Samantha at the World's Fair Part 17

"See the Sabbath labor it will cause, the great expenditure of strength and labor, to have all them stupendious buildin's open on the Sabbath.

The onseemly and deafnin' noise and clatter of the machinery, and the toil of the men that it will take to run and take care of all the departments, and the labor of the poor men who will have to carry guests back and forth all day."

"I d'no," sez Arville, "whether it will take so much more work or not; it is most of it run by water-power and electricity, and water keeps on a-runnin' all day Sunday as well as week days.

"Your mill-dam don't stop, Miss Cork, because it is Sunday."

Miss Cork's house stands right by the dam, and you can't hear yourself speak there hardly, so it wuz what you might expect, to have her object specially to noise.

Miss Cork kinder tosted her head and drawed down her upper lip in a real contemptious way, and Arvilly went on and resoomed:

"And electricity keeps on somewhere a-actin' and behavin'; it don't stop Sundays. I have seen worse thunder-storms Sundays, it does seem to me, than I ever see week days. And when old Mom Nater sets such a show a-goin' Sundays, you have got to tend it, whether you think it is wicked or not.

"And as for the work of carryin' folks back and forth to it, meetin'-housen have to run by work--hard work, too. Preachin', and singin', and ringin' bells, and openin' doors, and lightin' gas, and usherin' folks in, and etc., etc., etc.

"And horse-cars and steam-cars have to run to and frow; conductors, and brakemen, and firemen, and engineers, and etc., etc.

"And horses have to be harnessed and worked hard, and coachmen, and drivers, and men and wimmen have to work hard Sundays. Yes, indeed.

"Now, my sister-in-law, Jane Lanfear, works harder Sundays than any day out of the seven. They take a place with thirty cows on it, and she and Jim, bein' ambitious, do almost all the work themselves.

"Every Sunday mornin' Jane gets up, and she and Jim goes out and milks fifteen cows apiece, and then Jim drives them off to pasture and comes back and harnesses up and carries the milk three miles to a cheese factory, and comes back and does the other out-door ch.o.r.es.

"And Jane gets breakfast, and gets up the three little children, and washes 'em and dresses 'em, and feeds the little ones to the table. And after breakfast she does up all her work, washes her dishes and the immense milk-cans, sweeps, cleans lamps and stoves, makes beds, etcetry, and feeds the chickens, and ducks, and turkeys. And by that time it is nine o'clock. Then she hurries round and washes and combs the three children, curls the hair of the twin girls, and then gets herself into her best clothes, and by that time she is so beat out that she is ready to drop down.

"But she don't; she lifts the children into the democrat, climbs her own weary form in after 'em, and takes the youngest one in her lap. And Jim, havin' by this time got through with his work and toiled into his best suit, they drive off, a colt follerin' 'em, and Jim havin' to get out more'n a dozen times to head it right, and makin' Jane wild with anxiety, for it is a likely colt.

"Wall, they go four milds and a half to the meetin'-house--there hain't no Free-well Baptist nearer to 'em, and they are strong in the belief, and awful sot on that's bein' the only right way. So they go to cla.s.s-meetin' first, and both talk for quite a length of time; they are quite gifted, and are called so. And then they set up straight through the sermon, and that Free-well Baptist preaches more'n a hour, hot or cold weather, and then they both teach a large cla.s.s of children, and what with takin' care of the three restless children, and their own weariness on the start, they are both beat out before they start for home. And Jane has a blindin' headache.

"But she must keep up, for she has got to git the three babies home safe, and then there is dinner to get, and the dishes to wash, and the housework, and the out-door work to tend to, and what with her headache, and her tired-out nerves and body, and the work and care of the babies, Jane is cross as a bear--snaps everybody up, sets a bad pattern before her children and Jim--and, in fact, don't get over it and hain't good for anything before the middle of the week.

"The day of rest is the hardest day of the week for her.

"But she told me last night--she come in to get my bask pattern, she is anxious to get her parmetty dress done for the World's Fair--but she said that she shouldn't go if it wuz open Sunday, for her mind wuz so sot on havin' the Sabbath kep strict as a day of rest.

"Now I believe in goin' to meetin' as much as anybody, and always have been regular. But I say Jane hain't consistent." (They don't agree.)

Arvilly stopped here a minute for needed breath. Good land! I should have thought she would; and Lophemia Pegrum spoke up--she is a dretful pretty girl, but very sentimental and romantic, and talks out of poetry books. Sez she:

"Another thought: Nature works all the Sabbath day. Flowers bloom, their sweet perfume wafts abroad, bees gather the honey from their fragrant blossoms, the dews fall, the clouds sail on, the sun lights and warms the World, the gra.s.s grows, the grain ripens, the fruit gathers the sunshine in its golden and rosy globes, the birds sing, the trees rustle, the wind blows, the stars rise and set, the tide comes in and goes out, the waves wash the beach, and carries the great ships to their havens--in fact, Nature keeps her World's Fair open every day of the week just alike."

"Yes," sez Miss Eben Sanders--she is always on the side of the last speaker--she hain't to be depended on, in argument. But she speaks quite well, and is a middlin' good woman, and kind-hearted. Sez she--

"Look at the poor people who work hard all the week and who can't spend the time week days to go to this immense educational school.

"Them who have to work hard and steady every working day to keep bread in the hands of their families, to keep starvation away from themselves and children--clerks, seamstresses, mechanics, milliners, typewriters, workers in factories, and shops, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

"Children of toil, who bend their weary frames over their toilsome, oncongenial labor all the week, with the wolves of Cold and Hunger a-prowlin' round 'em, ready to devour them and their children if they stop their labor for one day out of the six--

"Think what it would be for these tired-out, beauty-starved white slaves to have one day out of the seven to feast their eyes and their hungry souls on the _best_ of the World.

"What an outlook it would give their work-blinded eyes! What a blessed change it would make in all their dull, narrow, cramped lives! While their hands wuz full of work, their quickened fancy would live over again the too brief hours they spent in communion with the World's best--the gathered beauty and greatness and glory of the earth. Whatever their toil and weariness, they _had_ lived for a few hours, their eyes _had_ beheld the glory of G.o.d in His works."

Miss Cork yawned very deep here, and Miss Sanders blushed and stopped.

They hain't on speakin' terms. Caused by hens.

And then Miss Cork sez severely--a not noticin' Miss Sanders speech at all, but a-goin' back to Arvilly's--she loves to dispute with her, she loves to dearly--

"You forgot to mention when you wuz talkin' about Sabbath work connected with church-goin' that it wuz to worship G.o.d, and it wuz therefore right--no matter how wearisome it wuz, it wuz perfectly right."

"Wall, I d'no," sez Arvilly--"I d'no but what some of the beautiful pictures and wonderful works of Art and Nature that will be exhibited at the World's Fair would be as upliftin' and inspirin' to me as some of the sermons I hear Sundays. Specially when Brother Ridley gits to talkin' on the Jews, and the old Egyptians.

"It stands to reason that if I could see Pharo's mummy it would bring me nearer to him, and them plagues and that wickedness of hisen, than Brother Ridley's sermon could.

"And when I looked at a piece of the olive tree under which our Saviour sot while He wuz a-weepin' over Jeruesalem or see a wonderful picture of the crucifixion or the ascension, wrought by hands that the Lord Himself held while they wuz painted--I believe it would bring Him plainer before me than Brother Ridley could, specially when he is tizickey, and can't speak loud.

"Why, our Lord Himself wuz took to do more than once by the Pharisees, and told He wuz breakin' the Sabbath. And He said that the Sabbath wuz made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

"And He said, 'Consider the Lilies'--that is, consider the Lord, and behold Him in the works of His hands.

"Brother Ridley is good, no doubt, and it is right to go and hear him--I hain't disputed that--but when he tries to bring our thoughts to the Lord, he has to do it through his own work, his writin', which he did himself with a steel pen. And I d'no as it is takin' the idees of the Lord so much at first hand as it is to study the lesson of the Lilies He made, and which He loved and admired and told us to consider.

"The World's Fair is full of all the beauty He made, more wonderful and more beautiful than the lilies, and I d'no as it is wrong to consider 'em Sundays or week days."

"But," sez Miss Yerden, "don't you know what the Bible sez--'Forget not the a.s.semblin' of yourselves together'?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bub Lum.]

"Well," piped up Bub Lum, aged fourteen, and a perfect imp--

"I guess that if the Fair is open Sundays, folks that are there won't complain about there not bein' folks enough a.s.sembled together. I guess they won't complain on't--no, indeed!"

But n.o.body paid any attention to Bub, and Arvilly continued--

"I believe in usin' some common sense right along, week days and Sundays too. It stands to reason that the Lord wouldn't gin us common sense if He didn't want us to use it.

"We don't need dyin' grace while we are a livin', and so with other things. There will be meetin'-housen left and ministers in 1894, most likely, and we can attend to 'em right along as long as we live.

"But this great new open Book of Revelations, full of G.o.d's power and grace, and the wonderful story of what He has done for us sence He wakened the soul of His servant, Columbus, and sent him over the troubled ocean to carry His name into the wilderness, and the strength and the might He has given to us sence as a nation--

"This great object lesson, full of the sperit of prophecy and accomplishment, won't be here but a few short months.

"And I believe if there could be another chapter added to the Bible this week, and we could have the Lord's will writ out concernin' it, I believe it would read--

"'Go to that Fair. Study its wonderful lessons with awe and reverence.

Go week days if you can, and if you can't, go Sundays. And you rich people, who have art galleries of your own to wander through Sundays, and gardens and greenhouses full of beauty and sweetness, and the means to seek out loveliness through the world, and who don't need the soul refreshment these things give--don't you by any Pharisaical law deprive my poor of their part in the feast I have spread for both rich and poor.'"

Sez Miss Cork, "I wouldn't dast to talk in that way, Arville. To add or diminish one word of skripter is to bring an awful penalty."