Around The Tea-Table Part 6

My wife, seated beside me, did not like the music. But I said: "What beautiful sentiment! My dear, it is a pastoral. You might have known that from 'Wo-haw-gee!' You have had your taste ruined by attending the Brooklyn Tabernacle." The choir repeated the last line of the hymn four times. Then the prima donna leaped on to the first line, and slipped, and fell on to the second, and that broke and let her through into the third. The other voices came in to pick her up, and got into a grand wrangle, and the ba.s.s and the soprano had it for about ten seconds; but the soprano beat (women always do), and the ba.s.s rolled down into the cellar, and the soprano went up into the garret, but the latter kept on squalling as though the ba.s.s, in leaving her, had wickedly torn out all her back hair. I felt anxious about the soprano, and looked back to see if she had fainted; but found her reclining in the arms of a young man who looked strong enough to take care of her.

Now, I admit that we cannot all have such things in our churches. It costs like sixty. In the Church of the Holy Bankak it coats one hundred dollars to have sung that communion, piece:

"Ye wretched, hungry, starving poor!"

But let us come as near to it as we can. The tune "Pisgah" has been standing long enough on "Jordan's stormy banks." Let it pa.s.s over and get out of the wet weather. Good-bye, "Antioch," "Harwell" and "Boylston."

Good-bye till we meet in glory.

But if the prescription of new tunes does not end congregational singing, I have another suggestion. Get an irreligious choir, and put them in a high balcony back of the congregation. I know choirs who are made up chiefly of religious people, or those, at least, respectful for sacred things. That will never do, if you want to kill the music. The theatrical troupe are not busy elsewhere on Sabbath, and you can get them at half price to sing the praises of the Lord. Meet them in the green room at the close of the "Black Crook" and secure them. They will come to church with opera-gla.s.ses, which will bring the minister so near to them they can, from their high perch, look clear down his throat and see his sermon before it is delivered. They will make excellent poetry on Deacon Goodsoul as he carries around the missionary box. They will write dear little notes to Gonzaldo, asking him how his cold is and how he likes gum-drops. Without interfering with the worship below, they can discuss the comparative fashionableness of the "basque" and the "polonaise," the one lady vowing she thinks the first style is "horrid," and the other saying she would rather die than be seen in the latter; all this while the chorister is gone out during sermon to refresh himself with a mint-julep, hastening back in time to sing the last hymn. How much like heaven it will be when, at the close of a solemn service, we are favored with s.n.a.t.c.hes from Verdi's "Trovatore,"

Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" and Bellini's "Sonnambula," from such artists as

Mademoiselle Squintelle, Prima Donna Soprano, from Grand Opera House, Paris.

Signor Bombastani, Ba.s.so Buffo, from Royal Italian Opera.

Carl Schneiderine, First Baritone, of His Majesty's Theatre, Berlin.

If after three months of taking these two prescriptions the congregational singing is not thoroughly dead, send me a letter directed to my name, with the t.i.tle of O.F.M. (Old Fogy in Music), and I will, on the receipt thereof, write Another prescription, which I am sure will kill it dead as a door nail, and that is the deadest thing in all history.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BATTLE OF PEW AND PULPIT.

Two more sermons unloaded, and Monday morning I went sauntering down town, ready for almost anything. I met several of my clerical friends going to a ministers' meeting. I do not often go there, for I have found that some of the clerical meetings are gridirons where they roast clergymen who do not do things just as we do them. I like a Presbyterian gridiron no better than a Methodist one, and prefer to either of them an old-fashioned spit, such as I saw one summer in Oxford, England, where the rabbit is kept turning round before a slow fire, in blessed state of itinerancy, the rabbit thinking he is merely taking a ride, while he is actually roasting.

As on the Monday morning I spoke of I was pa.s.sing down the street, I heard high words in a church. What could it be? Was it the minister, and the s.e.xton, and the trustees fighting? I went in to see, when, lo! I found that the Pew and the Pulpit were bantering each other at a great rate, and seemed determined to tell each one the other's faults. I stood still as a mouse that I might hear all that was said, and my presence not be noticed.

The Pew was speaking as I went in, and said to the Pulpit, in anything but a reverential tone: "Why don't you speak out on other days as well as you do to-day? The fact is, I never knew a Pulpit that could not be heard when it was thoroughly mad. But when you give out the hymn on Sabbaths, I cannot tell whether it is the seventieth or the hundredth. When you read the chapter, you are half through with it before I know whether it is Exodus or Deuteronomy. Why do you begin your sermon in so low a key? If the introduction is not worth hearing, it is not worth delivering. Are you explaining the text? If so, the Lord's meaning is as important as anything you will have in your sermon. Throw back your shoulders, open your mouth!

Make your voice strike against the opposite wall! Pray not only for a clean heart, but for stout lungs. I have nearly worn out my ears trying to catch your utterances. When a captain on a battlefield gives an order, the company all hear; and if you want to be an officer in the Lord's army, do not mumble your words. The elocution of Christ's sermon is described when we are told he opened his mouth and taught them--that is, spoke distinctly, as those cannot who keep their lips half closed. Do you think it a sign of modesty to speak so low? I think the most presuming thing on earth for a Pulpit to do is to demand that an audience sit quiet when they cannot hear, simply looking. The handsomest minister I ever saw is not worth looking at for an hour and a half at a stretch. The truth is that I have often been so provoked with your inarticulate speech, that I would have got up and left the church, had it not been for the fact that I am nailed fast, and my appearance on the outside on a Sabbath-day, walking up and down, would have brought around me a crowd of unsanctified boys to gaze at me, a poor church pew on its travels."

The Pulpit responded in anything but a pious tone: "The reason you do not hear is that your mind on Sundays is full of everything but the gospel. You work so hard during the week that you rob the Lord of his twenty-four hours. The man who works on Sunday as well as the rest of the week is no worse than you who abstain on that day, because your excessive devotion to business during the week kills your Sunday; and a dead Sunday is no Sunday at all. You throw yourself into church as much as to say, 'Here, Lord, I am too tired to work any more for myself; you can have the use of me while I am resting!' Besides that, O Pew! you have a miserable habit. Even when you can hear my voice on the Sabbath and are wide awake, you have a way of putting your head down or shutting your eyes, and looking as if your soul had vacated the premises for six weeks. You are one of those hearers who think it is pious to look dull; and you think that the Pew on the other side the aisle is an old sinner because he hunches the Pew behind him, and smiles when the truth hits the mark. If you want me to speak out, it is your duty not only to be wide awake, but to look so. Give us the benefit of your two eyes. There is one of the elders whose eyes I have never caught while speaking, save once, and that was when I was preaching from Psalm cxiii. 12, 'They compa.s.sed me about like bees,' and by a strange coincidence a b.u.mble-bee got into church, and I had my attention divided between my text and the annoying insect, which flew about like an ill.u.s.tration I could not catch. A dull Pew is often responsible for a dull Pulpit. Do not put your head down on the back of the seat in front, pretending you are very much affected with the sermon, for we all know you are napping."

The Pew: "If you want me to be alert, give me something fresh and startling. Your sermons all sound alike. It don't make any difference where you throw the net, you never fish up anything but moss-bunkers. You are always talking about stale things. Why don't you give us a touch, of learned discussion, such as the people hear every Sunday in the church of Reverend Doctor Heavyasbricks, when, with one eye on heaven and the other on the old man in the gallery, he speaks of the Tridentine theory of original sin, and Patristic Soteriology, Mediaeval Trinitarianism, and Antiochian Anthropology? Why do you not give us some uncommon words, and instead of 'looking back upon your subject,' sometimes 'recapitulate,' and instead of talking about a man's 'peculiarities,' mention his 'idiot-sin-crasies,' and describe the hair as the capillary adornment; and instead of speaking of a thing as tied together, say it was 'inosculated.'"

The Pulpit: "You keep me so poor I cannot buy the books necessary to keep me fresh. After the babies are clothed, and the table is provided for, and the wardrobe supplied, my purse is empty, and you know the best carpenter cannot make good shingles without tools. Better pay up your back salary instead of sitting there howling at me. You eased your conscience by subscribing for the support of the gospel, but the Lord makes no record of what a man subscribes; he waits to see whether he pays. The poor widow with the two mites is applauded in Scripture because she paid cash down. I have always noticed that you Pews make a big noise about Pulpit deficiencies, just in proportion to the little you do. The fifty cents you pay is only premium on your policy of five dollars' worth of grumbling. O critical Pew!

you had better scour the bra.s.s number on your own door before you begin to polish the silver k.n.o.b on mine."

The Pew: "I think it is time for you to go away. I am glad that conference is coming. I shall see the bishop, and have you removed to some other part of the Lord's vineyard. You are too plain a Pulpit for such an elegant Pew. Just look at your big hands and feet. We want a spiritual guide whose fingers taper to a fine point, and one who could wear, if need be, a lady's shoe. Get out, with your great paws and clodhoppers! We want in this church a Pulpit that will talk about heaven, and make no allusion to the other place. I have a highly educated nose, and can stand the smell of garlic and a.s.safoetida better than brimstone. We want an oleaginous minister, commonly called oily. We want him distinguished for his unctuosity. We want an ecclesiastical scent-bag, or, as you might call him, a heavenly nosegay, perfect in every respect, his ordinary sneeze as good as a doxology. If he cry during some emotional part of his discourse, let it not be an old-fashioned cry, with big hands or coat sleeve sopping up the tears, but let there be just two elegant tears, one from each eye, rolling down parallel into a pocket-handkerchief richly embroidered by the sewing society, and inscribed with the names of all the young ladies' Bible cla.s.s.

If he kneel before sermon, let it not be a coming down like a soul in want, but on one knee, so artistically done that the foot shall show the twelve-dollar patent leather shoe, while the aforesaid pocket-handkerchief is just peeping from the coat pocket, to see if the ladies who made it are all there--the whole scene a religious tableau. We want a Pulpit that will not get us into a tearing-down revival, where the people go shouting and twisting about, regardless of carpets and fine effects, but a revival that shall be born in a band-box, and wrapped in ruffles, and lie on a church rug, so still that n.o.body will know it is there. If we could have such a Pulpit as that, all my fellow-Pews would join me, and we would give it a handsome support; yes, we would pay him; if we got just what we want, we could afford to give, in case he were thoroughly eloquent, Demosthenic and bewitching--I am quite certain we could, although I should not want myself to be held responsible; yes, he should have eight hundred dollars a year, and that is seven hundred and sixty dollars more than Milton got for his 'Paradise Lost,' about which one of his learned contemporaries wrote: 'The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the fall of man; if its length be not considered a merit, it has no other.'

Nothing spoils ministers like too big a salary. Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked; if it had not been for the wax and the fat, he would not have kicked. Sirloin steaks and mince pies are too rich for ministers. Put these men down on catfish and flounders, as were the fishermen apostles. Too much oats makes horses frisky, and a minister high-fed is sure to get his foot over the shaft. If we want to keep our pulpits spiritual, we must keep them poor. Blessed are the poor!"

"Stop! stop!" cried the Pulpit; and it seemed to rise higher than before, and to tremble from head to foot with excitement, and the banisters to twist as if to fly in indignation at the Pew, and the plush on the book-board to look red as fire; and seeing there was going to be a collision between Pulpit and Pew, I ran up the aisle and got between them (they were wide enough apart to allow me to get in), and I cried, "Silence!

This is great talk for a church. Pulpits ought not to scold, and Pews ought not to grumble. As far as I can see, you are both to blame. Better shake hands and pray for a better spirit. It wants more than a bishop to settle this difficulty. The Lord Almighty alone can make Pulpit and Pew what they ought to be. You both need to be baptized over again!" Then, taking up a silver bowl that stood on the communion table, half full of the water yesterday used at a babe's christening, I stood between the belligerents, and sprinkled Pew and Pulpit with a Christian baptism, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And when I got through, I could not tell whether Pew or Pulpit said Amen the louder.

CHAPTER XX.

THE DEVIL'S GRIST-MILL.

The above name has been given to one of the geysers of California, that group of boiling springs, now famous. Indeed, the whole region has been baptized with Satanic nomenclature.

The guide showed us what he called the "Devil's Mush-pot," the "Devil's Pulpit," the "Devil's Machine Shop," and, hearing a shrill whistle in the distance, we were informed it was the "Devil's Tea-kettle." Seeing some black water rushing from a fountain, from which the people of the neighborhood and tourists dip up genuine ink, we were told it was the "Devil's Ink-stand." Indeed, you are prepared for this on the Pacific Railroad, as your guide book points you to the "Devil's Gate," and the "Devil's Slide," and the "Devil's Peak."

We protest against this surrender of all the geysers to the arch demon. All the writers talk of the place as infernal. We do not believe this place so near to h.e.l.l as to heaven. We doubt if Satan ever comes here. He knows enough of hot climates, by experience, to fly from the hiss of these subterraneous furnaces. Standing amid the roaring, thundering, stupendous wonder of two hundred spouting water springs, we felt like crying out, "Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord G.o.d almighty!"

Let all the chemists and geologists of the world come and see the footstep of G.o.d in crystals of alum and sulphur and salt. Here is the chemist's shop of the continent. Enough black indelible ink rushes out of this well, with terrific plash, to supply all the scribes of the world. There are infinite fortunes for those who will delve for the borax, nitric and sulphuric acid, soda, magnesia and other valuables. Enough sulphur here to purify the blood of the race, or in gunpowder to kill it; enough salt to savor all the vegetables of the world. Its acid water, which waits only for a little sugar to make it delicious lemonade, may yet be found in all the drug stores of the country. The water in one place roars like a steamboat discharging its steam. Your boots curl with the heat as you stand on the hot rocks, looking. Almost anywhere a thrust of your cane will evoke a gush of steam. Our thermometer, plunged into one spring, answered one hundred and seventy-five degrees of heat. Thrust in the "Witch's Caldron," it a.s.serted two hundred and fifteen degrees. "The Ink-stand" declared itself two hundred degrees. An artificial whistle placed at the mouth of one of these geysers may be heard miles away. You get a hot bath without paying for it. The guide warns you off the crust in certain places, lest you at the same moment be drowned and boiled. Here an egg cooks hard in three minutes.

The whole scene is unique and incomparable. The Yosemite makes us think of the Alps; San Francisco reminds us of Chicago; Foss, the stage driver, hurling his pa.s.sengers down the mountain at break-neck speed, suggests the driver of an Alpine diligence; Hutchings' mountain horse, that stumbled and fell flat upon us, suggested our mule-back experiences in Tete Noir Pa.s.s of Switzerland; but the geysers remind us of nothing that we ever saw, or ever expect to see. They have a voice, a bubble, a smoke, a death-rattle, peculiar to themselves. No photographist can picture them, no words describe them, no fancy sketch them.

You may visit them by either of two routes; but do not take the advice of Foss, the celebrated stage driver. You ought to go by one route, and return the other; yet Foss has made thousands of travelers believe that the only safe and interesting way to return is the way they go--namely, by his route. They who take his counsel miss some of the grandest scenery on the continent. Any stage driver who by his misrepresentations would shut a tourist out of the entrancing beauties of the "Russian Valley" ought to be thrashed with his own raw-hide. We heard Foss bamboozling a group of travelers with the idea that on the other route the roads were dangerous, the horses poor, the accommodations wretched and the scenery worthless. We came up in time to combat the statement with our own happy experiences of the Russian Valley, and to save his pa.s.sengers from the oft-repeated imposition.

And thus I have suggested the chief annoyance of California travel. The rivalries of travel are so great that it is almost impossible to get accurate information. The stage drivers, guides and hotel proprietors, for the most part, are financially interested in different routes. Going to Yosemite Valley by the "Calaveras route," from the office in San Francisco where you buy your ticket to the end of your journey, everybody a.s.sures you that J.M. Hutchings, one of the hotel keepers of Yosemite, is a scholar, a poet, a gentleman and a Christian, and that to him all the world is indebted for the opening of the valley. But if you go in by the "Mariposa route," then from the office where you get your ticket, along by all the way stations and through the mountain pa.s.ses, you are a.s.sured that Mr.

Liedig, the hotel keeper of Yosemite, is the poet and Christian, and that J.M. Hutchings aforesaid is a n.o.body, a blower, a dead beat, the chief impediment to the interests of Yosemite--or, to use a generic term, a scalawag.

The fact is that no one can afford in California to take the same route twice, for each one has a glory of its own. If a traveler have but one day for the Louvre Gallery, he cannot afford to spend it all in one corridor; and as California is one great picture gallery, filled with the masterpieces of Him who paints with sunshine and dew and fire, and sculptures with chisel of hurricane and thunderbolt, we cannot afford to pa.s.s more than once before any canvas or marble.

But whatever route you choose for the "Hot Springs," and whatever pack of stage driver yarns you accept, know this--that in all this matchless California, with climate of perpetual summer, the sky cloudless and the wind blowing six months from the genial west; the open field a safe threshing floor for the grandest wheat harvests of the world; nectarines and pomegranates and pears in abundance that perish for lack of enough hands to pick; by a product in one year of six million five hundred thousand gallons of wine proving itself the vineyard of this hemisphere; African callas, and wild verbenas, and groves of oleander and nutmeg; the hills red with five thousand cattle in a herd, and white with a hundred and fifty thousand sheep in a flock; the neighboring islands covered with wild birds' eggs, that enrich the markets, or sounding with the constant "yoi-hoi," "yoi-hoi," of the sea-lions that tumble over them; a State that might be called the "Central Park" of the world; the gulches of gold pouring more than fifty million of dollars a year into the national lap; lofty lakes, like Tahoe, set crystalline in the crown of the mountain; waterfalls so weird that you do not wonder that the Indians think that whosoever points his finger at them must die, and in one place the water plunging from a height more than sixteen times greater than Niagara,--even in such a country of marvels as this, there is nothing that makes you ask more questions, or bow in profounder awe, or come away with more interesting reminiscences than the world renowned California geysers.

There is a bang at your bed-room door at five-o'clock in the morning, rousing you to go up and explore them; and after spending an hour or two in wandering among them, you come back to the breakfast prepared by the model landlord of California, jolly, obliging, intelligent, reasonable. As you mount the stage for departure you give him a warm shake of the hand, and suggest that it would be a grand thing if some one with a vein of poetry in his mind and the faith of G.o.d in his heart would come round some day, and pa.s.sing among the geysers with a sprinkle of hot steam, would baptize them with a Christian name.

Let us ascribe to Satan nothing that is grand, or creative, or wise. He could not make one of these grains of alum. He could not blow up one of these bubbles on the spring. He does some things that seem smart; but taking him all in all, he is the biggest fool in the universe.

If the devil wants to boil his "Tea-kettle," or stir his "Mush-pot," or whirl his "Grist-mill," let him do it in his own territory. Meanwhile, let the water and the fire and the vapor, at the lift of David's orchestral baton, praise the Lord!

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CONDUCTOR'S DREAM.

He had been on the train all day, had met all kinds of people, received all sorts of treatment, punctured all kinds of tickets, shouted "All out!" and "All aboard!" till throat, and head, and hand, and foot were weary. It would be a long while before we would get to another depot, and so he sagged down in the corner of the car to sleep. He was in the most uncomfortable position possible. The wind blew in his neck, his arm was hung over the back of the seat, he had one foot under him, and his knee pressing hard against a bra.s.s hinge. In that twisted and convoluted position he fell asleep, and soon began to dream.

It seemed to him, in his sleep, that the car was full of disagreeables.

Here was a man who persisted in having a window up, while the rain and sleet drove in. There was a man who occupied the whole seat, and let the ladies stand. Here sat a man smoking three poor cigars at once, and expectorating into the beaver hat of the gentleman in front. Yonder was a burglar on his way to jail, and opposite a murderer going to the gallows.

He thought that pickpockets took his watch and ruffians refused to pay their fare. A woman traveling alone shot at him a volley of questions: "Say, conductor, how long before we will get to the Junction?" "Are you sure we have not pa.s.sed it?" "Do you always stop there?" "What time is it?"

Madam, do keep quiet! "None of your impudence!" "How far from here to the Junction?" "Do you think that other train will wait?" "Do you think we will get there in time?" "Say, conductor, how many miles yet?" "Are you looking out?" "Now, you won't let me go past, will you?" "Here! conductor, here! Help me out with my carpet bag, and band-box, and shawl, and umbrella, and this bundle of sausage and head-cheese." What was worse, the train got going one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and pulling the connecting rope, it broke, and the cars got off the track, and leaped on again, and the stove changed places with the wood box, and things seemed going to terrible split and unmitigated smash. The cities flew past. The brakes were powerless. The whistle grew into a fiend's shriek. Then the train began to slow up, and sheeted ghosts swung lanterns along the track, and the cars rolled into a white depot, which turned out to be a great marble tomb; and looking back to see his pa.s.sengers, they were all stark dead, frozen in upright horror to the car backs.

Hearing by the man's snore, and seeing by his painful look, he was having an awful dream, we tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Conductor! Turn over that seat, and take my shawl, and stretch yourself out, and have a comfortable nap." "Thank you, sir," he said, and immediately sprawled himself out in the easiest way possible. He began his slumbers just as an express train glides gracefully out of Pittsburg depot; then went at it more earnestly, lifted all the brakes, put on all the steam, and in five minutes was under splendid headway. He began a second dream, but it was the opposite of the first. He thought that he had just stepped on the platform of his car, and a lady handed him a bouquet fresh from the hot house. A long line of railroad presidents and superintendents had come to the depot to see him off, and tipped their hats as he glided out into the open air.

The car was an improvement on Pullman's best. Three golden goblets stood at the end, and every time he turned the spigot of the water cask, it foamed soda-water--vanilla if you turned it one way, strawberry if you turned it the other. The spittoon was solid silver, and had never been used but once, when a child threw into it an orange peeling. The car was filled with lords and d.u.c.h.esses, who rose and bowed as he pa.s.sed through to collect the fare.

They all insisted on paying twice as much as was demanded, telling him to give half to the company and keep the rest for himself. Stopped a few minutes at Jolly Town, Gleeville and Velvet Junction, making connection with the Grand Trunk and Pan-Handle route for Paradise. But when the train halted there was no jolt, and when it started there was no jerk. The track was always clear, no freight train in the way, no snow bank to be shoveled--train always on time. Banks of roses on either side, bridges with piers of bronze, and flagmen clad in cloth-of-gold. The train went three hundred miles the hour, but without any risk, for all the pa.s.sengers were insured against accident in a company that was willing to pay four times the price of what any neck was worth. The steam whistle breathed as sweetly as any church choir chanting its opening piece. n.o.body asked the conductor to see his time-table, for the only dread any pa.s.senger had was that of coming to the end of its journey.