, my mother and foremothers had been engaged in embroidering altar-cloths and in making durable Dorcas ap.r.o.ns for the unknown poor. This made the difference in our natures that love bridged. That is the wonderful thing about love--it comes so tremendously new and directly from G.o.d to recreate in us, and it is so divinely unprejudiced by what our ancestors did religiously or sacrilegiously.

To all appearances it would have been better for William if he had chosen for his wife one of those pallid prayer-meeting virgins who so naturally keep their lamps trimmed and burning before the pulpits of unmarried preachers. They are really the best women to be found in any church. They never go astray, they are the gentle maiden sisters of all souls, the faded feminine love-psalms of a benighted ministry who wither and grow old without ever suspecting that their hope was marriage no less than it is the hope of the giddiest girl. However, a preacher rarely takes one of them for his first wife. It is only after he has been left a widower with a house full of children that he turns imploring love-looks in their direction. And whatever is true in other churches, it will be found upon investigation that most of the excellent stepmothers so numerous in the Methodist itinerancy have been selected from this cla.s.s. But William was not a widower; besides, love is the leveler of human judgments in such matters and the builder of new destinies. So I was chosen instead of the prayer-meeting virgin to be his wife--the gayest, wildest young heroine hoyden in the town.

We met by chance in the house of a mutual friend. I remember the day very well, so blue above, so green below, with all the roses in Edenton blooming. I was going to tea at the Mallarys'. I wore a green muslin, very tight in the waist, but flaring in the skirt like the spring boughs of a young bay tree. I had cornta.s.sel hair and a complexion that gave my heart away. Mrs. Mallary, a soft, match-making young matron, met me at the door and whispered that she had a surprise for me. The next moment we entered the parlor together. The room spun around, I heard her introducing some one, felt the red betrayal on my brow, and found myself gazing into the face of a strange young man and hoping that he would ask me to marry him. It was William, a college mate of Tom Mallary's, spending the night on his way to his circuit from a district meeting. He wore his long-tailed preacher clothes and looked like a young he-angel in mourning as he bowed and replied to me with his eyes that indeed he would ask me to be his wife as soon as it was proper to do so. This was sooner than any steward or missions mother in his church would have suspected. For, once a man is in love, his sense of propriety becomes navely obtuse and primitive.

There is little distinction between a preacher and any other man as a lover. William, I recall, made love as ardently as the wildest young scamp in Edenton. This was one of the thrilling circ.u.mstances of our courtship. I should not have been surprised if Tom Logan, or Arthur Flemming or any one of a half a dozen others had made me telegraphic dispatches of an adoring nature with his eyes, but I was flattered and delighted to have melted the mortal man in a young minister who always looked as if he had just risen from his knees. I do not know why women are this way about preachers, but they are, at least they were in my day, and, later, I discovered that the trait leads to curious complications. Meanwhile, I left the course of our true love all to William, feeling that a man who could smile like that must know what was proper. We were engaged in less than a week and married in a month. Women only are the conductors of protracted courtships.

Our wedding tour was a drive of twenty miles through the country to the parsonage on the Redwine Circuit. And the only one who had any moral impression of the day was the horse. I do not even recall the road except that it swept away like a white, wind-blown scarf over the green world, and that wild roses looked at me intimately from the fence corners as we pa.s.sed. William had a happy amen expression, but neither of us was thinking of the living or dying souls in the Redwine Circuit.

The horse, however, had got her training on the road between churches, and did not know she was conducting a wedding tour. She was a sorrel, very thin and long-legged, with the disposition of a conscientious red-headed woman. She was concerned only to get us to the parsonage in time for the "surprise" that had been secretly prepared for our coming.

Toward evening the road narrowed and steepened and, looking up, we caught sight of it, a little wren of a house, hidden between two green shoulders of the world. The roof sloped until one could touch the mossy shingles, and the chimneys on either side were like ugly, voluminous old women who rocked the cradle of a home between them and cheered it with the red heart of wood fires within. In the valley below lived the people of Redwine Church. But the world was withdrawn and could only be seen at a great distance through the gateway of the two hills. One had the feeling that G.o.d's ancient peace had not been disturbed in this place, and this was a solemn, foreboding feeling for me as we reached the shadow of the big fruit tree in front of the house, and William lifted me lightly from the buggy, unlatched the door--it was before the day of rogues and locks in that community--and welcomed me home with a kiss that felt a trifle too much like a benediction.

There were two rooms; one was a bedroom, having a red, white and blue rag carpet on the floor and furnished with a home-made bed, a little stump-toed rocking chair, a very straight larger chair, and a mirror hanging over a table that was covered with fancifully notched blue paper. The other was the living room, and contained a cedar piggin and gourd on a shelf; a bread tray, dishpan, a pot and two skillets on another shelf near the fireplace, two split-bottom chairs, a table, and a cat. The cat was a large, gray agnostic. He never admitted William's presence by so much as a purr or a claw, and I have noticed that the agnostic is the only creature living who can treat a preacher with so much contempt. We found him curled up on the window sill next to the milk pitcher, sunning himself.

William went out to put up his red-headed horse, and I drew a chair before the shelf containing the bread tray, the dishpan, pot and skillets, and stared at them with horror and amazement. Why had William not mentioned this matter of cooking? I had never cooked anything but cakes and icings in my whole life! I was preparing to weep when a knock sounded upon the door and immediately a large, fair woman entered. She wore the most extraordinary teacup bonnet on her huge head that was tied somewhere in the creases of her doubled chin with black ribbons. And, on a blue plate, she was carrying a stack of green-apple pies nearly a foot high. Catching sight of the half-distilled tears in my eyes as I arose to meet her, she set the pies down, clasped me in her arms and whispered with motherly tenderness: "I know how you feel, child; it's the way all brides feel when they first realize what they have done, and all they've done to theirselves. But 'tain't so bad; you'll come down to it in less 'an a week; and you mustn't cry now, with all the folks comin' in. They won't understand."

She pointed through the open door and I turned in the shelter of her arms to see down the road a strand of people ascending the hill, dressed like fancy beads, each behind the other, and each bearing something in her hands or on his shoulders--and William standing at the gate to welcome them.

"Who are they?" I asked in astonishment.

"It's a donation party. I come on ahead to warn you. Them's the members of the Redwine, Fellowship and Macedonia churches, bringin'

things to celebrate your weddin'. I'm Glory White, wife of one of the stewards at Redwine, and we air powerful glad to have you. So you mustn't cry till the folk air all gone, or they'll think you ain't satisfied, which won't do your husband any good."

That was my first lesson in suppressing my natural feelings. As the years went by I had more lessons in it than in anything else. And I reckon it is not such a bad thing to do, for if one's natural feelings are suppressed long enough one develops supernatural feelings and feels surer of having a soul.

The donation party poured in, Sister Glory White and I standing between the kitchen table and the fireplace to receive them. William acted as master of ceremonies, conducting each man and woman forward with great _empress.e.m.e.nt_ for the introduction. Everyone called me "Sister Thompson" and laid a "donation" on the table in pa.s.sing. I was not aware at the time of their importance, but as William only received two hundred and forty-five dollars for his salary that year we should have starved but for an occasional donation party. In fact, they are smiling providential instances in the memory of every Methodist itinerant. Upon this occasion they ranged from bedquilts to hams and sides of bacon; from jam and watermelon rind preserves to flour, meal and chair tidies. One old lady brought a package of Simmons' Liver Regulator, and Brother Billy Fleming contributed a long twist of "dog shank"--a homecured tobacco. The older women spread the viands for the "infare," as the wedding dinner was called, upon the table, and we stood about it to eat amid shouts and laughter and an exchange of wit as good natured as it was horrifying to bridal ears.

"So," said a huge old Whitman humorist that I afterward identified as Brother Sam White, as he clasped both my hands in his, "this is Brother Thompson's new wife"--as if I were one of a series--"you are welcome, ma'am. He's been mightily in need of a wife to perk him up. He's a good preacher, but sorter like my young horse Selim. There ain't a better colt in the country, only he don't show it; sperit's too quiet unless I lay a cuckle bur under his tail. And your husband, ma'am, what he says is good, but he don't r'ar and pitch enough. He can't skeer young sinners around here with jest the truth. He must learn to jump up and down and _larrup_ 'em with it!"

All this was delivered in a bellowing voice that fairly shook the feathers in my hat. And it indicates the quality of William's ministry and the ideals of his congregation.

CHAPTER II

I BUILD FOR MYSELF A MONUMENT MORE ENDURING THAN BRa.s.s

As Sister Glory White had predicted, I "came down to it" at once and soon learned to perform the usual feminine miracles in the bread-tray and skillets. Our happiness did not differ from the happiness of other young married people except that it was abashed morning and evening with family prayers--occasions when Thomas, the cat, invariably arose with an air of outraged good-breeding and withdrew to the back yard.

William had long, active, itinerating legs in those days, a slim, graceful body, a countenance like that of Sir Walter Raleigh and eyes that must have been like Saint John's. They were blue and had in them the "far, eternal look." And in the years to come I was to learn how much the character of the man resembled both that of the cavalier and the saint. Also, I was to learn that it was no light matter for one's husband to have descended from an ecclesiastical family that had found its way up through church history by prayer and fasting.

A Presbyterian may make the most abiding forefather, because his doctrinal convictions are so strong they prenatally crimp the morals of those who come after him; and it may be that a Methodist ancestor counts for less in the third and fourth generation because his theology is too genially elastic to take a Calvinistic grip upon posterity, but it is certain that he will impart a wrestling-Jacob disposition to his descendants which nothing can change. So it was with William; he was often without "the witness of the Spirit," but I never knew him to let his angel go. He had a genius for wrestling in prayer as another man might have for writing great poetry. His words flew together into coveys when he fell upon his knees, and rose like mourning doves to Heaven, or they would be like high notes out of a black-Saul mood of the soul, and then they thundered forth from his lips as if he were about to storm the gates of Paradise. And sometimes, in the dramatic intensity of his emotions, he would ask for the most terrifying things.

At first as we knelt together there in the quiet little house with no one near for help but the hills, I was alarmed less Heaven should take him at his word, for if half his pet.i.tions had been granted we could not have lived in this world. We should have been scattered like the fine dust of a too great destiny. But presently, when nothing adequate to them happened during the night, I learned to have more confidence in the wisdom of G.o.d and less in William's. With him prayer was simply a spiritual obsession based upon a profound sense of mortal weakness and very mystifying to his young wife, who had cheerfully said her orisons from a book night and morning with an easy Canterbury conscience.

The Sat.u.r.day after our marriage I accompanied him to Redwine, his regular appointment. It was the custom then to have preaching Sat.u.r.day and Sunday. The church was withdrawn from the road into a dim forest of pines, black and mournful. Here and there, horses and mules bearing saddles or dangling harness stood slipshod in the shade, switching their tails at innumerable flies. Near the door was the group of men one always sees about a country church on meeting days. They are farmers who have an instinct for the out-of-doors and who, for this reason, will not go in till the last moment. Beyond the church, in the thicker shadows, lay its dead beneath a colony of staggering gray stones. Upon one grave, I remember, where the clay was freshly turned, there was a bouquet of flowers--love's protest against the sonorous sentence--"earth to earth and dust to dust"--which the other graves confirmed. The pine needles lay thick above them, and not a flower distinguished them from the common sod. They had the look of deeper peace, the long, untroubled peace of sleepers who have pa.s.sed out of the memory of living, worrying men. These churchyards for the dead were characteristic features in country circuits, and I mention this one because ever after it seemed to me to be just inside the gateway of the Methodist itinerancy, and because, in the end, it came to be the home place of my heart.

I had never before been in a Methodist church. A certain Episcopalian conceit prevented my straying into the one at Edenton. And I was shocked now at the Old Testament severity of this one. There was no compromise with human desires in it, not a touch of color except the brown that time gives unpainted wood, not an effort anywhere to appeal to the imagination or suggest holy imagery. Only the semicircular altar rail about the narrow box pulpit suggested human frailty, prayer and repentance. On the men's side--for the law of s.e.x was observed to the point of segregation in all our churches--there was a sprinkling of men with red, strong, craggy faces who appeared to have the Adam clod highly developed in them, a world-muteness in expression that seemed to set them back in the garden and to hide them from G.o.d on account of their sins. On the other side there was more lightness, more life and hope expressed in the faces of the younger women. But in the faces of the old there was the same outdone look of Nature facing G.o.d.

There was no service, from the standpoint of my Episcopal rearing; just a hymn, a prayer, and then William took his text, the Beat.i.tudes--all of them. I have since heard better sermons on one of them, but the figure of him standing there behind the high pulpit in the darkened church with his eyes lifted, as if he saw angels above our heads, has never faded from my memory, nor have the faces of the old women in their black sunbonnets upturned to him, nor the drooping shoulders of the old men sitting in the amen corner with bowed heads. Somehow, there was a reality about the whole scene that we did not have at home with all the fine music and Heaven-hinting accessories.

He had reached the promise to the blessed peacemakers in the course of his sermon, the vision-seeing calm growing deeper in his eyes and the high look whitening on his brow, when suddenly a woman on the front seat stood up, laid her sleeping infant on the floor with careful deliberation, took off her black calico bonnet, stepped into the aisle, slapped her hands together and began to spin around and around upon her toes with incredible celerity. Her homespun skirt ballooned about her, the ruffle of her collar stood out like a little frill of white neck feathers. She had a fixed, foolish expression, maintained an energy of motion that was persistent and amazing, and gave out at regular intervals a short, staccato squeal that was scarcely human in sound.

Not a word was spoken; William himself was silenced as he watched the strange phenomenon. And I have often wondered since at the quality of that courage in an otherwise shrinking country woman which could cause her to rise, take the service out of the preacher's hands as serenely as if she had been sent from G.o.d. And this is what she really believed. And every other member of the congregation, including William, shared the belief that she had got an extraordinary blessing that day.

After all, it is a tremendous blessing to believe that one's G.o.d is within immediate blessing distance. In this connection I venture to add that it has always seemed to me a lack of comprehension which gives the Methodists the chief reputation for emotional religion, and it is certainly cheating the Episcopalians. For every time the service is read in an Episcopal church the congregation shouts the responses, quietly, of course, and by the book, but it is shouting just the same, and with a beseeching use of words both joyful and agonizing that surpa.s.ses any sporadic shouting of the Methodists.

After the sermon we had dinner on the grounds, for this was an all-day meeting with another service at the end of the day. And Sat.u.r.day dinner on the grounds of a Methodist church thirty years ago was a function that appealed to the threefold nature of man as nothing else I have ever seen did. Socially speaking, all the best people in the community were present; the real best people, you understand.

Spiritually, it was an occasion hallowed by grave conversation; for were we not within the shadow of G.o.d's house, in the sacred presence of the dead? It was gruesome if you had an Episcopalian temperament, but certainly it conduced to good breeding and sobriety. But, more particularly, there was the dinner itself set out of huge hampers on white cloths that appealed to the natural primitive man simply and honestly, without a single pretense of delicacy to hide the real grossness of the human appet.i.te.

On this day plenty strewed the ground from Sister Glory White's basket to Sister Amy Jurdon's and Sister Salter's. There were biscuit the size of saucers and of the thickness of bread loaves, hams, baked hens, roasted pigs, more biscuit, cuc.u.mber pickles six inches in length, green-grape pies, custards of every kind and disposition, and cakes that proclaimed the skill of every woman in the church.

William advised me to eat as I had never eaten before or the women would think I did not like their cooking and would be correspondingly offended. I was expected to consume at least three of the great biscuit and everything else in proportion. Fortunately, I sat near a tangle of vines in which I discovered a dog was hiding, a hound who gazed imploringly at me through the leaves with the forlorn, backslidden-sinner expression peculiar to his species, as much as to say: "Don't tell I am here; maybe then I'll get a few crumbs later on."

I not only did not tell, but I fed him eight of the biscuit, five slices of ham, and nearly everything else in reach of me except the cuc.u.mber pickles. I never saw a dog eat more furtively or so well.

Meanwhile, I was raising for myself a monument more enduring than bra.s.s in the hearts of my husband's people, as a hardy woman who could make herself one of them. William, who did not suspect the presence of the dog, grew faintly alarmed, but I persevered till the last man staggered surfeited from the feast. It was my first and, I may add, almost my only triumph as a minister's wife on a backwoods circuit.

After the night service it was arranged that we should go home with the Salters to spend the night. Sister Salter was the woman who had received the blessing. Brother Salter was not a brother at all--he was still in the world, a little, twopenny man with a thin black beard, sad black eyes and a perch mouth. But he was not proud of his G.o.dless state, especially as it compared with his wife's radiant experience; he was literally an humble sinner and showed it. We took our places behind them in split-bottom chairs in the one-horse wagon. Sister Salter was still in her baptismal mood and, as we rumbled on into the deepening twilight through the sweeting spring woods, she continued to sing s.n.a.t.c.hes from the old hymns. Higher and higher her fine treble voice arose till the homing birds answered and every living thing in the forest felt the throb of the poignant melody--everything except the baby on her breast. It slept on as soundly as if it breathed her peace into its soft little body.

Night had fallen when we reached the house, a one-room log cabin.

"Light and go in," said Brother Salter. "I reckon the children air all in bed. You 'uns kin ondress and git in while me and Sally unhitches the horse."

We "lit" and entered the large room flooded with moonshining. There was a bed in each corner, and all occupied save one. This was evidently the "company bed." We knew by its opulent feather paunch, by the white-fringed counterpane and by the pillow-shams bearing soporific mottoes worked in turkey-red thread. One could not tell the age of or how many persons were already asleep in the other beds; but, judging from the number and varying sizes of the shoes that staggered and kicked up on the floor beside them, there must have been a hearty dozen, ranging all the way from adolescence down to infancy.

It is needless to add that we were apparently asleep and the covers over my horrified head when the elder Salters entered. Where they slept is still a mystery. But we were awakened very early the next morning by the sound of Sister Salter's voice singing, "His loving kindness, oh, how good!" as she rattled the stove doors beneath the cookshed in the yard. Three very young children were sitting half under our bed examining our shoes and other articles of apparel, and as many older heads stared at us from the opposite beds. My anguish can be better imagined than described, and the nonchalance with which William arose and a.s.sumed his trousers did not add to my opinion of him. I afterward learned that nothing was more common than this populous way of entertaining guests, and that he had long since become hardened to the indelicacies of such situations.