Around The Tea-Table Part 4

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MIDNIGHT LECTURE.

At eight o'clock precisely, on consecutive nights, we stepped on the rostrum at Chicago, Zanesville. Indianapolis, Detroit, Jacksonville, Cleveland and Buffalo. But it seemed that Dayton was to be a failure. We telegraphed from Indianapolis, "Missed connection. Cannot possibly meet engagement at Dayton." Telegram came back saying, "Take a locomotive and come on!" We could not get a locomotive. Another telegram arrived: "Mr.

Gale, the superintendent of railroad, will send you in an extra train. Go immediately to the depot!" We gathered up our traps from the hotel floor and sofa, and hurled them at the satchel. They would not go in. We put a collar in our hat, and the shaving apparatus in our coat pocket; got on the satchel with both feet, and declared the thing should go shut if it split everything between Indianapolis and Dayton. Arriving at the depot, the train was ready. We had a locomotive and one car. There were six of us on the train--namely, the engineer and stoker on the locomotive; while following were the conductor, a brakeman at each end of the car, and the pastor of a heap of ashes on Schermerhorn street, Brooklyn. "When shall we get to Dayton?" we asked. "Half-past nine o'clock!" responded the conductor. "Absurd!" we said; "no audience will wait till half-past nine at night for a lecturer."

Away we flew. The car, having such a light load, frisked and kicked, and made merry of a journey that to us was becoming very grave. Going round a sharp curve at break-neck speed, we felt inclined to suggest to the conductor that it would make no especial difference if we did not get to Dayton till a quarter to ten. The night was cold, and the hard ground thundered and cracked. The bridges, instead of roaring, as is their wont, had no time to give any more than a grunt as we struck them and pa.s.sed on.

At times it was so rough we were in doubt as to whether we were on the track or taking a short cut across the field to get to our destination a little sooner. The flagmen would hastily open their windows and look at the screeching train. The whistle blew wildly, not so much to give the villages warning as to let them know that something terrible had gone through.

Stopped to take in wood and water. A crusty old man crawled out of a depot, and said to the engineer, "Jim, what on earth is the matter?" "Don't know,"

said Jim; "that fellow in the car yonder is bound to get to Dayton, and we are putting things through." Brakes lifted, bell rung, and off again. Amid the rush and pitch of the train there was no chance to prepare our toilet, and no looking-gla.s.s, and it was quite certain that we would have to step from the train immediately into the lecturing hall. We were unfit to be seen. We were sure our hair was parted in five or six different places, and that the cinders had put our face in mourning, and that something must be done. What time we could spare from holding on to the bouncing seat we gave to our toilet, and the arrangements we made, though far from satisfactory, satisfied our conscience that we had done what we could. A b.u.t.ton broke as we were fastening our collar--indeed, a b.u.t.ton always does break when you are in a hurry and n.o.body to sew it on. "How long before we get there?" we anxiously asked. "I have miscalculated," said the conductor; "we cannot get there till five minutes of ten o'clock." "My dear man," I cried, "you might as well turn round and go back; the audience will be gone long before ten o'clock." "No!" said the conductor; "at the last depot I got a telegram saying they are waiting patiently, and telling us to hurry on." The locomotive seemed to feel it was on the home stretch. At times, what with the whirling smoke and the showering sparks, and the din, and rush, and bang, it seemed as if we were on our last ride, and that the brakes would not fall till we stopped for ever.

At five minutes of ten o'clock we rolled into the Dayton depot, and before the train came to a halt we were in a carriage with the lecturing committee, going at the horse's full run toward the opera house. Without an instant in which to slacken our pulses, the chairman rushed in upon the stage, and introduced the lecturer of the evening. After in the quickest way shedding overcoat and shawl, we confronted the audience, and with our head yet swimming from the motion of the rail-train, we accosted the people--many of whom had been waiting since seven o'clock'--with the words, "Long-suffering but patient ladies and gentlemen, you are the best-natured audience I ever saw." When we concluded what we had to say, it was about midnight, and hence the t.i.tle of this little sketch.

We would have felt it more worthy of the railroad chase if it had been a sermon rather than a lecture. Why do not the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociations of the country intersperse religious discourses with the secular, the secular demanding an admission fee, the religious without money or price? If such a.s.sociations would take as fine a hall, and pay as much for advertising, the audience to hear the sermon would be as large as the audience to hear the lecture. What consecrated minister would not rather tell the story of Christ and heaven free of charge than to get five hundred dollars for a secular address? Wake up, Young Men's Christian a.s.sociations, to your glorious opportunity, it would afford a pleasing change. Let Wendell Phillips give in the course his great lecture on "The Lost Arts;" and A.A. Willitts speak on "Sunshine," himself the best ill.u.s.tration of his subject; and Mr. Milburn, by "What a Blind Man Saw in England," almost prove that eyes are a superfluity; and W.H.H. Murray talk of the "Adirondacks," till you can hear the rifle crack and the fall of the antlers on the rock. But in the very midst of all this have a religious discourse that shall show that holiness is the lost art, and that Christ is the sunshine, and that the gospel helps a blind man to see, and that from Pisgah and Mount Zion there is a better prospect than from the top of fifty Adirondacks.

As for ourselves, save in rare and peculiar circ.u.mstances, good-bye to the lecturing platform, while we try for the rest of our life to imitate the minister who said, "This one thing I do!" There are exhilarations about lecturing that one finds it hard to break from, and many a minister who thought himself reformed of lecturing has, over-tempted, gone up to the American Library or Boston Lyceum Bureau, and drank down raw, a hundred lecturing engagements. Still, a man once in a while finds a new pair of spectacles to look through.

Between Indianapolis and Dayton, on that wild, swift ride, we found a moral which we close with--for the printer-boy with inky fingers is waiting for this paragraph--Never take the last train when you can help it. Much of the trouble in life is caused by the fact that people, in their engagements, wait til' the last minute. The seven-o'clock train will take them to the right place if everything goes straight, but in this world things are very apt to go crooked. So you had better take the train that starts an hour earlier. In everything we undertake let us leave a little margin. We tried, jokingly, to persuade Captain Berry, when off Cape Hatteras, to go down and get his breakfast, while we took his place and watched the course of the steamer. He intimated to us that we were running too near the bar to allow a greenhorn to manage matters just there. There is always danger in sailing near a coast, whether in ship or in plans and morals. Do not calculate too closely on possibilities. Better have room and time to spare. Do not take the last train. Not heeding this counsel makes bad work for this world and the next. There are many lines of communication between earth and heaven.

Men say they can start at any time. After a while, in great excitement, they rush into the depot of mercy and find that the final opportunity has left, and, behold! it is the last train!

CHAPTER XIV.

THE s.e.xTON.

King David, it is evident, once thought something of becoming a church s.e.xton, for he said, "I had rather be a doorkeeper," and so on. But he never carried out the plan, perhaps because he had not the qualification.

It requires more talent in some respects to be s.e.xton than to be king. A s.e.xton, like a poet, is born. A church, in order to peace and success, needs the right kind of man at the prow, and the right kind at the stern--that is, a good minister and a good s.e.xton. So far as we have observed, there are four kinds of janitors.

THE FIDGETY s.e.xTON.

He is never still. His being in any one place proves to him that he ought to be in some other. In the most intense part of the service, every ear alert to the truth, the minister at the very climax of his subject, the fidgety official starts up the aisle. The whole congregation instantly turn from the consideration of judgment and eternity to see what the s.e.xton wants. The minister looks, the elders look, the people in the gallery get up to look. It is left in universal doubt as to why the s.e.xton frisked about at just that moment. He must have seen a fly on the opposite side of the church wall that needed to be driven off before it spoiled the fresco, or he may have suspicion that a rat terrier is in one of the pews by the pulpit, from the fact that he saw two or three children laughing. Now, there is nothing more perplexing than a dog chase during religious services. At a prayer meeting once in my house, a snarling poodle came in, looked around, and then went and sat under the chair of its owner. We had no objection to its being there (dogs should not be shut out from all advantages), but the intruder would not keep quiet. A brother of dolorous whine was engaged in prayer, when poodle evidently thought that the time for response had come, and gave a loud yawn that had no tendency to solemnize the occasion. I resolved to endure it no longer. I started to extirpate the nuisance. I made a fearful pa.s.s of my hand in the direction of the dog, but missed him. A lady arose to give me a better chance at the vile pup, but I discovered that he had changed position. I felt by that time obstinately determined to eject him. He had got under a rocking chair, at a point beyond our reach, unless we got on our knees; and it being a prayer meeting, we felt no inappropriateness in taking that position. Of course the exercise had meanwhile been suspended, and the eyes of all were upon my undertaking. The elders wished me all success in this police duty, but the mischievous lads by the door were hoping for my failure. Knowing this I resolved that if the exercises were never resumed, I would consummate the work and eject the disturber. While in this mood I gave a lunge for the dog, not looking to my feet, and fell over a rocker; but there were sympathetic hands to help me up, and I kept on until by the back of the neck I grasped the grizzly-headed pup, as he commenced kicking, scratching, barking, yelping, howling, and carried him to the door in triumph, and, without any care as to where he landed, hurled him out into the darkness.

Give my love to the s.e.xton, and tell him never to chase a dog in religious service. Better let it alone, though it should, like my friend's poll-parrot, during prayer time, break out with the song, "I would not live alway!" But the fidgety s.e.xton is ever on the chase; his boots are apt to be noisy and say as he goes up the aisle, "Creakety-crack! Here I come.

Creakety-crack!" Why should he come in to call the doctor out of his pew when the case is not urgent? Cannot the patient wait twenty minutes, or is this the cheap way the doctor has of advertising? Dr. Camomile had but three cases in three months, and, strange coincidence, they all came to him at half-past eleven o'clock Sunday morning, while he was in church. If windows are to be lowered, or blinds closed, or register to be shut off, let it be before the sermon.

THE LAZY s.e.xTON.

He does not lead the stranger to the pew, but goes a little way on the aisle, and points, saying, "Out yonder!" You leave the photograph of your back in the dust of the seat you occupy; the air is in an atmospheric hash of what was left over last Sunday. Lack of oxygen will dull the best sermon, and clip the wings of gladdest song, and stupefy an audience.

People go out from the poisoned air of our churches to die of pneumonia.

What a sin, when there is so much fresh air, to let people perish for lack of it! The churches are the worst ventilated buildings on the continent. No amount of grace can make stale air sacred. "The prince of the power of the air" wants nothing but poisoned air for the churches. After audiences have a.s.sembled, and their cheeks are flushed, and their respiration has become painful, it is too late to change it. Open a window or door now, and you ventilate only the top of that man's bald head, and the back of the neck of that delicate woman, and you send off hundreds of people coughing and sneezing. One reason why the Sabbaths are so wide apart is that every church building may have six days of atmospheric purification. The best man's breath once ejected is not worth keeping. Our congregations are dying of asphyxia. In the name of all the best interests of the church, I indict one-half the s.e.xtons.

THE GOOD s.e.xTON.

He is the minister's blessing, the church's joy, a harbinger of the millennium. People come to church to have him help them up the aisle. He wears slippers. He stands or sits at the end of the church during an impressive discourse, and feels that, though he did not furnish the ideas, he at least furnished the wind necessary in preaching it. He has a quick nostril to detect unconsecrated odors, and puts the man who eats garlic on the back seat in the corner. He does not regulate the heat by a broken thermometer, minus the mercury. He has the window blinds arranged just right--the light not too glaring so as to show the freckles, nor too dark so as to cast a gloom, but a subdued light that makes the plainest face attractive. He rings the bell merrily for Christmas festival, and tolls it sadly for the departed. He has real pity for the bereaved in whose house he goes for the purpose of burying their dead--not giving by cold, professional manner the impression that his sympathy for the troubled is overpowered by the joy that he has in selling another coffin. He forgets not his own soul; and though his place is to stand at the door of the ark, it is surely inside of it. After a while, a Sabbath comes when everything is wrong in church: the air is impure, the furnaces fail in their work, and the eyes of the people are blinded with an unpleasant glare. Everybody asks, "Where is our old s.e.xton?" Alas! he will never come again. He has gone to join Obededom and Berechiah, the doorkeepers of the ancient ark. He will never again take the dusting; whisk from the closet under the church stairs, for it is now with him "Dust to dust." The bell he so often rang takes up its saddest tolling for him who used to pull it, and the minister goes into his disordered and unswept pulpit, and finds the Bible upside down as he takes it up to read his text in Psalms, 84th chapter and 10th verse: "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my G.o.d than to dwell in the tents of wickedness!"

CHAPTER XV.

THE OLD CRADLE.

The historic and old-time cradle is dead, and buried in the rubbish of the garret. A baby of five months, filled with modern notions, would spurn to be rocked in the awkward and rustic thing. The baby spits the "Alexandra feeding-bottle" out of its mouth, and protests against the old-fashioned cradle, giving emphasis to its utterances by throwing down a rattle that cost seven dollars, and kicking off a shoe imported at fabulous expense, and upsetting the "baby-basket," with all its treasures of ivory hair brushes and "Meen Fun." Not with voice, but by violence of gesture and kicks and squirms, it says: "What! You going to put me in that old cradle?

Where is the nurse? My patience! What does mother mean? Get me a 'patented self-rocker!'"

The parents yield. In comes the new-fangled crib. The machine is wound up, the baby put in, the crib set in motion, and mother goes off to make a first-rate speech at the "Woman's Rights Convention!"

Conundrum: Why is a maternal elocutionist of this sort like a mother of old time, who trained four sons for the holy ministry, and through them was the means of reforming and saving a thousand souls, and through that thousand of saving ten thousand more? You answer: "No resemblance at all!" You are right. Guessed the conundrum the first time. Go up to the head of the cla.s.s!

Now, the "patented self-rockers," no doubt, have their proper use; but go up with me into the garret of your old homestead, and exhume the cradle that you, a good while ago, slept in. The rockers are somewhat rough, as though a farmer's plane had fashioned them, and the sides just high enough for a child to learn to walk by. What a homely thing, take it all in all!

You say: Stop your depreciation! We were all rocked in that. For about fifteen years that cradle was going much of the time. When the older child was taken out, a smaller child was put in. The crackle of the rockers is pleasant yet in my ears. There I took my first lessons in music as mother sang to me. Have heard what you would call far better singing since then, but none that so thoroughly touched me. She never got five hundred dollars per night for singing three songs at the Academy, with two or three encores grudgefully thrown in; but without pay she sometimes sang all night, and came out whenever encored, though she had only two little ears for an audience. It was a low, subdued tone that sings to me yet across thirty-five years.

You see the edge of that rocker worn quite deep? That is where her foot was placed while she sat with her knitting or sewing, on summer afternoons, while the bees hummed at the door and the shout of the boy at the oxen was heard afield. From the way the rocker is worn, I think that sometimes the foot must have been very tired and the ankle very sore; but I do not think she stopped for that. When such a cradle as that got a-going, it kept on for years.

Scarlet-fever came in the door, and we all had it; and oh, how the cradle did go! We contended as to who should lie in it, for sickness, you know, makes babies of us all. But after a while we surrendered it to Charlie. He was too old to lie in it, but he seemed so very, very sick; and with him in the cradle it was "Rock!" "Rock!" "Rock!" But one day, just as long ago as you can remember, the cradle stopped. When a child is asleep, there is no need of rocking. Charlie was asleep. He was sound asleep. Nothing would wake him. He needed taking up. Mother was too weak to do it. The neighbors came in to do that, and put a flower, fresh out of the garden-dew, between the two still hands. The fever had gone out of the cheek, and left it white, very white--the rose exchanged for the lily. There was one less to contend for the cradle. It soon started again, and with a voice not quite so firm as before, but more tender, the old song came back: "Bye! bye!

bye!" which meant more to you than "Il Trovatore," rendered by opera troupe in the presence of an American audience, all leaning forward and nodding to show how well they understood Italian.

There was a wooden canopy at the head of the old cradle that somehow got loose and was taken off. But your infantile mind was most impressed with the face which much of the time hovered over you. Other women sometimes looked in at the child, and said: "That child's hair will be red!" or, "What a peculiar chin!" or, "Do you think that child will live to grow up?"

and although you were not old enough to understand their talk, by instinct you knew it was something disagreeable, and began to cry till the dear, sweet, familiar face again hovered and the rainbow arched the sky. Oh, we never get away from the benediction of such a face! It looks at us through storm and night. It smiles all to pieces the world's frown. After thirty-five years of rough, tumbling on the world's couch, it puts us in the cradle again, and hushes us as with the very lullaby of heaven.

Let the old cradle rest in the garret. It has earned its quiet. The hands that shook up its pillow have quit work. The foot that kept the rocker in motion is through with its journey. The face that hovered has been veiled from mortal sight. Cradle of blessed memories! Cradle that soothed so many little griefs! Cradle that kindled so many hopes! Cradle that rested so many fatigues! Sleep now thyself, after so many years of putting others to sleep!

One of the great wants of the age is the right kind of a cradle and the right kind of a foot to rock it. We are opposed to the usurpation of "patented self-rockers." When I hear a boy calling his grandfather "old daddy," and see the youngster whacking his mother across the face because she will not let him have ice-cream and lemonade in the same stomach, and at some refusal holding his breath till he gets black in the face, so that to save the child from fits the mother is compelled to give him another dumpling, and he afterward goes out into the world stubborn, willful, selfish and intractable,--I say that boy was brought up in a "patented self-rocker." The old-time mother would have put him down in the old-fashioned cradle, and sung to him,

"Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed;"

and if that did not take the s.p.u.n.k put of him would have laid him in an inverted position across her lap, with his face downward, and with a rousing spank made him more susceptible to the music.

When a mother, who ought to be most interested in training her children for usefulness and heaven, gives her chief time to fixing up her back hair, and is worried to death because the curls she bought are not of the same shade as the spa.r.s.ely-settled locks of her own raising; and culturing the dromedarian hump of dry-goods on her back till, as she comes into church, a good old elder bursts into laughter behind his pocket-handkerchief, making the merriment sound as much like a sneeze as possible; her waking moments employed with discussions about polonaise, and vert-de-gris velvets, and ecru percale, and fringed guipure, and poufs, and sashes, and rose-de-chene silks, and scalloped flounces; her happiness in being admired at b.a.l.l.s and parties and receptions,--you may know that she has thrown off the care of her children, that they are looking after themselves, that they are being brought up by machinery instead of loving hands--in a word, that there is in her home a "patented self-rocker!"

So far as possible, let all women dress beautifully: so G.o.d dresses the meadows and the mountains. Let them wear pearls and diamonds if they can afford it: G.o.d has hung round the neck of his world strings of diamonds, and braided the black locks of the storm with bright ribbons of rainbow.

Especially before and right after breakfast, ere they expect to be seen of the world, let them look neat and attractive for the family's sake. One of the most hideous sights is a slovenly woman at the breakfast table. Let woman adorn herself. Let her speak on platforms so far as she may have time and ability to do so. But let not mothers imagine that there is any new way of successfully training children, or of escaping the old-time self-denial and continuous painstaking.

Let this be the commencement of the law suit:

OLD CRADLE versus PATENTED SELF-ROCKER.

Attorneys for plaintiff--all the cherished memories of the past.