OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 MY SON 
 
 CORRA HARRIS
 
 .MY SON 
 
 BY 
 
 CORRA HARRIS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HAPPILY MARRIED," "A CIRCUIT RIDER S WIFE, 
 
 "THE RECORDING ANGEL," ETC.; 
 AND IN COLLABORATION WITH FAITH HARRIS LEECH: 
 "FROM SUNUP TO SUNDOWN" 
 
 NEW ^SJT YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 MY SON 
 
 2130221
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 YEARS ago I wrote a book about my husband, Wil 
 liam Thompson, who was a circuit rider in the 
 Methodist itinerancy. I have read this book myself, 
 not only with interest because it is a literal transcript 
 of our lives, but with wonder in the light of what 
 has happened since, because it contains no reference 
 to the son born to us two years after we entered the 
 itinerancy. Rather, I seem to have been at some 
 pains to omit him from this record. At the time this 
 book was written he did not seem to belong to it. 
 I was still withholding him in my heart from the 
 hardships and sacrifices William and I had made of 
 our lives. I believed he was different, you under 
 stand. William was his father, but I always thought 
 of him more particularly as my son. He had my 
 secular nature. The solemn Sabbath of the soul, the 
 awful nearness of Providence and speculations in 
 the kingdom of heaven came into my life under the 
 shadow of William s prayers. My corruption was 
 not originally concerned about putting on incorrup- 
 
 7
 
 8 MY SON 
 
 tion, and to this day I cannot help worrying a little 
 about being raised merely a spiritual body. The 
 sense I have of my own human reality shrinks from 
 the winged florescence of this idea. I have always 
 been a substantial person, closer kin than William 
 to my dust. 
 
 I used to think with secret satisfaction that this son 
 of mine resembled my own father, who could not 
 by any stretch of charity or imagination have been 
 regarded as a pious man, and who even in death only 
 managed to look the noble image of stern Adam 
 clay. But he had a strong character and achieving 
 spirit, with his scenes laid mightily in this present 
 world. From the beginning this boy had the same 
 valor of life in his face, not at all like his own 
 father s, whose countenance was so fine and benig 
 nant that one could almost see the wing tracks of 
 angels in the air about his head. 
 
 When this child was born William wished to 
 name him after one of the Apostles, preferably John, 
 but I would not have it. He was too much of a 
 John himself in meekness and long suffering. As a 
 wife I was willing to share these attributes with him, 
 but as a mother I had other plans for my son. We 
 finally agreed that he should be called Peter. Wil 
 liam, like most gentle saints, loved this repentant 
 fisherman whom the Lord sent to "feed my lambs." 
 But I was satisfied with the name because if there 
 was to be this kind of apostolic succession in the
 
 MY SON 9 
 
 family I wanted one who could refer back to a mili 
 tant precedent, and who could and would cut off 
 somebody s ears under proper provocation. The 
 grace of turning the other cheek was a spirtual attain 
 ment in which William excelled, and being an in 
 effably good man he could afford this extravagance 
 in humility; but the way Simon Peter brandished his 
 sword and cut the high priest s servant s ear has 
 always appealed to me more. I know of at least 
 one bishop s ear which I coveted as long as he 
 lived. 
 
 I shall pass as briefly as possible over Peter s 
 youth, because this record has to do with the man 
 he became in spite of me. 
 
 He was a good baby and never notably good after 
 ward. For a number of years we moved him, along 
 with our few worldly goods, chickens, puppy and 
 commentaries, from one circuit to another without 
 making up our minds about him. I could not be 
 partial to him because there was William, and Wil 
 liam could not because there was his God, for whom 
 he was bound to forsake anybody or everybody at a 
 pinch. This situation was entirely agreeable to 
 Peter. If he had a soul at this time he showed no 
 evidence of having one. He was simply a very fat 
 good time quietly from morning until night. If I 
 little animal who walked on his hind legs and had a 
 had a secret sin in those days it was the pleasure
 
 10 MY SON 
 
 I took in him, because nothing had fallen upon him, 
 neither the fear of the Lord nor the anguish of 
 conscience. He was the emblem of that life which 
 was already passing from me in the shadow of Wil 
 liam s prayers. I was becoming a good woman, but 
 Peter was that fleshpot of Egypt which I carried 
 with me through the wilderness. He was my hope 
 in the now of this present world, before that other 
 world to come, toward which I was journeying hand 
 in hand with William. 
 
 His father s relations to Peter were characteristic. 
 He was determined to lay the foundation of the 
 gospel in him before any other foundations were 
 laid. Peter s attitude was also characteristic. He 
 was not surprised to learn that God made him. A 
 child never is. They are endowed with an incredible 
 sense of personal magnitude. It is only after one 
 has passed through the diminishing process of 
 becoming a man that he doubts whether he was 
 worth or received such meticulous care from the 
 Almighty. 
 
 Peter learned the Ten Commandments with an air 
 of serene detachment. He also learned his father s 
 precious Beatitudes and the Twenty-third Psalm, 
 merely with his tongue. I can see him now, a very 
 short pudgy little boy, standing in the mournful light 
 of William s cavernous eyes reciting Isaac Watts 
 majestic hymn in childish treble:
 
 MY SON 11 
 
 When I thurvey the wondrouth Croth 
 On which the Printh of Glory died, 
 
 My richetht gain I count but loth. 
 And pour contempt on all my pride. 
 
 These teachings had no appreciable effect on his 
 conduct. As he grew, thinned in the middle and 
 lengthened in his legs, he showed the usual normal 
 tendencies toward damnation. I do not know what 
 the members of our church thought of him, but I 
 doubt if he redounded any to our glory. He was a 
 good student of books, and had a bad record in be 
 havior at school. He was frank, mischievous and 
 possessed of a militant disposition. He never lied to 
 me, but he was ready to deceive his father when some 
 doubtful deed must be hidden. I suppose this was 
 for the same reason that Adam made specious ex 
 planations to t: * Lord on the day he also performed 
 one of his own deeds. Peter was afraid of his father. 
 My belief is that the moral sense is never born in any 
 of us except through the pangs of transgressions. 
 Peter suffered these pangs to an unusual degree. It 
 is no soft place to be the son of a saint. William 
 was continually snatching him like a little brand 
 from the burning. He snatched him with prayers 
 and with the rod. 
 
 When he was about twelve years old, I remember, 
 we were living in a parsonage that had a round table 
 in the dining room. William used to lead Peter,
 
 12 MY SON 
 
 shrinking, into this room for punishment when the 
 sin he had committed was too flagrant to be wiped 
 out by prayer in the study. I do not know why, 
 unless it was because there was no barn on the place, 
 where boys usually receive paternal castigations. 
 Anyhow, the performance would begin, Peter dart 
 ing round and round the table, William following 
 after with his coat tails flying, applying the rod 
 at more or less regular intervals. 
 
 I had my feelings on these occasions, the only ones 
 I ever had bitterly antagonistic to William and his 
 gospel, so uncompromising, so full of punishments. 
 
 When Peter s yells and the swish of the switch be 
 came unbearable I used to slip softly to the door, 
 open it the merest crack, thrust my hand through, 
 seize William s coat tail as he passed, give it an 
 authoritative tug from behind, then close the door 
 and walk tremblingly back to my chair in the next 
 room. I cannot say what might have happened if 
 he had failed to heed this hint of maternal provi 
 dence over my son, but he always did. 
 
 "Now, sir," I would hear him say, speaking stern 
 ly, "get your Bible and memorize the third and tenth 
 verses of the twenty-sixth chapter of Isaiah !" 
 
 The third reads: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect 
 peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he 
 trusteth in thee"; and the tenth one reads terribly: 
 "Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not 
 learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will
 
 MY SON 13 
 
 he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty 
 of the Lord." 
 
 I do not know how William could remember the 
 verses of the Scriptures so accurately under dis 
 turbing circumstances, but he invariably dosed Peter 
 with both kinds. 
 
 Then he would go out to make pastoral visits, and 
 no doubt to quiet his nerves, for he was always 
 mournfully upset by these Jehovah seances with 
 Peter. Then my son would slip quietly through the 
 dining-room door and appear before me, standing at 
 a little distance, wishful and indignant, his face tear- 
 stained, still rubbing his shoulders through his thin 
 summer jacket. This was his way of tempting me. 
 But I always resisted, except possibly I may have 
 regarded him with too much tenderness for disciplin 
 ary purposes. 
 
 "Peter," I would say, "you did wrong. Your 
 father did right to punish you. Now take a bath 
 and get your Bible!" 
 
 I always made him take that baptismal bath after 
 ward, because it soothed and cooled his heated body 
 and still hotter temper. And I always saw that he 
 knew the penitential verses before his father re 
 turned. 
 
 Children are more than intelligent, they are clair 
 voyant. They know us so much better than we know 
 them. Peter has told me since that he used to watch 
 for my hand to appear through the crack of that
 
 14 MY SON 
 
 door, and yelled the louder that it might show quick 
 ly. He never doubted, he told me, that my sympa 
 thies were with him, in spite of my hypocritical sup 
 port of his father. And I remember saying in reply : 
 "Yes, but your father was always right, Peter!" He 
 looked at me keenly, and laughed. 
 
 It is queer how one may still remain faithful to 
 another s ideals, when they never were really one s 
 own. In my heart I was opposed to William s 
 methods of bringing up my son. I had that feeling 
 about Peter. He was mine, the only treasure I had 
 on earth. But I never dared to interfere. We did 
 not discuss the matter, but I was sure that William 
 had secret designs on him. He hoped to make a 
 preacher of him. I watched the development of his 
 plan in silence, Peter was never aware of it. But he 
 was no potter s clay in his father s hands. I trusted 
 the quality of my son. William s methods might 
 keep down the animus in him, but I thanked my 
 heavenly Father that he could not actually call him 
 to preach the gospel. 
 
 I was determined to break this entail of the min 
 istry on William s family, he himself being the 
 fourth one in direct succession from father to son, 
 all good men, and faithful. But it is well to keep 
 the dust of your family in good condition, as well 
 as their immortal souls. One or two wrestling 
 Jacobs are enough. If they keep it up one generation 
 after another they develop a sort of spiritual diathesis
 
 MY SON 15 
 
 which affects the nerves of the body and divorces 
 them mentally from the realities of this present exist 
 ence. I have heard William tell how when he was 
 a very small boy he used to hide in the mulberry 
 bushes behind his mother s garden to wrestle in 
 prayer. My heart ached for him in the throes of 
 his infantile spiritual struggles. He was born with a 
 prayer on his lips. He lost all the happy trans 
 gressions of youth. He was never for one comfort 
 able irresponsible moment of this world. His flesh, 
 his natural instincts and wishes were his crucifixion 
 to the day of his death. 
 
 It seemed to me as I considered these things, that 
 I wanted Peter saved barely saved, you understand 
 but I was not willing that he should sacrifice the 
 whole of life in this world for salvation in the next 
 one. There must be many saints in heaven who 
 earn their citizenship there with less expense. It 
 was wrong, I know that now, but I took pleasure 
 then in the fact that when Peter wrestled it was 
 with another youth, not anybody s angel. Some 
 times when he came in from school with bruises and 
 abrasions on his strong young body I felt strangely 
 lifted. I wanted to sing a song. I went about my, 
 work in the kitchen with a lighter step. I could feel 
 the smile on my face at the thought of what was 
 going on in the study at that moment between Peter 
 and his father. I knew that my son was sitting 
 hunched up on his chair, a little secret man savage,
 
 16 MY SON 
 
 head lowered submissively while William lectured 
 him on the duties of the peacemaker. Peter was no 
 peace producer ! And I was glad of it. This busi 
 ness of peacemaking, my masters, I know it to be 
 a perpetual submission to that which is not peace 
 in the other fellow. There have been times in my 
 life when it was infernally hard to bear, the peace 
 that William made and kept. 
 
 But I kept right in behind Peter, lest he should 
 reflect too much discredit on his father. He reached 
 the age when every boy wants to stop attending Sun 
 day school. It comes upon them about the time they 
 change from short trousers into long ones. I do not 
 know why unless it is because Sabbath school is as 
 sociated in their minds with childish things or with 
 the innocuous desuetude of the teachers who so fre 
 quently teach them. But I made Peter go, only al 
 lowing him a little more margin of time to stand out 
 side the church before he went in. Then he ar 
 rived at the period when he wanted to sit in the back 
 seats with the other young roe-buck sinners. But I 
 made him keep on sitting up front. He must have 
 looked good to the congregation, but he was not 
 good, no better than a boy of that age really is. 
 
 He passed unscathed through one revival after 
 another when he should have been soundly converted. 
 I do not know if others have observed this, but I 
 believe it is harder for a preacher s son to be born 
 again. They know too much about it. They hear
 
 MY SON 17 
 
 the brethren talk about revival methods and this or 
 that kind of gospel for stirring up sinners. A good 
 many of their spiritual illusions are destroyed. 
 They must always seek the kingdom of heaven on a 
 cold collar, so to speak, which is the best way, but 
 far more searching. They may join the church, they 
 usually do at an early age, but I have rarely seen 
 one soundly converted in the spiritual stew of a 
 revival where so many people, especially young 
 ones, used to be wildly and enthusiastically con 
 verted. 
 
 Still, I always made Peter go up for prayers when 
 his father invited penitents to the altar. It would 
 do him no harm to go, but it certainly would reflect 
 on William s ministry if he could not move his own 
 son to show some signs of repentance. 
 
 William s health failed when Peter was seven 
 teen. After that he was superannuated and faded 
 away into the Job Scriptures. The one thing he 
 never surrendered of all his hopes was that Peter 
 would be called to the ministry and carry on the 
 work of his fathers in the Lord s vineyard. 
 
 Then William passed to his reward. We took him 
 back and buried him in the old Redwine churchyard. 
 A great many sinners and few saints are buried 
 there. It is a cheerful, worldly minded community, 
 which returns to its dust in singular confidence, as 
 disobedient children have rest and peace in their 
 beds at night. I did not worry about this. I had
 
 18 MY SON 
 
 the feeling that William would be very much at 
 home in that silent congregation of sinners. This 
 was the way he had spent his whole life. 
 
 Peter finished high school in June of that year. 
 It was settled that he should put himself through 
 college. He took the agency for a one- volume en 
 cyclopedia. It was printed in diamond type and 
 contained all the available information in the world. 
 I was never able to find anything in it that I really 
 wanted to know, but he said it was there. He had 
 great success with these books. He sold them to 
 people who could not read, and to those who could 
 but would not. He stored more knowledge in this 
 county during three months than a hundred years 
 of schools could have imparted. And I have no 
 doubt that it is all there yet, still inviolate, a thou 
 sand musty old volumes scattered in the cupboards 
 and on the shelves of farmhouses, in country stores 
 and college libraries. He had no conscience about 
 selling the thing, and he earned enough money to 
 take him through his freshman year. 
 
 He wanted to enter the state university, but Wil 
 liam had a good man s suspicions of universities. 
 He said the very name suggested latitudinarianism. 
 He said a man could get such broad views as to 
 unfit him for the wear and tear of life. He said 
 mere culture was not a preservative of the human 
 mind, but a sort of intellectual gilt, which rubbed
 
 MY SON 19 
 
 off presently and showed something ugly, often vic 
 ious beneath. He did not think any man ought to 
 have more knowledge than he could live up, to de 
 cently and practice with honor among his fellow 
 men. Maybe he was narrow about that, but so are 
 the strongest rays of light that penetrate the utter 
 most darkness of your insides. So is the steel- 
 tempered wedge that cleaves solid substances. So 
 is the life of every man who achieves his purpose 
 by his own will and works. He must be something 
 of a bigot, hard and invincible at the pointed end 
 of his mind. 
 
 The events of the last few years indicate that 
 William s prejudice against some of our universi 
 ties were justified. The worst things we are ex 
 periencing now were taught for more than a quarter 
 of a century in these institutions before the reds 
 and radicals introduced them to the credulous work 
 ing classes. In those days they were merely flash 
 light topics of conversation, used by smart people to 
 lighten the tedium of their cultured existence, and 
 your uncultured one. But four years ago, when we 
 experienced the terrific shock of war, and men be 
 gan to act fiercely and objectively according to the 
 way they thought, it required the ferocious strength 
 of armies, the cold and merciless grasp of commer 
 cialism, and the concentrated efforts of all the 
 churches to hold things together against the Setebos 
 doctrines taught by many learned professors.
 
 20 MY SON 
 
 So I persuaded Peter to enter Eliam College, 
 which is under the control of our church. He might 
 not learn so much, but I thought what he did learn 
 would not be so bad and dangerous to know. 
 
 Then I settled down to live on what the confer 
 ence allowed me each year from the widows-and- 
 orphans fund. Fortunately William had a little in 
 surance, because a widow cannot live on what she 
 receives from this fund, not even if she has lost her 
 appetite and is the kind of widow Paul recom 
 mends in the fifth chapter of Timothy: "Let not a 
 widow be taken into the number under threescore 
 years old, having been the wife of one man," he 
 writes Timothy, "well reported of for good works; 
 if she have brought up children, if she have lodged 
 strangers, if she have washed the saints feet," and 
 so forth and so on. 
 
 I have nothing against Paul, except the way some 
 elders and bishops copy his authoritative manner 
 and methods, when Paul was overheated or prob 
 ably not very well, in dealing with their humbler 
 John brethren. But I do think he was harder on 
 these poor widows than he might have been on, say, 
 widowers; not that I ever heard of a widower figur 
 ing in the Acts or any other Scriptures. I am not 
 complaining, you understand, I am simply stating 
 my opinion, as Paul did himself sometimes when he 
 admitted that so far as he knew it was not divinely 
 inspired.
 
 MY SON 21 
 
 I have sometimes thought it might have been 
 better for me if I had married again. I was still 
 a young woman when William died. Then what 
 happened would not have happened to me. But 
 when you have been the wife of a man of God it is 
 not so easy to descend in the scale of things to be 
 come the wife of a merchant or even a millionaire. 
 Some of them may have done it, but I never knew 
 or heard of a Methodist preacher s widow who mar 
 ried the second time. I am only admitting that I 
 thought of it long afterward, much as you think of 
 a trip to China which you know you never would 
 or could have taken. 
 
 As time passed I began to feel my oats, as the 
 saying goes. I was still doing my Christian deeds, 
 but I was no longer walking so softly before the 
 elders and stewards in my church as I used to 
 walk when they held William s poor little dingy 
 worldly fortunes in the hollow of their hands. 
 Sometimes I used to get up and sail out of church 
 after the services were over when the presiding elder 
 had preached, without telling him I had enjoyed 
 his sermon or that it went straight to my heart, just 
 to know how it felt to be independent like other 
 people. I used to sit in the congregation and enjoy 
 the sensation of not having to worry when promi 
 nent members slept through the sermon, because it 
 was not William who was preaching. No one can 
 know who has not had the experience how anxious
 
 22 MY SON 
 
 a pastor s wife is about everything, from listening to 
 know which of the brethren flatter her husband s 
 prayers with the approval of their amens, to the 
 crucial and desperate concern she feels about 
 whether he will ever be able to get his collections 
 in full. 
 
 I rested from all that. I was looking forward to 
 another estate when Peter graduated. He had done 
 exceedingly well. After the first year he made his 
 expenses by tutoring and teaching the summer school 
 at his college. His scholarship was so good that 
 he had been offered the position of adjunct professor 
 of philosophy in this college when he had taken his 
 degree. I anticipated an elegant old age in Peter s 
 house on the campus of Eliam College. I used to 
 entertain myself planning how we should furnish 
 it. When you have lived for so many years in par 
 sonages furnished by committees you do crave the 
 privilege of having your own things and rubbing 
 them and looking at them and possessing them. 
 Peter would have a real library to work in, and I 
 would have flowered curtains at the windows in 
 my bedroom, and a stuffed chair to sit in. I always 
 wanted gay curtains, but committees who furnish 
 parsonages do not indulge in them. And I always 
 wanted an everyday easy-chair. The hard wooden- 
 bottom chairs that prevail in parsonages are durable, 
 but they get to be hard on the very soul of you from 
 having to sit ui them so much. I could see myself
 
 MY SON 23 
 
 in this house or walking through the campus, quietly 
 but genteelly dressed like a good old proverb of a 
 woman, with people telling other people that "the 
 elderly lady who just passed is th mother of Dr. 
 Peter Thompson," and so forth and so on. 
 
 You never know what will happen to you. This 
 is why I do not permit myself to be too sure about 
 the kind of place heaven is. The only description 
 we have of it is John s dream on Patmos, when he 
 was old and tired and blind and homesick. Maybe 
 if Paul had had that vision he might have seen a 
 different heaven altogether. Anyway, it is best 
 not to be too sure of your handsome things in this 
 present world if you are a woman. The older I 
 am the more it seems to me that we are merely the 
 attributes of our men. I do not know if suffrage 
 and hypothecated economic independence will make 
 much difference. It only seems a new way we have 
 of being their nearer adjectives. Whenever we 
 make up our minds to do something great and 
 splendid it is always something we do to or for men. 
 We do not seem able to live apart from them, men 
 tally, morally or politically only spiritually, be 
 hind that door, when we lay their case before the 
 Lord and pray for guidance about what next to do 
 with some one of them. And all the time he does 
 the doing. You only screech or picket him or sub 
 mit to the inevitable. He simply packs you up and 
 takes you along with him when he decides to change
 
 24 
 
 his scenes, either as a duty or a treasure. You may 
 be a home body, but you must travel. You may 
 want to see the world, but you must remain at home 
 and let him b~ your world. I do not know that 
 it can be said even by those who believe in the doc 
 trine of predestination, that Providence predestines 
 us to our fate. Your husband does it, then maybe 
 you are passed along to your son, and he wigwags 
 you over a way your old tired feet never wished to 
 go. But you must, because that is the way he has 
 chosen for himself. It is something like that, though 
 I do not seem to make it very clear; but if you 
 have streaked it this way and that after one man half 
 a lifetime, and then suddenly, when you were 
 settling down in your own mind and spirit, if you 
 are obliged to get up, turn round and follow another 
 one up and down, you know what I mean. 
 
 The blow fell on me like a bolt from a clear sky. 
 This was in May before Peter graduated in June. 
 I always had a short filial letter from him, written 
 on Sunday afternoon. But for two weeks I did not 
 hear from him, then in the middle of the third week 
 came a thick letter. I do not know why, but my 
 heart misgave me as I weighed this bulky package in 
 my hand. Men are never so voluminous as when 
 they have something to excuse or explain. 
 
 I went into my room and shut the door before I 
 broke the seal, though there was not a soul in that 
 house but me, and probably my God.
 
 MY SON 25 
 
 When I had finished reading the letter I laid it 
 on the window sill beside me and folded my hands. 
 It was a warm spring day, but I felt the chill of 
 winter in the air. The sun was shining, but the 
 shades of twenty years gathered and darkened that 
 room. Memories showed their faces in these shad 
 ows. I saw William, young and strong in the Lord, 
 starting forth to walk to his appointment to preach 
 on the Redwine circuit, which was our first work. 
 I saw the mountains, bleak and cold, above the house 
 where our first baby had been born dead. I remem 
 bered that Gethsemane night. 
 
 I saw the old brown altars filled with mourning 
 penitents; I saw the dim faces of so many, many 
 congregations William had served; I remembered the 
 ones of them we had nursed, and the ones we had 
 buried. And it had all been so hard, so barren of 
 every comfort except the comfort of the Holy Spirit, 
 which settled on William, never on me. 
 
 Looking back through this pale twilight of mem 
 ory I knew now when the change came in William, 
 when he really gave up his hopes as a man and 
 ceased to expect better appointments. It was after, 
 a certain annual conference when he had been sent 
 back to the same circuit, though he had expected to 
 be moved to a station. He knew it then, but it was. 
 years before I realized that he would always be a 
 circuit rider, never have any big church to serve. 
 
 The years stretched before me like weary roads on
 
 26 MY SON 
 
 these circuits. How tired I used to get during the 
 long revival seasons, always having to prepare a 
 table for company, but always attending every serv 
 ice, hoping the penitents would come to the altar 
 when at the end of the sermon William entreated 
 them to come. 
 
 The wailing strains of that old hymn he used to 
 give out then filled the room, faint and sad : 
 
 Just as I am, without one plea 
 But that Thy blood was shed for me, 
 And that Thou bidd st me come to Thee, 
 Lamb of God! I come, I come! 
 
 My eyes filled with tears. William used to look 
 so sorrowful when nobody came. Then he would 
 exhort again before we sang the next verse, while 
 I held my breath in suspense, hoping this would 
 move them. And so on it would go until William 
 would say fatally, "Last stanza!" meaning: "You 
 have denied your God, and some of you may be 
 dead and lost before another day!" 
 
 Then they would begin to straggle down the 
 aisle ungainly youths, young girls suddenly serious. 
 Then they crowded, hurrying to the altar, old and 
 young together. 
 
 How my heart always lifted at this windfall of 
 mourners beneath William s preaching! I could see 
 him now in memory as I had seen him so many times
 
 MY SON 27 
 
 lift his hand say, "Let us pray! Brother Rhuebot- 
 tom, will you lead us in prayer*?" 
 
 The rustling and scraping of heavy shoes as we 
 went down on our knees! How the rafters seemed 
 to shake above the roll and thunder of Brother 
 Rhuebottom s prayer! He was a "valorous worm" 
 storming the gates of God. He was Jacob wrestling 
 with the pilgrim angel. And he would not let 
 him go without the blessing he craved. Women 
 sobbed, men shouted "Amen!" and the mourners 
 moaned. 
 
 These were the only moments of perfect joy I 
 remember in all those years. How could I be happy, 
 I asked myself now, in the spiritual anguish of such 
 scenes. They were terrible, even the souls born 
 out of these travails. They were changed, these 
 men and women who sprang up from these 
 altars. They had a light on their faces. A great 
 experience burned in their eyes. 
 
 But how we suffered, pinched and prayed Wil 
 liam all for them, I all for William. Looking back 
 I could see that he never really lived at all, that 
 he spent his life praying for eternal life. 
 
 This was the life I had meant that Peter should 
 escape. Peter was to be my own life restored to me. 
 
 Tears fell upon my folded hands. I felt like 
 an old clock that has been going too fast which is 
 suddenly turned back years and years. 
 
 I reached for his letter. But it was now too dark
 
 28 MY SON 
 
 to read it. I had been there a long time. The sun 
 had gone down. These were real shadows about 
 me now. But it made no difference, I knew what 
 was in this letter. I should never be able to forget 
 or escape what was in it. 
 
 Peter wrote that he had decided to enter the min 
 istry. Stripped of much he said before and much 
 that he wrote afterward, this was the sentence that 
 dimmed my light and set me back years in time. 
 
 He had declined the place offered him in the 
 faculty at Eliam for a number of reasons, all writ 
 ten out in full, as a man who takes not so much 
 trouble to convince you as he does to convince him 
 self. 
 
 He had been considering the ministry for some 
 time, but he had not mentioned this to me until he 
 was fully settled in his own mind that this was 
 the thing he would do. 
 
 He was sure that I would be happy to know of 
 this decision. He had an idea that most good women 
 wanted their sons to become preachers. And though 
 I had remained "generously silent," leaving him free 
 to make his own choice of a profession, he was glad 
 his choice was no doubt an answer to my prayers. 
 He was depending upon me, he went on. He re 
 membered with more and more admiration the way I 
 had helped and sustained his father. We would 
 start again in the itinerancy together, at the bot 
 tom, on a circuit, probably the usual hardships for a
 
 MY SON 29 
 
 time, but he believed he would be able to command 
 good appointments in a very few years, probably 
 the best in the conference. He thought he knew 
 what the people needed now, a gospel that fitted 
 their needs under modern conditions. The church 
 could not afford to lag behind the progress civiliza 
 tion was making. That changed men s minds. The 
 successful preacher had to keep up with them, and 
 go them one better; and so on and so forth. 
 
 He had some money left, enough for his purpose. 
 He would come home for a few days after his grad 
 uation to see me and receive my blessing. Then he 
 would go to New York for a course of lectures in 
 
 He mentioned the place. It is one of those 
 
 wide-open theological seminaries. This would be 
 his last chance to do some studying along a special 
 line which he needed, for he expected to join the 
 Conference and take work in the autumn. 
 
 Mothers are undoubtedly the most gifted hypo 
 crites in the world to their children. They not only 
 love and cherish them, they play a role, they recite 
 the lines that belong to that role, which may not be 
 dictated by their hearts or their own convictions, 
 but by the circumstances in which they bring up 
 their children. So it had been with me. As Wil 
 liam s wife, Peter s mother was forced to keep him 
 in the shadow of the church with solemn admoni 
 tions, when always I hoped and longed for him to 
 escape into the world of deeds done by men, not
 
 30 MY SON 
 
 saints. And now he imagined I should be thankful 
 because he was about to enter the ministry ! 
 
 It was his father who prayed as long as he lived 
 that Peter might be called to preach the gospel. 
 Even at that I was not so sure William s prayers 
 had been answered. 
 
 I rose, lighted the lamp and read Peter s letter 
 again. I missed that strange egotism of humility 
 peculiar to men who have been "called" to preach 
 the gospel. William had it. I was always afraid 
 he would be called as a missionary to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth. But Peter wrote that he had 
 "decided to enter the ministry." And he had his 
 eye already fixed on the "best appointments in the 
 Conference." 
 
 Wrestling with angels is nothing to wrestling with 
 your own heart, especially when you have grown old 
 and tired and your heart has grown strong in one 
 desire. I passed through hours of struggle that 
 night, alone in my house. I did not want Peter 
 to enter the ministry. A terrible weariness fell upon 
 me at the thought of going back over those hard 
 years. It was not that I no longer believed in the 
 kingdom of heaven, but that I did believe in it. I 
 had settled down comfortably in my faith. I dread 
 ed to be stirred up again, for other people s 
 sins, made anxious day and night about the affairs 
 of the church. I had been William s amen, so to 
 speak, for so many years. And nothing had come
 
 MY SON 31 
 
 of it for just me, but an awful, unnatural vir- 
 tuousness, a sacrificial piety, and the death of Wil 
 liam. 
 
 If it came to the pinch I doubt if any man or 
 woman would choose to live the same life over 
 
 
 
 again, however well he had lived it. He might for 
 that reason choose one quite different. It may be a 
 fearful thing to admit, but I wanted now, even in 
 my approaching age, some of the natural willful 
 sweetness of just living, of being responsible to the 
 Lord only for my personal sins, not for the brethren 
 or the sistren. Heaven knows I never wanted to be 
 so good a woman as I had to be as William s wife. 
 How many times I had been tempted to speak the 
 truth to stewards in our church or at the woman s 
 missionary meeting, that would have skinned some 
 body alive for meanness, when I had to say some 
 thing meek and forbearing for William s sake. 
 What a relief it would have been just to tear round 
 sometimes regardless of my soul s salvation, or any 
 other soul s salvation. But I never did. I was wait 
 ing for Peter to grow up, win a place in the world 
 and open the door of this prison for me. 
 
 Now here he was about to close it in my face 
 forever. You do not know how much you desire 
 something until you are about to lose it. I suffered. 
 And I could not do as I always did in the years of 
 my submission, get the Bible and find some Scrip 
 ture to comfort me. If you are not meek it is
 
 32 MY SON 
 
 no use to read your Bible. "What is in you is not in 
 it. 
 
 I sat there in my old gray dress with my old gray 
 head leaning against the back of the chair, with my 
 eyes closed to hold the tears. 
 
 There was another reason why I did not want 
 Peter to be a preacher. Thirty years ago, when Wil 
 liam and I were young, the best men mentally and 
 spiritually entered the ministry. They had great 
 virtues and great gifts. They had dignity and in 
 fluence. They insipred reverence. And many of 
 them became national figures in the church of God. 
 Now, we all know it is too often the seconds who 
 enter the ministry, ordinary men whose sacred of 
 fices do not exalt or change their quality. They fre 
 quently became prominent, but they do not become 
 great. Their eloquence is like any other eloquence. 
 Their hearts do not burn, their lips have not been 
 touched with the holy fire. They lack some awful 
 quality of the spirit which the old preachers had and 
 which they have not. It is not for me to judge 
 them, but I have wondered if they did not lack the 
 courage of that sublime thing which we call faith. 
 They have been tamed by something which is not the 
 Holy Ghost. The young preacher may be a dull 
 honest man or he may be a sensationalist, but he 
 does not speak the same things nor with the same 
 authority preachers of an elder day had. The very
 
 MY SON 33 
 
 pulpit where these men stood has been effaced. It 
 is becoming more and more of a rostrum. 
 
 For the first time in my life I looked askance at 
 my son. Never before had he measured himself in 
 my thoughts beside his father. I had counted his 
 cubits by another standard. And now I found him 
 undersize. What <was this presumption that pos 
 sessed him 1 ? How could he dare so much 1 ? What 
 was the matter with the world that a smart young 
 man could "decide to enter the ministry" much as 
 he would decide to practice law, and look forward 
 shrewdly to the "best appointments." 
 
 I thought I would write Peter exactly what was 
 in my mind. I would search him and warn him. 
 
 Then I fell to trembling at the fear of what I was 
 about to do. Who was I to question him 4 ? After 
 all, my son had delivered himself into the hands 
 of the Lord. The Lord would chasten him and tear 
 him down and build him up according to his word 
 and his Spirit. That was the end of the struggle. 
 I knew it when I began to weep. Then I went over 
 to the table and wrote him the kind of letter the 
 mother of a young preacher should write. I told 
 him that I would go with him and help him and 
 stand by him so long as I had the strength for this 
 business. All I asked of him was that he would 
 pray without ceasing that he might be a true disciple 
 and become as much as God would give him grace 
 to be like his father, who had literally believed in
 
 34 MY SON 
 
 "the way, the truth and the life," and had preached 
 it, counting himself as nothing that he might serve 
 his Lord. 
 
 I am a Protestant as much as I can be anything, 
 but I am not always orthodox in secret. Sometimes 
 my heart, the heart that loved and believed in Wil 
 liam, will put messages in my prayers to him, when 
 I should pray only to my Heavenly Father. It was 
 so on this night when at last I came to my knees. 
 I know I started out right, asking God to have mercy 
 upon me, and to create within me a clean heart and 
 renew a right spirit within me, because he knew I 
 needed it; and to give me courage and strength to 
 live again within the hollow of his hand. It was 
 no use to ask forgiveness for wishing a little life 
 apart, for I knew I should never cease to regret and 
 wish for the world. I merely made a silent foot 
 note here in my mind for him tc see namely, that 
 he had made this world, filled it and blessed it. For 
 what, if not for his children to love it and crave it*? 
 But when it came to Peter I found myself talking 
 to William in that prayer. I wanted him to be with 
 Peter as much as he could under the circumstances. 
 If he had any influence in heaven I wanted him to 
 see that strong angels guided Peter s footsteps, be 
 cause I was very uneasy about him. 
 
 Peter came home in June. He was in high spirits, 
 a ruddy, handsome young man with the sparkle of 
 a fine intelligence in his strong black eyes. I could
 
 MY SON 35 
 
 see that he had a well-seasoned mind, and the use of 
 it, but he did not look like a man upon whom the 
 mantle of a prophet had fallen. I missed that high 
 secret assurance the call of God gives, not easily 
 named, but to be found in Scriptures like this: 
 "Thou art mine. When thou passest through the 
 waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, 
 they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest 
 through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither 
 shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord 
 thy God." 
 
 I had been through these places with William, 
 without partaking of his great assurance, but I had 
 felt these waters, these fires; I had watched him on 
 his mountain top, and I had been very near him 
 in the valley of shadows many times. Everything 
 had happened to me except that my cup had never 
 run over, and my head had never been anointed 
 with oil. And it did not seem to me that Peter had 
 any sense of these experiences through which he 
 must pass. I was determined again to search him. 
 
 I wanted to ask him a few questions that the 
 brethren do not ask a young man when they grant 
 him a license to preach the gospel. But this was 
 not so easy to do. He was very affectionate, ready 
 to talk about whatever concerned just me, his 
 mother, but I could not pin him down in any spirit 
 ual corner of a conversation. 
 
 Finally it dawned upon me that he understood
 
 86 MY SON 
 
 and was purposely evading the issue. His manner 
 implied that his idea of the ministry was different, 
 possibly beyond me. He kept off the subject as 
 men do when they keep their women out of their 
 business affairs. Maybe he thought I was too old 
 to face the issues a minister must meet now. 
 
 But there was one test that he could not evade. 
 I gave it. We had been sitting on the porch in the 
 moonlight talking round and round in an ever-widen 
 ing circle. I went in, lit the lamp and called Peter. 
 I called him much in the tone I used to call him 
 when it was time for him to wash his feet, say 
 his prayers and go to bed. 
 
 He came in blinking at the light for a moment and 
 looking across inquiringly at me as he sat down be 
 side the table. 
 
 I took my little Bible from the window sill, where 
 I keep it, and handed it to him. 
 
 "Lead us in prayer, Peter," I said. 
 
 I may be mistaken, but I thought he hesitated 
 for the briefest moment. Then he took the book, 
 opened it at random and read a few verses. Then 
 we knelt and Peter prayed a sort of intellectual 
 brickmason s prayer to his Heavenly Father, if you 
 know what I mean; the words of a good workman 
 who meant to do his duty and make things go. 
 I will say that there was vim and confidence in 
 this prayer and not the faintest taint of self-right 
 eousness, nor even of humility.
 
 MY SON 37 
 
 The next evening in a little silence that occurred 
 between us I reached out quite unexpectedly and 
 took Peter unawares. 
 
 "My son," I said, "you do not know what is be 
 fore you. You are the fifth man in direct succes 
 sion in your family who has given up the world 
 and chosen the cross for his portion." 
 
 Peter stirred, leaned back in his chair and made 
 no reply. 
 
 "The first one was converted under John Wesley 
 during the first revival he held in this country. They 
 were all good men, but your father was the best. 
 He was a holy man, Peter. His footsteps are before 
 you." 
 
 "Father was good, the best man I ever knew," he 
 answered after a pause; "but he was not a success 
 ful preacher." 
 
 "Many were converted under his ministry," I 
 answered quietly. 
 
 "Those emotional experiences, they did count 
 then; but now, mother, everything is different. You 
 must try to understand that. Religion is a develop 
 ment " 
 
 "Religion is a great experience," I interrupted. 
 
 "It is now past the emotional, primitive stage, 
 and is becoming a creative force in the world. It 
 is reaching people, getting some sense into their 
 heads about how to think and keep clean and live
 
 38 MY SON 
 
 healthily in their minds and bodies. That is the 
 best use to make of it." 
 
 This sounded blasphemous to me, but I held my 
 peace. 
 
 "It is all there, in the Scriptures, if we will only 
 learn to use it, not shout it," he went on. "But we, 
 the preachers, must meet the people halfway. We 
 have been too far removed from them and their 
 practical everyday needs." 
 
 No such place as "halfway" is mentioned in the 
 gospels for a priest to meet his people, but I did not 
 say anything. 
 
 "You remember Snitkins *?" Peter began again 
 after a pause. 
 
 Yes, I told him. I was not likely to forget Snit- 
 kins. He was a steward in the last church William 
 served; a large yellow-bearded tomcat of a man 
 who made money, ruled the town and wanted to rule 
 the church. He complained of William s sermons, 
 said he couldn t keep awake. He thought that 
 church needed a younger man for pastor. I always 
 thought he had something to do with William s 
 being superannuated at the next Conference. 
 
 "Father did not know how to manage Snitkins, 
 that s what I mean," Peter said. 
 
 "It is not clear to me yet, what you mean, Peter," 
 I returned. 
 
 "He wanted to be prominent, that was Snitkins 
 nature. Father should have appointed him super-
 
 MY SON 39 
 
 intendent of the Sunday school. He wanted to 
 be. Then he might have made a showing that would 
 have helped the reports from that church. See my 
 point?" 
 
 "I see it, but your father would never have made 
 it," I returned. 
 
 He said he did not want me to think he failed to 
 appreciate the wonderful grace and goodness of his 
 father, but he was trying to show how necessary 
 it was now to use all means to further the interests 
 of the church. 
 
 "Father was a mystic," he added. 
 
 And he went on showing me, talking well and 
 very shrewdly, and I must say like a man with a 
 good conscience. 
 
 I gathered that he thought William depended too 
 much on the leadings of the Spirit, and that he, 
 Peter, was by that as some liberal-minded Christian 
 Scientists are about administering a dose of medi 
 cine to a man who does not believe in this doctrine 
 and cannot be cured by faith of his ailment. He was 
 for getting results, whether you were in the spirit or 
 out of it. 
 
 We had no more talk along this line, and he went 
 away the next day, to be gone until Conference met 
 in November. 
 
 The one comfort I had was that he was not a 
 hypocrite. He was in earnest about calling him-
 
 40 MY SON 
 
 self to the ministry and about being a good busi 
 ness man of the gospel. But I felt very queer about 
 facing the saints on those old backwoods circuits 
 with Peter in this fix.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 
 IN November of his graduation year Peter joined 
 the Conference and received his first appointment. 
 He was sent to Brasstown, a small place in the 
 mountains, far north of the church equator of this 
 state. This was not a circuit, but what is known as 
 a half station. Besides the church at Brasstown he 
 would serve one other, five miles distant in the 
 country, known as the Suetally Chapel. This was 
 encouraging, for the rule is to try out a young 
 preacher on one of the hardest circuits, many of 
 them consisting of six churches. 
 
 I was very busy while he was at Conference, sell 
 ing the things I had accumulated during the last 
 four years and getting ready to move. When my 
 trunks were packed I had nothing extra except my 
 onion buttons and a few garden seed. I had my 
 doubts about Peter as a pastor, and no matter what 
 happened if we had a good garden we could pull 
 through. This was a sort of private collection Wil 
 liam and I used always to take from the earth, to 
 insure us against those misfortunes which overtake 
 the children of God when their daily bread de 
 pends upon the good will of their stewards and the 
 Quarterly Conference. 
 
 41
 
 42 MY SON 
 
 Nothing remained to be done when Peter returned 
 from the Conference except to pack his father s 
 books. The trunks were in the hall, and one large 
 black tin box. This box contained the strongest and 
 most cherishable sermons of four generations of 
 preachers in the Thompson family. They dated 
 back to a certain discourse by the Rev. Henry 
 Thompson, who had been a terribly ungodly man 
 until he was converted at Savannah under John 
 Wesley and received the call to preach, but did not 1 
 get one of Mr. Wesley s teaspoons. I do not know 
 how it happened, but there are a lot of these tea 
 spoons handed down in Methodist families, which 
 are said to have descended directly from John Wes 
 ley. And it always sounded queer to me, pre 
 senting newborn souls with souvenir spoons. If I 
 should ever meet this great apostle of Methodism in 
 the next world I may make some discreet inquiries 
 of him about this. You cannot approve of every 
 thing a good man does, but if he was rewarding his 
 converts openly, what I want to know is why Henry 
 Thompson did not get one of these spoons. He was 
 soundly converted. He became a great preacher and 
 seems never to have forgotten the narrow escape he 
 had from damnation. He appears always to have 
 preached with a coal of fire in his mouth. The text 
 of this old sermon was, "The soul that sinneth, it 
 shall surely die." And it was a brimstone master-
 
 MY SON 43 
 
 piece of the gospel. There were also many of Wil 
 liam s best sermons in this box. 
 
 After we had discussed the news every preacher 
 always brings back from a meeting of the annual 
 Conference, and Peter had delivered messages from 
 some of the elder brethren who entered the itiner 
 ancy years ago when William did, we went into the 
 hall to consider our baggage, which must be shipped 
 at once to Brasstown. 
 
 Peter stood with his hands in his pockets regard 
 ing three old itinerating trunks, the ribs of them 
 bulging, their sides battered and the tops crank- 
 sided, grinning a little, but securely roped and tied. 
 He said he doubted if they would make the trip. 
 
 "Oh, yes, they will. They are used to it," I as 
 sured him. 
 
 He recognized the tin box. From the time he 
 could remember he must have seen this box going 
 before us to the next appointment. 
 
 "Still keeping those old sermons," he said, smil 
 ing. 
 
 "Yes, they are the Enoch records of men who 
 walked with God," I answered, nettled by some 
 thing in the tone of his voice. 
 
 We went back into the living room, where he be 
 gan to examine William s books. He bent over, 
 wrinkled his fine nose and doubled up the wrinkles 
 on his smooth young brow at these old ragged vol-
 
 44 MY SON 
 
 umes with their bindings torn and their loose leaves 
 sticking out here and there. 
 
 "Mother, these books are all out of date," he said. 
 
 I regarded him. The eye may speak to a man 
 even when he has his back turned to you. My son 
 felt something poignant laid on him from behind. 
 He stood up, glanced at me sidewise, ran his fingers 
 across the backs of Kitto s Commentaries, which 
 filled one shelf. 
 
 "Now, these are perfectly useless," he told me. 
 
 "Peter " I began. 
 
 "There is not a single volume in this collection 
 worth the cost of packing and shipping," he finished 
 in spite of my trying to say something. 
 
 "Peter," I began again, giving him an eye for 
 an eye this time, "I do not know what is in these 
 books. I never did know. But your father knew. 
 He said that they were a great help and inspira 
 tion to him. And where I go, they are going!" 
 
 "Oh, well, if you feel so about it, we must take 
 them, of course," he answered in the manner of a 
 man who humors, merely humors a woman. 
 
 So we took them, and every time we moved to 
 another appointment we carried them and the old 
 battered tin box. Peter shed his own modern books 
 on the Scriptures frequently, as if his spirit molted 
 theologically like a chicken. But I kept right in 
 behind him with all those thunderous old com 
 mentaries from which William had obtained the
 
 MY SON 45 
 
 stern and majestic obscurities of his preaching 
 style. 
 
 We arrived in Brasstown much as preacher folk 
 always do. And I was too busy for a time to know 
 how Peter was performing his offices as a pastor. 
 
 The Methodist parsonage has changed less in the 
 last twenty years than the Methodist Church. The 
 effect of the religious mind on parsonage furniture 
 is, I believe, far more permanent than it is on human 
 character. This may be because the human is never 
 quite reduced to the mere grimness of it. Even a 
 saint flares sometimes and lets in a rosy light on 
 his morals. But the parsonage is hopelessly sub 
 missive to anything your sternest Christian imagina 
 tion can do it, which is also a frugal imagination. 
 The insides of it never minister to anything but the 
 sacrificial instincts of its victims. The one at Brass- 
 town was very severe. But it was clean. Sister 
 Stone, who was chairman of the reception committee 
 which met us the day we came, called my attention 
 to this fact. 
 
 "You see, it is clean," she said when we returned 
 to the parlor after we had finished checking up the 
 list of all the parsonage things. 
 
 "Yes, everything is beautifully clean," I agreed 
 cordially. 
 
 She was regarding me authoritatively over the top 
 of her spectacles. The other women of this commit-
 
 46 MY SON 
 
 tee were regarding me like a determined cloud of 
 witnesses. 
 
 "Six of us spent two days getting this house in 
 order," Sister Stone went on. 
 
 "You did!" I exclaimed, lifting my face and 
 blinking admiration at them through my glasses. 
 You may always look pleasanter through your glasses 
 than you can over the top of them. 
 
 "And I hope such a task will never be laid upon 
 us again. Our last pastor s wife was not a good 
 housekeeper," she said. 
 
 I made a sad little sound through my nose 
 in memory of their last pastor s wife, and let it go 
 at that, though I could have made a few searching 
 remarks. 
 
 It is true that some preachers wives are not good 
 housekeepers, but it is not a singular fact, nor 
 peculiar to them. Other women fall short of this 
 perfection with less excuse. They do not do their 
 own work or nurse their own children. On their 
 busiest day and in addition to everything else, they 
 are not obliged to dust and wipe off their husbands, 
 as the pastor s wife must do, lest he show a human 
 grease spot on the lapel of his coat in the pulpit. 
 Then she must make sure the poor absent-minded 
 soul, being in the spirit on this Lord s Day, has a 
 clean handkerchief in his pocket with which to wipe 
 his brow when he warms up in the course of his 
 sermon. She must also get the children off to Sun-
 
 MY SON 47 
 
 day school. She must prepare dinner, and get ready 
 for church, and be there in her accustomed place be 
 fore the first hymn is sung. 
 
 Multiply these activities by the fifty-two Sabbaths 
 in the year. Double that to count the Sunday-night 
 services. Add all the Wednesday-night prayer meet 
 ings, and you receive some idea of what the day of 
 rest means to a preacher s wife, even if there is no 
 quarterly meeting with the presiding elder on her 
 hands. There is also the revival season of six weeks 
 in the hottest part of the summer, and all the com 
 pany incident to that, with the youngest baby getting 
 his teeth and keeping her up at night. For the in 
 fants in preachers families always do cut their hard 
 est teeth during the revival season. I never knew a 
 single exception, no matter if he was due according 
 to Nature to have produced them during the previous 
 month of January. Even the grace of God cannot 
 give such a woman the time and physical strength 
 to be a good housekeeper. 
 
 I have sometimes wished in my bitterer moments 
 that the Lord would even it up to Methodist 
 preachers wives in the next world by giving them 
 special committee privileges to investigate the house 
 keeping records of prominent church women who 
 know so much and tell so much about how we kept 
 their parsonages in this one. 
 
 After Sister Stone and her cohorts took their leave 
 I unpacked and put my things in place. Then I sat
 
 48 MY SON 
 
 down to have a good cry. This was a sort of bap 
 tismal habit with me in the old days. Whenever we 
 moved to a new work I used to take a little time off 
 to weep and rock myself and soothe my feelings, 
 which were always secretly suffering from the 
 change. But now I could not work myself up to the 
 point of tears. I felt queer and cold and strangely 
 removed from these old griefs and associations. 
 Maybe it was my age and Peter s youth, but I did 
 not feel so near and kin to pastoral things. 
 
 On the following Sunday morning I heard Peter 
 preach for the first time. It was the usual little vil 
 lage tombstone of a church, this one in Brasstown, 
 very white outside, dark and sadly toned inside, 
 as a grave must be after you have lain in it a long 
 time. 
 
 I have not seen much in my life, only the plain 
 things. My eyes have not been cultivated by the 
 splendors of this present world. I have never seen a 
 great statue or a great painting. But I have often 
 wondered what the world which has seen all these 
 things would think about the picture of a Sunday- 
 morning congregation somewhere on a Methodist 
 preacher s circuit, which has been painted by a really 
 great artist. It would be like painting the Beati 
 tudes. Rows upon rows of candlelit faces in the 
 brown gloom, with such a plain altar in front of 
 them, this one looking so meek; that one blessed
 
 MY SON 49 
 
 from having mourned; this old saint wearing his 
 seeing-God look from having been so long pure in 
 heart. 
 
 No matter what these people have done during 
 the week, they drop that secular and carnal expres 
 sion, they are now innocent of themselves. It is very 
 touching. You may scarcely distinguish the worst 
 of them from the best of them. The man seated 
 there at the end of the bench whose very hair snarls, 
 whose face is marked with so many lines of human 
 frightfulness, seems now in this shadowy peace only 
 to have been weather-beaten by exposure in some 
 harsh windy corner of life. The evil in him shows 
 for what evil really is, a sort of ugly pathos. This 
 woman on the other side of the aisle, who is a terma 
 gant in her own house, wears an air of repose, as if 
 for this hour she has been eased from the worry and 
 flurry of doing her duty, right or wrong. The veriest 
 gossip of them all looks like an elderly handmaiden 
 of the Lord ready to fall upon her knees and wash 
 the feet of the saints. And the others, the plain 
 script of the congregation, are so submissive, so 
 completely at rest from themselves and from their 
 neighbors. 
 
 This is not hypocrisy, it is the church; the effect 
 of its silence and the association of ideas for which 
 it stands in the minds of these people. 
 
 I came early that morning because I wanted to 
 have a look at Peter s flock, and form some idea of
 
 50 
 
 the sort of men and women with whom he would 
 have to deal. I knew that somewhere among these 
 tired old lambs there would be the usual difficult 
 brethren, known to each other but not to the new 
 pastor. I have inspected too many congregations 
 in my day not to recognize them almost by sight. 
 And I have seen a hundred like the one inside the 
 doors of that church the same red-hot stoves down 
 near the front, the same little glass pitcher and 
 tumbler on the right-hand side of the pulpit. I chose 
 a seat as usual at the end of one of the amen sec 
 tions, not to be too close to the saints nor too far 
 from the sinners to see what was going on without 
 turning my head inquisitively. 
 
 I saw my son for the first time sitting in a pulpit. 
 Only his head was visible above the top of the altar. 
 No doubt he had said his priest prayer before I came 
 in. I know of no other act of worship which is so 
 definitely and almost shockingly performed at the 
 expense of the congregation as this private personal 
 pulpit prayer of the Methodist itinerant preacher. 
 He enters this sacred place, and with his back to the 
 congregation he drops upon his knees, both of them, 
 bends his body to a right angle, covers his face with 
 his hands, and, with his long coat tails artlessly 
 parted behind, he makes his prayer to Almighty God 
 to sustain him and give him courage to preach the 
 word with power to these people behind him. It is 
 the one moment in his life when he publicly outranks
 
 MY SON 51 
 
 his congregation by holding a sort of official council 
 with his Lord in which they are merely the topic 
 under discussion. 
 
 I settled down and spread out my skirts, adjusted 
 my glasses and caught sight of Brother Stone at the 
 end of the same bench in the darkest corner of the 
 amen section. I whispered him one of those discreet 
 nods you offer in the prayerful atmosphere of a 
 church. He returned it. Then he seized his long 
 white beard as if it were the apron of his face, held 
 it back, took a sort of hissing aim at the little sand 
 box and expectorated, meaning that it was nearly 
 time to sing the opening hymn. 
 
 I have noticed this, that the fiercer male saints fre 
 quently use tobacco, while the vacillating, hair-hung 
 and breeze-shaken saint is almost sure to be an 
 abstemious man, who must backslide before he can 
 indulge in the use of tobacco, or even coffee. There 
 fore, the fields of spiritual battles are always strewn 
 with these wounded who must be restored to a state 
 of mild ecstasism before they can possibly believe 
 that they are right with their Lord. 
 
 I had already recognized Brother Stone as one of 
 the fiercer saints who would never backslide or even 
 during a revival admit that he needed a "deeper work 
 of grace." He was a standpatter in the Lord s vine 
 yard, and usually kept one foot on his pastor s neck. 
 I knew that his relation to Peter would be strictly 
 doctrinal, and I wondered how he was going to man-
 
 52 MY SON 
 
 age Peter, or if it was possible that Peter might man 
 age him. This was a maternal flight of imagination. 
 In all my experience I had never known such a thing 
 to happen. 
 
 We see through our glass darkly when we look 
 toward the future, but if we face about and look 
 toward the past, it is awful how clearly we can see. 
 It seemed to me on this Sunday morning that I was 
 looking through thirty years at Peter s congregation, 
 and I saw a number of persons there who would have 
 been only shadows upon my glass when I was young. 
 
 A tall man attracted my attention. He was seated 
 on the front bench, holding his head so high that his 
 brown curly beard stuck straight out in front of him. 
 His hair lay back from his lofty brow as if some wind 
 from heaven had blown it. His fine dark eyes were 
 lifted in a sort of penitential gaze at nothing in par 
 ticular. I had my suspicions the moment my eyes 
 rested on him. Your true saint never looks much 
 like one. If you are experienced in estimating moral 
 and spiritual values in a congregation you discovered 
 long ago that the publican and pharisee sinner never 
 stays put in the back of the church where he belongs 
 and where the Scriptures covering his case so plainly 
 locate him. He is always to be found in the fore 
 ground of the sanctuary with nothing but the altar 
 rail between him and the new preacher, waiting to be 
 called on to lead in prayer, which he can do with 
 more humility and anguished eloquence than a plain
 
 MY SON 53 
 
 good man ever commands. But if he leads the prayer 
 the congregation will not follow. It plants its fore 
 legs and waits for the pastor to discover his mistake, 
 because it usually turns out that he is a professional 
 bankrupt in business, or that he shaves the notes of 
 sinners, or that he has done something to the widows 
 and orphans. 
 
 I hoped Peter would not call on this man, who 
 looked so much like a handsome prayer, to lead in 
 prayer until he knew more about his secular reputa 
 tion. 
 
 No one, I suppose, knows what the unpardonable 
 sin is. I have sometimes thought every man chooses 
 his own unpardonable sin, a particular temptation 
 that raises the spiritual hair on the spine of his soul 
 in horror at the very thought of it. For I remember 
 how many different kinds of unpardonable sins Wil 
 liam used to be called upon to pass on. But there is 
 no variation at all in what a Christian community 
 regards as unpardonable transgressions. There are 
 two: If a man is dishonest, however successfully; 
 if he is immoral, however delicately and discreetly, 
 they will have none of him in the sanctuary. His 
 prominence there is an offense. They will listen with 
 sympathy to the drunkard s or the fighting man s 
 confessions, they will back him up to the very throne 
 of grace if he leads the prayer; but if you want to 
 quench the Spirit in your church call on a note 
 shaver or Lothario to pray. They will endure him
 
 54 MY SON 
 
 in the choir, but they will not accept him on his 
 knees. 
 
 There is another equally dangerous person in 
 every church, who never sits in the amen corner, 
 nor conspicuously near the front, but somewhere in 
 the body of the congregation, like a concealed 
 weapon. It is impossible to locate him until the dust 
 that has been kicked up over the new pastor is settled 
 and we are all off for the kingdom of heaven to 
 gether. Then he comes quietly to the preacher and 
 puts him wise to everybody in the church. I have 
 known more than one church to die spiritually from 
 the bite of this serpent in its bosom without ever 
 suspecting him. He used to take the spiritual spunk 
 out of William as no other emanation of Satan ever 
 did, because he invariably left him bereft of com 
 fortable voluntary faith in so many members of his 
 congregation. 
 
 I may have been surreptitiously scouting behind 
 my glasses for this person when Peter stood up and 
 gave out the first hymn. For a moment my vision 
 was blurred by the tears in my eyes, by the prayer 
 in my heart. Then I saw Peter clearly, not pale 
 with the sense of his office, a tall slender young man, 
 dark and richly colored, very handsome and perfectly 
 at his ease. 
 
 It is now a long time ago, and I do not remember 
 his text. He took it much as he would have taken 
 off his hat upon entering the house, because this is
 
 MY SON 55 
 
 the custom, and because he would not need it in 
 there. Certainly he did not refer to this text again. 
 And you would not have been able to prove that he 
 had one by the discourse that followed. It fitted 
 the minds of his congregation like a good working 
 shirt. He mentioned the Lord by name several times, 
 but the gist of what he said meant that during this 
 year we should all get together, practice sanity, 
 health, decency and honor and enjoy our virtues. 
 
 The people were pleased. They looked refreshed, 
 a little gay, as if they had tasted a new and lively 
 beverage and found it stimulating. They crowded 
 round Peter to shake hands after the service was 
 over. Brother Stone slapped him on the back. They 
 all were animated, and wanted him to know how 
 much they had enjoyed his sermon. But I missed 
 the woman who used so often to come up timidly 
 with tears in her eyes to tell William that she had 
 been strengthened in her faith ; I did not see the silent 
 man who had been so moved that he merely wrung 
 William s hand and passed on. 
 
 I stood aside and watched my son. I saw him 
 radiating himself among these people, nothing of 
 the priest in his manner. He shook hands so many 
 times and so violently that his forelock fell down on 
 his forehead, making him handsomer than ever. He 
 was flushed with this exchange of happiness. There 
 was nothing wrong in any of it, but there was some 
 thing, not present something very old and patient,
 
 56 MY SON 
 
 that never changes. I hate to say it, but I had the 
 feeling that my son had absolved these people from 
 both their sins and the Holy Spirit. They were con 
 siderably lightened of burdens, this was apparent, 
 such was the effect of his sermon, during which he 
 had not referred to sin or to faith or to any of the 
 ancient stepping stones of peace with God. 
 
 I heard someone say as we came out that they had 
 got a live wire at last, and now that this church 
 would do something. 
 
 This prophecy was fulfilled. That church cer 
 tainly did do something. It doubled the size of its 
 congregations in three months, and nearly doubled 
 the assessments under Peter s ministry, which was a 
 light and easy ministry. In vain did Brother Stone 
 watch and wait for him to slip up on a doctrine, show 
 the horns and forked tail of a heresy. Peter was too 
 far removed from the very ground where doctrines 
 and heresies are to be found. His sermons had one 
 purpose so far as I could see to cheer you up, make 
 you forget issues that might confuse your conscience, 
 and to build up the church. His Sabbath sermon 
 was sufficiently secular to fit your weekdays. They 
 were lectures on how to live and prosper Monday, 
 Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on. 
 
 His pastoral visiting was like that of a candidate 
 seeking election. He was full of good will, good 
 works and a sort of incorrigible energy. If you bit
 
 MY SON 57 
 
 him with one of your meanest, most narrow-minded 
 convictions, he would not assault you with the Scrip 
 tures for doing it. He allowed you to keep this con 
 viction as if it was your own property and sacred to 
 you. He almost cured Stone of religious rabies in 
 this way. 
 
 The man I had noticed on the front seat that first 
 Sunday was named Belote. He was the leading 
 merchant in Brasstown and had a reputation for 
 doubtful dealing. Peter never reproved him for 
 these transgressions, neither would he permit him 
 to figure prominently in any church enterprise; but 
 he constantly mulched Belote for food to feed the 
 poor, and clothes wherewith to clothe them. No 
 other member contributed so much to charity. 
 
 "It is all I can ask Belote to do with propriety," 
 he told me. 
 
 He was shockingly intimate with this man. 
 
 "Peter," I said to him one day, "do you think you 
 should spend so much time in Belote s store?" 
 
 "I must," he answered. "Belote thinks of some 
 thing wrong to do every day. I go by there to tell 
 him not to do it." 
 
 "And does he heed your advice*?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; but the trouble is he has thought of 
 something else by the time I come next time," he 
 laughed. 
 
 "He is a sinner, nothing else," I said sharply.
 
 58 MY SON 
 
 "Comes from living constantly in the same room 
 with his emotions," said Peter. 
 
 "What do you mean? 
 
 "Well, in the old days Belote could no doubt, 
 would have qualified as an ascetic desert monk, 
 something of that sort. But it isn t done now, and 
 there is not sufficient opportunity for the exercise 
 of his emotional temperament in the common lot 
 along with the rest of us, so he takes a header now 
 and then," he laughed. 
 
 "Soon after we came here Belote told me he was 
 thinking of killing Tracy," Peter went on, smiling. 
 
 "Tracy! What could he have against Brother 
 Tracy ?" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Said Tracy had talked about him." 
 
 "He probably deserved censure," I answered. 
 
 "Yes; he admitted that. I persuaded him not 
 to kill Tracy." 
 
 "Peter, this sounds very cold-blooded." 
 
 "No; hot-blooded," he returned. "Then he ad 
 vised with me about making over all his property 
 to his wife because his creditors were pressing him. 
 I persuaded him not to do that. This morning I 
 was passing his store in a great hurry going to a com 
 mittee meeting in Stone s office, when Belote rushed 
 out, pale with excitement, caught hold of me like 
 a drowning man and led me back to his desk. He 
 was in deep trouble." 
 
 "What was it?"
 
 MY SON 59 
 
 "He said he was thinking of geeting a divorce 
 from his wife and what did I think of it? 
 
 "The wretch!" I exclaimed, recalling poor little 
 Mrs. Belote, who was the mother of five children. 
 
 "He said he could not endure his wife any longer. 
 She ragged him. He had no peace. I advised him 
 not to sue for the divorce." 
 
 "He could not get it !" 
 
 "So I told him. And I left him submissive to his 
 marriage vows. But next week it will be something 
 else. So you see how it is," Peter concluded, look 
 ing across at me, smiling. "I must visit Belote and 
 look after him as a physician attends an incurable 
 patient. He will never be a well man morally, but 
 I can prolong his usefulness by looking after him. 
 He has just contributed enough canned goods for the 
 Boy Scout camp." 
 
 I had not served as an understudy to a circuit rider 
 for thirty years without gaining considerable knowl 
 edge about sinners of Belote s type. William never 
 compromised the gospel in their favor. He held 
 them up in secret and exhorted them; he called on 
 them nearly by name in public to repent. And I 
 have seen such men soundly converted who lived 
 godly lives afterward. But if they did not repent 
 and believe he turned them out of the church, even 
 if they were prominent members who paid liberally 
 to the support of the ministry. He said it was as 
 immoral to allow them to purchase respectability
 
 60 MY SON 
 
 when they were not respectable with contributions 
 to the church, as it was to take any other kind of 
 bribe. But if after they had been so disciplined they 
 made their offering in meekness, it was no offense 
 to take it. I thought he was hard on these back 
 sliders. I used to insist that the church should be 
 a sort of hospital where the spiritually halt, lame 
 and blind ought to be received and nursed back to 
 salvation. 
 
 "Let them take the treatment and obey the rules 
 of it, then," he would answer, unmoved. 
 
 Now as I listened to Peter s account of his pastoral 
 ministrations to Belote I found myself agreeing with 
 William s sterner view. Peter was making a scien 
 tific application of the gospel to his case, permitting 
 him to bend the Scriptures to fit his carnal nature. 
 He accepted it as a fact that Belote could not live up 
 to the Christian standard, and made what use he 
 could of him in this condition to further his own 
 pastoral plans. He was honest in this point of view. 
 But there was nothing in Peter that inspired him to 
 stand up, pale to the lips, with the sweat of anguish 
 on his brow and call out to his people, "Repent! 
 Repent ! The kingdom of heaven is at hand !" 
 
 He wore a sack coat, he had a good color, and his 
 preaching consisted in encouraging everybody to go 
 ahead and do the best he could under the circum 
 stances, which, if you notice, are always furnished 
 by the world, the flesh and the devil.
 
 MY SON 61 
 
 I should have been proud of him and satisfied, 
 since for so many years I had craved a little ease 
 ment from the sterner doctrines of salvation. But 
 I was not proud of him. I was terribly uneasy about 
 him and his water-and-sand gospel. You may not 
 be able to live up to them, but your standards of 
 righteousness ought not to vary or be diminished. 
 
 I continued to sit prominently near the front in 
 the church at Brasstown, but in my heart I felt far 
 to the rearward. Sometimes when Peter was preach 
 ing one of his cheerful prancing sermons I used to 
 wonder what would happen if suddenly I stood up, 
 waved him down and called out: "Tell them, Seek 
 ye first the kingdom of God . . . and all these 
 things shall be added unto you! Things, Peter! 
 Teach them the difference between mere things and 
 the kingdom of heaven !" 
 
 I reckon he would have sent for the doctor. He 
 did stop in the midst of his sermon when Mrs. Bux- 
 ton shouted. She was a simple old woman who had 
 acquired the habit of shouting in her younger days, 
 when this was not regarded as a breach of good man 
 ners before the Lord. And she would do it upon 
 the slightest rise in spiritual temperature during a 
 service. On this Sabbath evening she was sitting 
 as usual near the altar, her little old gray head and 
 withered face lifted like a candle against the wall. 
 And she was listening no doubt a trifle dizzily to 
 what Peter was saying about the Golden Rule of
 
 62 MY SON 
 
 God toward man, when she caught sight of the 
 smiling faces of the congregation. She looked round, 
 startled, much as you do when you have missed the 
 point, saw this glow of appreciation all about her 
 and mistook it for spiritual animation. Instantly 
 she bobbed up and out into the aisle with a sort 
 of cataleptic spring, threw her hands over her head 
 and shouted in a high treble voice "G-1-o-r-y !" 
 
 She sailed down one aisle and up the other, clap 
 ping her hands and letting out one of these little 
 cambric-needle shrieks at rhythmic intervals. 
 
 When someone began to shout in the old days the 
 preacher was supposed himself to be too much in the 
 spirit to stop preaching. Rather, he instinctively 
 preached louder, a circumstance which invariably 
 increased the emotional energy of the person shout 
 ing. It was not until Mrs. Buxton arrived in front 
 of the pulpit that she realized her pastor had deserted 
 her. Peter was standing like an incensed statue with 
 his eyes damningly fixed upon the clock on the op 
 posite wall. She paused, stared at him like a little 
 old bird whose feathers have fallen, whose wings 
 drag in the dust. Then she drifted backward into 
 the nearest seat, mortally wounded in her spiritual 
 pride. 
 
 This was another feather in Peter s cap; every 
 thing was, though I doubt if it was to be a jewel in 
 his crown, quenching a good old woman whose 
 ladder to God was her own emotions. But we
 
 MY SON 63 
 
 heard that she frequently disturbed revival services 
 and that everybody was glad to have her quelled 
 and permanently seated before the revival season 
 began. 
 
 Peter had his Brasstown congregation by the hair 
 of the head; that is to say, he reorganized every 
 department of the church along modern lines. 
 He worked under cover through Sister Stone to 
 expand the Women s Missionary Society. He 
 whipped all the men into a laymen s movement, 
 which was to do everything, from keeping the town 
 clean and electing the next mayor to providing extra 
 funds for the personal needs of the church, including 
 lectures and social receptions. He established a 
 credit-and-reward system in the Sunday school which 
 doubled the attendance and excited competition and 
 cupidity in the minds of the young to such an ex 
 tent that the standards of Biblical scholarship were 
 greatly advanced. Under his leadership the Metho 
 dist church became at once the most progressive 
 enterprise in the town. It rocked as if a boom had 
 struck it. But this was not a spiritual boom, there 
 was no hallelujah note in the fuss it made. 
 
 I tried not to be critical of Peter, but it seemed 
 to me he was substituting secular methods for the 
 work of the Holy Spirit. I have always resented the 
 old horned stewards in Methodist churches, who 
 made it their Christian duty to nag and obstruct the 
 pastor; but if I had been such a one in this church
 
 64 MY SON 
 
 at Brasstown I should have laid a restraining hand 
 on Peter. On the contrary, his stewards were secret 
 ly boastful about the way he emptied the other 
 churches in town when he preached. And it was 
 a bit stirring to see half of the congregation get up 
 and walk out on Communion Sunday, because they 
 were Baptists and must avoid the embarrassment of 
 having the sacrament offered them. 
 
 We had been on this work nearly two months be 
 fore Job s messengers began to arrive. I have always 
 thought these servants, who brought Job bad news, 
 were the most typical-of-man features of that story. 
 Certainly I never knew a preacher who was not af 
 flicted by them. 
 
 One very cold day in December I was sitting in 
 the corner beside the fire in the parlor knitting a 
 muffler. I was trying to finish it for Peter before 
 the following Saturday, when he was to go to his 
 first appointment at Suetally. He was seated reared 
 back very comfortably in the parsonage morris chair, 
 directly in front of the fire. And he was reading 
 Kenan s Life of Jesus. I felt the same sense of dis 
 approval that I used to have when I caught him when 
 he was a boy reading doubtful fiction. I knew noth 
 ing of this man, Renan, except that he was a French 
 man. I admire the French people. I believe that 
 they are thrifty, brilliant and exceedingly brave, 
 but I have never been able to pin my faith to their 
 godliness. The things I have heard about them are
 
 MY SON 65 
 
 very fine, but not pious, and frequently not moral. 
 I could not help thinking that what Matthew or 
 Mark or one of the other apostles had to tell of the 
 life of Christ would be more serviceable to Peter 
 as a preacher. I was trying to decide how to broach 
 the subject to him when I heard a sort of muttered 
 disturbance in front of the house. I glanced through 
 the window and saw an enormous old man taking 
 himself carefully out of the buggy and at the same 
 time exhorting the skittish-eared mule which was 
 hitched to it, to "Whoa!" 
 
 He was about six feet in height, most of this being 
 in the length of his legs, which were astonishingly 
 thin considering the bulk of his body. He wore a 
 black slouch hat, and gray clothes; his coat had 
 short frock tails which stood out from him as if 
 they did not like him, though they had been associ 
 ated with him for a long time. He was clean shaven, 
 and his chin stuck out ominously. 
 
 I had never seen him before, but I recognized him 
 instantly. He looked and walked like a man em 
 powered by divine Providence with all the authority 
 of misfortune. 
 
 Peter, who had also seen him by this time, laid 
 aside his book and went to receive him at the front 
 door. 
 
 I snatched up Kenan s Life of Jesus and hid it in 
 my work basket. You cannot be too particular 
 about things like that.
 
 66 MY SON 
 
 I heard Peter admit that he was the new preacher, 
 and the thunderous voice of our visitor announce 
 that he was Altimus Sparks. 
 
 "I reckon you have heard of me," he added in 
 the retching tones of a man who is taking off his 
 overcoat and wheezing from the exertion. 
 
 We had heard of him ! Every man has his volun 
 tary biographers, who publish the record of his deeds. 
 We knew that Brother Sparks was chairman of the 
 board of stewards in the church at Suetally. We 
 had heard that he was as innocent of salvation as a 
 heathen, but he was the heavyweight champion of 
 the Methodist doctrines in that community. He had 
 never been defeated in an argument, and he held the 
 belt, especially on infant baptism. 
 
 Peter, who is a tall, well-set-up man, looked small 
 and insignificant beside him when they came in to 
 gether. I told Brother Sparks how glad I was to 
 meet him at last, which is always a safe prevarica 
 tion, even morally, because you do it in charity that 
 you may not wound the sensibilities of the person 
 whom you are not glad to see. 
 
 He said the usual things in reply, and hoped I 
 was "well, ma am." Then he sat down in the morris 
 chair, which groaned dangerously. Suddenly the 
 whole room seemed crowded. Peter had to edge 
 his way round to a small chair in the opposite 
 corner. 
 
 Sparks was a fat man, whose countenance was not
 
 MY SON 67 
 
 confined to his mere face. He seemed to look at you 
 from the whole expanse of his broad shirt front. His 
 coat lay back from it like the lips of an enormous 
 grin at your expense. 
 
 He wagged us a measuring glance ornamented 
 with an intimate grin. Then he told me he hoped 
 I would pick out a wife for Peter as soon as possible. 
 "Unmarried preacher is as dangerous as a torpedo 
 in a church," he haw-hawed. And having discharged 
 this blunderbuss he informed Peter that he had come 
 to see him about the church at Suetally. 
 
 He said this church was on its last legs. It was 
 located in a valley between two mountains and the 
 high waters during the winter and spring rendered 
 it inaccessible. But this was not the worst. It was 
 in a community of Hard-shell Baptists ! 
 
 I have noticed this, that in mountainous regions 
 where there is a great deal of superfluous water 
 Primitive Baptists always predominate. The nature 
 of the country, the torrential rains, seem to produce 
 them as it does certain plants and water fowls. 
 There is a sort of laurel wreath of them which ex 
 tends in this section from the high crests of Ken 
 tucky through the Cumberland Mountains of Tenes- 
 see, and all over the foothills of the Blue Ridge in 
 Georgia and Northern Alabama. Neither Methodist 
 churches nor Presbyterians flourish in these places, 
 and there is practically no such thing as an Episco 
 palian. I have often wondered whether the weather
 
 68 MY SON 
 
 and the topography of the country had anything to 
 do with the creed we choose. It is a fearsome 
 thought. 
 
 Brother Sparks went on telling Peter about the 
 Primitive Baptists, who were so many thorns in the 
 side of the church at Suetally; how they would not 
 permit their children to attend Sabbath school ; how, 
 when the Methodists had a revival and stirred things 
 up and got an altar full of penitents converted, these 
 people invariably started a protracted meeting 
 preaching their doctrines, and the upshot was that 
 they herded these new-born souls through the bap 
 tismal waters of the nearest stream into their own 
 church ! 
 
 I hoped Peter would show some of the natural in 
 stincts of a Methodist shepherd over this account of 
 the marauding Baptists at Suetally. But he did not, 
 which troubled me. You cannot be too tolerant and 
 be anything else very definite. The meekest Metho 
 dist preacher I have ever known would show fight 
 when provoked by a Baptist. He will lie down, like 
 the lion and the lamb together, with a Presbyterian 
 or an Episcopalian, if so be that the latter will keep 
 him such close company, but he will lash out at a 
 Baptist. His Christianity becomes a sort of doc 
 trinal fierceness. One of the strongest sermons I 
 ever heard William preach was on the broad and 
 catholic meaning of the word "baptist." He was 
 equally imbued with power when he preached on
 
 MY SON 69 
 
 the doctrine of "election." But he would rest peace 
 fully on his strictly evangelical texts in a town full 
 of Presbyterians and never lift his voice against "pre 
 destination." 
 
 I have sometimes wondered if this antagonism 
 which Methodists feel toward Baptists does not 
 spring from the class distinction which the latter 
 make when they practice close communion. We all 
 do it who can in the world, but this is the only 
 church which does it openly and honestly before 
 the Lord. I reckon many a Baptist has suffered 
 from being obliged for conscience sake to behave 
 this way. 
 
 Personally I never could see any great difference 
 between the pivotal doctrines of damnation in any 
 of the churches. It comes to the same thing, whether 
 you are not elected to eternal life or are predestined 
 to damnation, or become, as the Methodists believe, 
 an apostate. 
 
 What worried me was that Peter never seemed 
 to clinch down and hold views that sternly divided 
 him from the world. He did make a raid during 
 this year on the Baptists at Suetally. He took fifty 
 of the younger ones into his church, but it was on 
 easy terms, and due to his personal popularity rather 
 than to any deep work of grace in them. Brother 
 Sparks was gratified, but he was not satisfied. He 
 was himself a Hard-shell Methodist, and he missed 
 the bones of our doctrines in Peter s sermons. He
 
 70 MY SON 
 
 used to appear at regular intervals at the parsonage 
 enormous and saturnine, to discuss emersion, free 
 will, and other issues of contention between him and 
 the Suetally Baptists. He was a hungry man. And 
 Peter nourished him in tolerance, which was like 
 offering Sparks a stone when he asked for the blood 
 of his enemies. 
 
 "The question is not whether you are baptized one 
 way or the other," he told Sparks one day, "and 
 it is not whether you have an emotional experience 
 or not. Emotions are the mere flowers of the animal 
 temperament" he used the word animal ! "which 
 bloom quickly and die quickly. It is unnatural and 
 not safe to live according to your transient hallelu 
 jahs, because you cannot, and the effort to do so 
 leads to hypocrisy and self-deceit." 
 
 When you are not very good yourself, being 
 called to the secular life from birth, you do want 
 your pastor to be a holy man. He represents your 
 vicarious holdings in salvation. Sparks, who was 
 sitting with Peter on the front porch with his legs 
 elevated and his feet resting on the balusters, 
 brought them to the floor with a thump. He leaned 
 forward in his chair and stared at Peter as if 
 he had suddenly discovered that there was no 
 great difference nor distance between him and this 
 man, spiritually speaking. And he was disap 
 pointed. 
 
 "The important thing in your religious life," Peter
 
 MY SON 71 
 
 went on, unconscious of this diminishing gaze, "is 
 to shed the sins you inevitably accumulate in the 
 business of living, endeavor to harm no man, do 
 your duty as it really is, not as you wish to see it, 
 render unto Caesar the things that are Csesar s, and 
 keep at it!" 
 
 This old ruffian Methodist never came again to 
 commune with his pastor. It was significant. He 
 had been seeking the heights in his perverted way, 
 and he had found Peter on the level. 
 
 Sometimes I honored my son for his invincible 
 honesty, for the cool clarity of his mind, the sim 
 plicity with which he performed every good office 
 of his calling, as if this was a matter of business. His 
 temper was always serene. He never suffered from 
 moods of spiritual depression. He prepared his ser 
 mons carefully, much as teachers prepare lectures. 
 And I discovered that he also prepared the prayers 
 he prayed for his people in church on Sunday. These 
 were very conservative petitions. It seemed that he 
 did not want to inconvenience the Lord to change 
 his plans by granting anything unusual or out of 
 the fixed order of things. I missed that childish and 
 beautiful valor of faith which inspires men to ask 
 the humanly impossible of their Heavenly Father 
 and get it. This is my point. They do get it ! I 
 could not imagine Peter taking his umbrella to church 
 during a drought and praying for rain. It seemed to
 
 72 MY SON 
 
 me that he never asked for anything which the Lord 
 had not granted or arranged for from the beginning 
 when he created the heavens and the earth, marked 
 off the zones and seasons and established order in 
 everything except the heart of man, which is the 
 one place where creation is still going on. 
 
 The brethren in the church at Brasstown furnished 
 a curious commentary on the quality of Peter s 
 prayers. When he began to preach there they 
 shouted their amens as usual, but they gradually 
 ceased to do this. It is only when you have the faith 
 and courage to pray for that which is beyond the 
 bounds of human reason that the brethren hunch 
 the Lord with groans and amens. The reasonable 
 ness of Peter on his knees compelled me to fear that 
 he did not really believe in the power of prayer. If 
 we are entirely reasonable we must live like brutes, 
 whose instincts are the result of experience well rea 
 soned out. But if we are at all spiritual-minded we 
 must take the sublime risks of surviving somewhere 
 above the plane of rationalism. 
 
 I was the more concerned for Peter because of his 
 sincerity. He was an honest man, but no priest. 
 He had not received his sight, but he walked without 
 fear in places where saints fear to tread. I prayed 
 that the Lord would forgive his presumption. And 
 I was in earnest about it. A mother kneeling before 
 the throne of grace is no puling saint, if she is a saint 
 at all. I was willing that Peter should be tried,
 
 MY SON 73 
 
 humbled and chastened in his spirit, but I reckon 
 every prayer-bearing angel in heaven knew my posi 
 tion on this matter, and that I would never stand 
 meekly by and see my son destroyed because the 
 mind and learning of these times had enveloped him 
 and obscured his vision of the way, the truth and 
 the life. Peter had some vague sense of my con 
 cern for him, but he atrtibuted it to my old-fashioned 
 notions, and got on very well with me by evading 
 issues. 
 
 We are queer creatures. One of the conditions 
 of life in this world, I believe, is that we cannot 
 be satisfied. I used to wish for a little carnal rest, 
 not the kind you have when for a moment you "sit 
 and sing your soul away to everlasting bliss," which 
 was always too high an experience to be comfortable ; 
 but I longed for human repose in the things that are 
 here and now. I might be attending to the plain 
 duties involved in securing this repose, like putting 
 my house in order or darning our Sabbath clothes, 
 but I never could be quite at peace knowing that 
 William was in the study across the hall or pacing 
 up and down behind the house wrestling in prayer 
 for the "witness of the Spirit," because I never did 
 know whether he would get it or not, and that kept 
 my heart aching and anxious for him. Now I found 
 myself worrying because Peter did not seem to feel 
 the "burden of souls." I was homesick for the past.
 
 74 MY SON 
 
 I longed for one of those old-fashioned revivals 
 where the congregation dwells in a sort of penitential 
 anguish on this chorus of the opening hymn: 
 
 Lord, revive us, Lord revive us! 
 
 All our strength must come from Thee. 
 Lord, revive us! Lord re-vi-ve us a- gain! 
 
 I used to get tearful sometimes when I thought of 
 those scenes back there in the old candlelit churches. 
 Then I d go out in the yard and look up and down 
 that street in Brasstown and wonder if I ought not 
 to go and see somebody in affliction, or who was sick ; 
 but there was a committee for doing every single 
 Christian thing in Peter s church, and I was not on 
 the one that dealt with the sick and afflicted. Then 
 maybe Sister Stone, who lived next door, would 
 come out on her porch and hail me and want to know 
 if I was well to-day. 
 
 I have noticed this, that nobody ever asks a man 
 if he is well ; but one woman invariably asks another 
 woman if she is. My health was always good, but 
 I did not feel well. My immortal spirit seemed to 
 be run down, and I had to resist the temptation to 
 tell Sister Stone that I was not very well, but just 
 able to be up and about. Then she would ask me 
 to come over and have some ice cream if it was a hot 
 afternoon. Or, if it was in the morning she would 
 fly back in the house and reappear with some toma-
 
 MY SON 75 
 
 toes, which she insisted upon my taking because my 
 plants had not done well and she had discovered that 
 Peter liked tomatoes. They were all kind and 
 thoughtful. But it seemed to me I had few oppor 
 tunities to practice my own kinder virtues. 
 
 I remember a rosebush in the back yard of this 
 parsonage at Brasstown. It must have been about 
 my age, as the life of a rose is reckoned, elderly, and 
 somewhat amorphous as to shape, with its branches 
 sprawling like a wide skirt on the ground. I be 
 came attached to this old bush. I had come in the 
 winter season and could not tell what kind of rose 
 it was, as you do not know this woman or that one 
 until you see her doing her daily, not her Sunday 
 deeds. In February I cut away the dead branches 
 and tied the others up, dug round the roots and fixed 
 it up according to the directions in the Scripture for 
 the barren fig tree. I used to slip out there every 
 day and pick the bugs off and watch the buds swell. 
 Then suddenly one morning late in May after a 
 warm rain the night before, I found it covered with 
 a rich dark red mass of old-fashioned velvet roses. 
 I had not seen one for years. The variety is prac 
 tically extinct, like certain kinds of people. 
 
 I was reduced to that, you understand, feeling 
 kin to an old bush in the back yard which must have 
 been planted there about the time I started out as 
 a Methodist itinerant s wife. 
 
 As the year drew to a close at Brasstown I thought
 
 76 MY SON 
 
 I felt a reaction in the church toward Peter. Some 
 of the older members grew strangely quiet. Now 
 and then one of them looked at him queerly as you 
 do at a genial and successful promoter who has 
 done much for your town but who is about to pass on 
 to other fields leaving you to handle the best way 
 you can the big business he has started, which has 
 been a very expensive business, and you knew very 
 well that he made you hit a pace that you cannot 
 keep up, not if you were redeemed and baptized 
 every six months. 
 
 In short, I think they began to realize with dolor 
 ous misgivings that the showing Peter would make 
 at Conference might have the effect of increasing 
 their assessments next year, besides giving them a 
 reputation for being progressive, which they doubted 
 if they could keep up even under his leadership. I 
 thought they were singularly resigned, however, to 
 the notion that he would not be back, but would un 
 doubtedly receive a much better appointment. 
 Everybody liked him, but the old financial heads 
 wagged when they computed what it had cost them 
 to keep him. They figured shrewdly that they could 
 do very well spiritually with a less expensive 
 preacher. I thought myself that this church would 
 be years recovering from Peter s executive ability, 
 and that if he should be sent back he would find a 
 much more difficult proposition on his hands.
 
 MY SON 77 
 
 Fortunately he was moved and given a much bet* 
 ter appointment. But I have written at length on 
 his first year in the itinerancy, because of what hap 
 pened afterward.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 I NEED not have been so concerned about facing 
 the old-fashioned saints on the backwoods cir 
 cuits with Peter and his newfangled ministry. You 
 cannot keep an up-to-date preacher on a circuit far 
 out in the hills where Providence measures the rain 
 and the seasons according to his wisdom, not accord 
 ing to your particular needs, and where the people 
 walk with a stoop as if they said with their very 
 backs, "Thy will be done !" Their circuit rider must 
 be a little run down intellectually from not being 
 able to afford the latest books by the highest critics 
 on the Scriptures. He must be sufficiently weather- 
 beaten spiritually to prove how close kin he is to 
 eternal things and just the word. 
 
 Peter was no such preacher. I do not say that the 
 training he had fitted him for a closer walk with 
 God, but it certainly did fit him for serving a differ 
 ent class of people altogether. It seemed that the 
 Conference thought so, for he was sent to an up-and- 
 doing church in an up-and-doing town the next year. 
 Brasstown was the last glimpse we had of the back 
 woods gospel area in the Methodist itinerancy. And 
 Suetally Chapel was the only out-and-out country 
 church he ever served. 
 
 78
 
 MY SON T9 
 
 We heard sad news from this church the follow 
 ing summer. The last of the fifty converts Peter 
 had filched from the Hard-shell Baptists had got 
 themselves properly immersed and gone back into 
 the church of their fathers and of the streams and 
 hills of that section! There are certain Scriptures, 
 I have often thought, which should not be used ex 
 cept in extreme cases, as you resort to a dangerous 
 and desperate remedy for a patient who is about to 
 die, anyhow. Even then they ought not to be spoken 
 at people from the pulpit, and you would be barely 
 justified in recalling them secretly and sadly in your 
 heart, that you may work the harder and pray the 
 more earnestly that they do not apply in the case 
 of this man or that woman whose spiritual condition 
 is very bad. The twenty-second verse of the second 
 chapter of Second Peter always seemed to me most 
 awful and the least quotable. I doubt if anybody 
 but an old fisherman disciple who had been accus 
 tomed all his life to ugly sights and disagreeable 
 smells would have used such a figure of speech to 
 convey a disastrous truth. But I have observed this 
 not to paraphrase what Saint Peter said at all 
 that a man wit 1 * a Baptist-made mind will return 
 to his doctrint every time. He will do it in his 
 secret heart, even if you are able to keep his name 
 on the roll of your Methodist church. You may 
 wrestle in prayer for his immortal soul at your altar, 
 and you may have the joy of seeing him converted
 
 80 MY SON 
 
 there; but when it comes to signing up his member 
 ship contract to live and die in grace, our vows do 
 not fit the awful strictness of his mind; the little 
 water we pour on his head is not enough to satisfy 
 the cleansing symbolism of a complete baptism. He 
 wants to be dipped. This is not foolishness. Noth 
 ing is foolish which satisfies a man s conscience about 
 assuming so great an obligation. 
 
 I warned Peter that there would be some back 
 firing in this church at Suetally when these recently 
 redeemed Baptists whom he had taken into it realized 
 how lightly and insufficiently they had been merely 
 sprinkled in the name of the Lord. But he always 
 left the dead to bury their dead on the work from 
 which he had passed. His whole mind and attention 
 was fixed on the church where he was the present 
 pastor in charge. His only comment upon the disaster 
 at Suetally was that probably the preacher who fol 
 lowed him had fallen under the influence of Brother 
 Sparks and had stirred up the animus of the com 
 munity by preaching doctrinal sermons. 
 
 His advancement in the Conference was remark 
 able when you consider the military system under 
 which our church is governed, a system complicated 
 with paternalism in a very literal sense. Thus a 
 preacher may be sent to a certain church when he 
 is not qualified to fill it, because he has a large family 
 and must have an appointment that will support him. 
 Peter was not married. I was the only family he
 
 MY SON 81 
 
 had, and I was merely the relict of a former family, 
 but he was given appointments that might easily 
 have supported a preacher with a wife and five chil 
 dren. 
 
 The bishop of a Methodist Conference has a cabi 
 net. The members of it are all "secretaries of in 
 terior," but they are called presiding elders. And 
 like Higher Adams, they have dominion over three 
 or four hundred preachers in this Conference. Some 
 of them are holy men, some are not so holy but have 
 great executive ability. Others, with no particular 
 renown for either piety or ability, have that queer 
 thing common to many men who never succeed at 
 anything but politics. They wear velvet gloves on 
 their spiritual fingers and have astounding influence 
 in managing the affairs of our church. But nearly 
 all of them have the horse-trading instinct. The 
 difference is that they trade preachers with one an 
 other. And it is natural for a presiding elder to 
 strive to get the best preachers in his district. I do 
 not know that there is anything wrong in the prac 
 tice, but it is sometimes hard on an old itinerant war- 
 horse, who has seen his best day and has grown stiff 
 in his legs from so many years of hard service. His 
 presiding elder swaps him off for anything he can get, 
 maybe a youngster just entering ministry a risk, 
 but a better one than an old man who had failed in 
 everything but his Psalms and prayers.
 
 82 MY SON 
 
 My belief is that Peter owed his rapid promotion 
 to his reputation in the bishop s cabinet for building 
 up every church he served. His reports at the An 
 nual Conference always flattered him. He was like 
 oil on troubled waters in a church row. He even 
 managed to get his board of stewards to live in love 
 and charity with him, though I still maintain that he 
 could not have done it two years in succession in the 
 same church, because by the end of the first year he 
 had invariablly driven them so hard that if he had 
 been returned they would have shown him their 
 heels, if I know Methodist stewards as well as I think 
 I do. Anyhow, Peter was in demand with the pre 
 siding elders. He was the shooting star of his Con 
 ference. And he always landed with his light shin 
 ing as pastor in one of the larger churches. This was 
 bad for him, I thought. A preacher may think he has 
 surrendered all for the sake of his Lord s service, but 
 he never can be sure until he gets a poor little runt 
 of a circuit somewhere when he was expecting a good 
 appointment. Then if he can keep his heart from 
 burning about the juggling and swapping among the 
 elders that resulted in his getting this backset in the 
 ministry, and if he "takes this work as from the 
 Lord," in spite of what he knows went on in the 
 cabinet, he is really qualified in grace and humility 
 for a better place in the next world at least. 
 
 Peter was sent to big country towns for two or 
 three years. I went along, with William s old box
 
 MY SON 83 
 
 of sermons and Kitto s Commentaries, you may say 
 as a sort of maternal epilogue to my son. I did not 
 have any active part in his work. I was merely 
 present, not voting. It is my belief that I knew as 
 much about the future as Peter and his dizzy congre 
 gations did; but I felt like an old gray-headed "Nay, 
 Nay" whose face had been turned forcibly toward 
 the past and made to sit that way while my son led 
 his flocks joyfully through the pleasanter, greener 
 pastures of the right-now period. 
 
 I have been tempted to write a book of meditations 
 for elderly people s indignant comfort and gratifica 
 tion about the way we are removed from the order of 
 things just when we know more than anybody else 
 does about life, and have developed the instinct to 
 teach and manage the world according to experience, 
 not experiments. 
 
 I could say a few things that would knock the 
 socks off of pretentious youth. If we in our years 
 made the mistakes, did the foolhardy things and 
 risked without testing the theories they try out, fre 
 quently at the whole world s expense, the last one 
 of us would be put in the mad house. Very few of 
 us die of our years. We are dead while yet we live 
 because they counsel us with the tenderest kindness. 
 Peter had that way with me : "You are growing old, 
 mother. You must not exert yourself too much. 
 Don t worry. Just run round and Visit and enjoy 
 yourself. You have had a hard life. Now take
 
 84 MY SON 
 
 things easy. I am getting on with my work. The 
 people like my preaching. I have the largest con 
 gregations they ever had in this church, so they tell 
 me." 
 
 He would say something like that. 
 
 And I would answer something like this: "But, 
 Peter, you do not search the hearts of your people. 
 You never mention their sins. Sin is a word you do 
 not use. You do not exhort them to repent and be 
 lieve. You do not seem to realize, my son, that the 
 world has lost its faith. You preach salvation by 
 prosperity." 
 
 Then I would tell him the things his prominent 
 members were doing, things forbidden in the Chris 
 tian life as well as in the discipline of our church. 
 And he would retort by reminding me of the good 
 they were also accomplishing so much for charity, 
 so much for mission, so much for general collections. 
 He was an optimist, but not spiritual. 
 
 Then I d get up and go into another room, sit 
 down, fold my hands and think how queer it was to 
 be like this. I recalled so many years when I was 
 an up-and-doing woman in the church whose opinion 
 was regarded. I remembered how I used to tell Peter 
 to go and say his prayers, and he went and said them. 
 How I taught him what was right and what was 
 wrong, and he believed me. Now this church might 
 as well be some kind of economic institution of learn 
 ing in which I felt like an old dunce. And now I
 
 MY SON 85 
 
 had lost my grip on Peter as if he were a wayward 
 son. 
 
 It all comes to this you must be meek at last. 
 This is the fate of every man and of every woman 
 when the years stretch farther and farther behind 
 you, and you feel the cold east wind of another coun 
 try blowing in your face. You may bluster about 
 it, deny your age, vow that you feel as young as 
 you ever did, keep your place in the world or the 
 church and even in the conversation, but your bones 
 tell no lies. They ache at night as if your flesh was 
 a frost on them. And sometimes even in company 
 you must reach down slyly to loosen a shoe string 
 because your feet are tired and swollen from the 
 long, long journey you have come, though you do not 
 walk much now. If you keep your place in the 
 world it is only through courtesy or through the pres 
 tige you acquired before you became what you are 
 now. If no one interrupts you when you monopolize 
 the conversation, if they listen respectfully and never 
 contradict you nor oppose your opinions, that is a 
 fatal sign. They do not believe a single thing you 
 say. Your wisdom is like your old coat ; it does not 
 fit the arching back of their younger views. They 
 are merely practicing good manners to the aged. 
 They do not really hear what you are saying. They 
 may be even attending your funeral, thinking of you 
 in the terms of your obituary. What a fine woman 
 you used to be in your prime?
 
 86 MY SON 
 
 I had this experience sometimes when we were 
 asked out to tea. I was so often reminded by con 
 trast of some other supper William and I had in a 
 cabin by candlelight long ago with old Brother 
 Rhuebottom and his wife. Or I would get off on the 
 experiences we had during one of his best revivals, 
 where sinners were converted and saints shouted. 
 Then suddenly I would realize that everybody was 
 being politely silent but not really listening. And 
 probably my hostess would be regarding me with 
 lifted brows and a small, thin smile, and I under 
 stood by the enticing way she said, "Yes," and 
 "Weren t those grand old days?" as if these days 
 were now finely polished swords hanging on the wall 
 for keepsakes that she was sacrificing herself to 
 my garrulity and trying to make herself my only 
 victim so that the other guests might go on talking 
 about what they had been talking about when I 
 started off on this tangent that led backward into 
 the past. I used to feel a little hurt, and withdrew 
 as soon as possible into the proper silence of my 
 years. 
 
 It is all very well to be dead to the world, but it 
 is a queer and depressing sensation to discover that 
 the world is dead to you. It is not so easy to take 
 a back seat in your old age when in your prime you 
 were a prominent person, even if you were only dis 
 tinguished for your meekness and long-suffering. 
 And there are moments to the last when you must
 
 MY SON 87 
 
 spring to your feet from force of habit, wave your 
 hand and say: "My dear brethren, I rise to a point 
 of personal privilege. Everybody here is wrong but 
 
 me! 
 
 You may as well sit down and let the wrong go on. 
 The brethren will not recognize you. You are out 
 of order. 
 
 I have seen this trembling-kneed tragedy too many 
 times not to recognize the symptoms of it in my own 
 case. So I tried to be patient and wait for what 
 would happen. I wanted to be somewhere round 
 when the mountains fell on Peter. I have never 
 claimed to be a very good woman; but I have 
 noticed this, that there are two things that cannot 
 be changed the weather and the word. We have 
 changed everything else. We have made the earth 
 over many times on top. We have built cities where 
 rivers ran. W T e sail a thousand ships where once 
 was dry land. We have cut out the whole geography 
 of the world half a dozen times. We have moved 
 races as if they were baggage. We have produced 
 new nations and new civilizations. Sometimes I 
 have thought in a horrified moment that if God had 
 not made this earth some man would have made it. 
 Give him an anvil and an atom and he can do nearly 
 anything that is a thing. But who by taking thought 
 can change the wind from the east to the west, or 
 cause one drop of rain to fall, or make a season fair 
 when clouds steam up ? That breath which the Lord
 
 88 MY SON 
 
 breathed upon this earth when he said, "Let there be 
 light," so that he could set up a firmament to divide 
 the waters from the waters and establish the dry 
 land, and started the grass to growing with the dew 
 on it, is the same wind that blew up the first cloud 
 from which the rain fell, and it is still blowing 
 where it listeth according to his mind and his sea 
 sons. And we cannot do a thing about it except 
 put on more clothes and build a fire; or take off some 
 clothes and not build a fire. 
 
 It is the same with the word. We cannot change 
 it. It is the weather of immortality. It is the very 
 breath of God to the soul of man. Nothing we do 
 or think can take its place. The fact remains that 
 the pure in heart do see God, and they do it by 
 faith. They are good by faith, they love and hope 
 by faith, and they are the only peace makers in this 
 world who do make and keep the peace. They are 
 the safe people. The word is their law and their 
 life. They are still the leaven that leaveneth what 
 we call Christian civilization. They are yet the most 
 powerful and most influential people among us with 
 out making a fuss about it. They hold things to 
 gether in spite of wars and politics and the masses 
 and classes who work and work in idleness and bitter 
 ness to achieve their greeds and purposes. 
 
 What does it matter that the mere form of the 
 Scriptures is blown down the windy ages to us out 
 of songs and myths, as the mere body of a man comes
 
 MY SON 89 
 
 up from the familiar dust? The truth is in them, as 
 the spirit of Something not dust is in man. This 
 truth cannot be changed without destroying man by 
 the very perversity of man. Look at the witnesses 
 against him. Every other living leopard thing, every 
 flying, crawling, creeping, walking thing is instinct 
 ively afraid of him. They know that he is different, 
 something more or worse than a mere animal. 
 
 I never had much learning, but I have accumu 
 lated considerable wisdom of the kind a wayfaring 
 man, even if he is not very bright, gets, simply by 
 doing the way he ought to do. And I have observed 
 that it does something to a man who substitutes his 
 reason and his convenience for faith in God. Reason 
 belongs to j.ust our dust, and that part of us only 
 belongs to th^ time of day in which we live. And if 
 we do not believe beyond this dust that merely 
 clothes us and this short day which is only a little 
 spoolful of time, wound out of eternity and cannot 
 be broken but takes us again into it well, you can 
 look round and see what it does to people. A lot 
 of them are snarled up in just this world s time of 
 day. They are the halt, lame and blind among us, 
 trying to prepare a revolution that will enable them 
 to take what they will not earn, trying to destroy the 
 word which is the only law that cannot be repealed, 
 amended or changed. 
 
 It will not happen. That revolution will not come 
 off. It will not, even if it comes, because a revolu-
 
 90 MY SON 
 
 tion is by nature a mere blast of temper. It cannot 
 go on. And when the dust of it clears and the dead 
 of it are buried, nothing of any real importance will 
 be changed. Everything will be ready, as it was in 
 the beginning the same weather, the same inviolate 
 word for those who shall have learned that the "per 
 fect law of liberty" is work and obedience. 
 
 During these earlier years of Peter s ministry I 
 was at a loss to discover the name of the thing he 
 had so innocently and honestly substituted for the 
 religion of his fathers. Finally I discovered that 
 it was not God at all, merely the science of human 
 duty. Every preacher has his favorite bywords of the 
 gospel. William s were : "Ye must be born again," 
 "Believe in me and ye shall have eternal life," "Keep 
 the faith," and a hundred similar phrases. But Peter 
 was always quoting from some Ph.D. So-and-So, who 
 was a scholar but not an apostle. 
 
 One must not object to these books as literature, 
 and no doubt they are useful to people who desire to 
 cultivate a sober dullness of mind and character. But 
 for the priests of God there are the teachings of 
 Jesus, the first and second Epistles of the Apostles, 
 the Acts to guide him in practical service. And if 
 he ought to touch up his congregation with a little 
 harshness, he can always find it in the Old Testa 
 ment. I never thought much of Solomon as a Chris 
 tian man, but he had a dolorous wisdom of life that 
 suits the taste of the bitterer saints. And if there
 
 MY SON 91 
 
 is some transgressor in his congregation who he knows 
 ought to be searched out and attended to, it is not 
 necessary to call him by name and hurt his feelings. 
 The preacher has only to take his text from the right 
 Psalm, because David has prepared all the rituals of 
 penitence any kind of sinner needs. If he wants elo 
 quence to inspire him there is Isaiah, the most nobly 
 eloquent man, living or dead, without one strain of 
 Promethean impotence in the torrential splendors of 
 his great spirit. 
 
 One Sunday Peter read the Ten Commandments, 
 and then preached, you may say, at random on the 
 moral law. He did not take these commandments 
 one by one and test his people with them. He did 
 not quote from Moses or any other Scripture. But 
 he said a good deal in this sermon, which I believe 
 was quoted, more than you could prove, because you 
 could not tell exactly when he passed fr.jni Hegel to 
 Hobbes, except that now and then he seemed to strike 
 a sort of intellectual air pocket when he dropped in 
 plain view of the humbler intelligences in his con 
 gregation. I watched him, and I was bound to con 
 clude that these descents were the only parts of 
 that discourse which he had got from his own 
 thinking, and all of it was seventh cousin removed 
 from the Scriptures^ which are always addressed 
 personally to "you" and may always be recognized 
 by that.
 
 92 MY SON 
 
 Finally he passed entirely out of sight in a sort 
 of passive verb obscurity though he was mounted on 
 what he called Kant s "categorical imperative." 
 
 I remember an old man named Glass who lived 
 years ago in one of our college towns. He was dis 
 tinguished for his simplicity and for the fact that he 
 was almost stone deaf. He had not attended re 
 ligious services for thirty years on this account. But 
 having learned that a celebrated doctor of divinity 
 would preach on the psychology of Saint Paul he 
 dusted his coat, combed his long white beard and 
 went to church that day. He sat on the front bench, 
 leaning far forward, his doddering old head cocked 
 to one side, his hand cupped back of his best ear, 
 and his eyes fixed in a sort of rheumy astonishment 
 on the great man, who read what he had to say about 
 the vertebra of Saint Paul s spiritual nature in a 
 moderate speaking voice, no animation, no gestures 
 to nearten a^ this wasteful use of good English, dully 
 assembled. 
 
 Peter s congregation regarded him much in the 
 same manner on this occasion. They were plain peo 
 ple out of an enterprising country town, well dressed, 
 comfortable, but not furbished up mentally, accus 
 tomed all their church lives to doctrines and amens 
 and evangelistic preaching. They backslid right 
 there. I saw them do it. They listened with a con 
 centrated attention which they would never have 
 given to a plain gospel sermon. Peter had them on
 
 MY SON 93 
 
 their mettle. They were determined to understand 
 him if it were humanly possible. This was the height 
 of their ambition, to skin the cat intellectually when 
 ever he did. 
 
 The modern preachers seem to me to be divided 
 into at least two classes those who really do preach 
 the gospel, but without any vital faith in its power 
 to move the people, and those who preach just ethics, 
 which is not preaching at all. It is offering a set of 
 fashionable people or unfashionable people who have 
 not been regenerated his own favorite butternut pat 
 tern of morals. Maybe he tells them from which 
 firm of writers he gets it, maybe he does not. It 
 comes to the same thing. What he says does not 
 carry with it the power of conviction. 
 
 You cannot go on being meek all the time, not 
 even if you are old and everybody has passed you in 
 the dust of the road. There comes a day when you get 
 a vision through a rift in this dust, you see the moun 
 tains shaking. You know something is going to hap 
 pen, and you get up for one brief moment to bar the 
 way and stop this foolishness. You do not succeed. 
 Nobody sees you, but you have the indignant con 
 solation of having had your say. 
 
 I waited that day until Peter had taken his Sab 
 bath-afternoon rest, but when he came out in the 
 cool of the evening to sit behind the vines on the 
 porch I was there. 
 
 He made some remark about what a pleasant day
 
 94 MY SON 
 
 this had been, and seeing that he did not refer en 
 tirely to the admirable autumn weather, but to some 
 feeling of personal satisfaction he had in it, I replied 
 briefly in the affirmative just wide enough to cover 
 the day. He asked me if I noticed what a large con 
 gregation he had at the morning service. I admitted 
 that a great many people were there. 
 
 "I never preached to a more attentive audience !" 
 he exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes, they listened as if they were deaf," I an 
 swered. 
 
 He glanced at me inquiringly. 
 
 "What was that you quoted, toward the last of 
 your sermon ?" I asked. 
 
 He was pleased. When you are young and do 
 not know how simple real wisdom is, and have just 
 preached a learned discourse, you do crave the, 
 humbler admiration of your fellow men, even if it 
 is only your old gray-haired mother. 
 
 "Oh, yes," Jie answered; "I hope they all got that. 
 It sums up the whole business of living: Act only 
 onithe maxim which thou canst at the same time will 
 to become the universal law, " he repeated sonor 
 ously. 
 
 "Why didn t you quote Matthew, seventh chapter 
 and twelfth verse, then, without calling it some 
 body s categorical imperative 4 ?" I demanded. 
 
 He flirted his head round and caught the look I 
 was giving him over the top of my glasses.
 
 MY SON 95 
 
 It was a plagiarism of the Golden Rule, but I 
 doubt if your congregation recognized it, fussed up 
 in that egotistical thunder of words," I said. 
 
 Peter was regarding me as you do a member of 
 your family who shows the impudence of invincible 
 ignorance. 
 
 "Mother!" he exclaimed. "You are referring to 
 one of the greatest thinkers of the age." 
 
 "And I am reminding you of the greatest Teacher 
 of all ages, who said the same thing so simply that a 
 wayfaring man could understand it and do it with 
 out puffing himself up by willing it on the rest of us 
 as universal law. That man didn t think it, Peter; 
 he learned it, and then hid it in philosophical terms, 
 as doctors and lawyers conceal the plain meaning of 
 medicines and laws in Latin words and big phrases," 
 I told him. 
 
 He was silent, not from regret but from filial re 
 pression. I took the advantage of him that Nature 
 gave me and went on speaking. 
 
 "You are whitewashing your people, Peter. You 
 are not teaching them to live by faith and to do the 
 will of God. You are teaching them how to choose 
 a convenient pattern of morals for this present world. 
 You read the Ten Commandments this morning; 
 then you quoted, but you scarcely mentioned Moses, 
 who led an undisciplined people through lands and 
 wildernesses for forty years, not because he taught 
 them that these were the principles of moral law
 
 96 MY SON 
 
 but because he taught them to believe that they 
 were literally from the Lord Almighty. Could a 
 single man you quoted this morning lead a people by 
 reading them his~own essays on morals? They could 
 not. They lack that authority of true prophets 
 "Thus saith the Lord !" 
 
 I got up heavily out of my chair, feeling very 
 much moved because I had not moved Peter. I was 
 about to pass into the house through the door be 
 hind him when I had another thought. Sometimes 
 I fear that this will happen to me after my last 
 breath is gone, that I may have a thought without 
 being able to speak it, and that I shall lie uneasily 
 in my very grave with it sticking up out of the dust 
 of my mortal mind like a flame. 
 
 "My objection to just ethics, Peter," I said, ad 
 dressing the back of his head, "is that they have too 
 many parents, both heathen and pagan, and that 
 these parents borrow from each other and taint their 
 systems with this commerce of ideas, and that they 
 are coldly impersonal, and that you cannot tell by 
 the noble language they use whether they are Chris 
 tians or atheists. Right now there are agitators in 
 this country quoting the same men you quoted this 
 morning, and they are working at the very founda 
 tions of our peace and order." 
 
 Then I went in, wiped my eyes and said tearfully, 
 "Oh, William, William!" and "Lord be merciful 
 to Peter, a fool, but my son, and an honest man!"
 
 MY SON 97 
 
 Then I prepared our evening meal, which is a light 
 one on Sunday, and told Peter I was not very well, 
 and would not go to church that night, because I 
 was fearful of what I had done to him, and that 
 I might quench whatever spirit he had to preach with. 
 
 In 1917 Peter had his first city church, at Drum 
 head, which is a fashionable suburb of the capital 
 of this state. It was separated from the city by the 
 country club and golf links. It was a small buf 
 very handsome church. The membership was also 
 small but composed entirely of rich and fashionable 
 people. There were no publicans and sinners in 
 this church, and no poor people in Drumhead. Ii 
 you wanted to do something charitable you must get 
 into your limousine and be driven five miles in the 
 opposite direction to find the perpetually poor. A 
 good deal of this went on in Drumhead. 
 
 I have noticed that rich people like to have their 
 good deeds and pay high for them, as they like to 
 have fine rugs on their floors and do not mind the 
 price. I doubt if they enjoy any luxury their wealth 
 affords more than they do this elegant Samaritanism. 
 But sometimes when I saw Mrs. Buckhart go by in 
 her big car on her way to do her alms in the city I 
 used to think of Sister Sally Tears, an old "widow 
 indeed" that William and I knew years ago. She 
 lived in a little house that looked like a gray eyebrow 
 on the side of the mountain. She was herself an 
 object of charity. The county contributed something
 
 98 MY SON 
 
 to her support, and the church did the rest. When 
 ever the collection for the poor was taken we always 
 knew we were wasting our nickels and dimes on 
 Sister Sally Tears, because she was disgracefully 
 extravagant with her charities. She was always 
 dividing her measure of meal with somebody, or get 
 ting her feet wet and being laid up with rheumatism 
 for us to nurse her, because she had gone off in bad 
 weather to nurse somebody else. Finally she capped 
 the climax by adopting an orphan, and not a service 
 able orphan at that, but a crippled boy who was 
 about to be sent to the poorhouse. The only ex 
 planation she ever gave was that she was "tired of 
 being a childless widow." 
 
 I used to feel sorry for Mrs. Buckhart sometimes. 
 She was very rich, and she was charitable, but she 
 did not know how to administer her funds. She was 
 autocratic. She snatched the poor whom she adopted" 
 bodily out of the ways that fitted their minds and 
 spirits. She rebuked them. She wanted to scrub 
 them and make them over in her own image. She 
 would tell them what she thought of them, which 
 was nothing good, then she would come back and tell 
 us what she told them and what she did to them. 
 They took her money, but the poor things did not 
 love her. She was a damnable providence who fed 
 them and reigned over them with a trained nurse and 
 a manual on sanitation. 
 
 It is easier to give all your goods to feed the poor,
 
 MY SON 99 
 
 or not to have any goods only your virtues, to boast 
 of than it is to judge the rich with charity. I was 
 probably unjust to Mrs. Buckhart, who could not 
 help being imperative about her good deeds, when 
 I compared her with Sally Tears, who was a per: 
 verse old woman never conscious for one moment of 
 her charities. But I thought of her, because she also 
 was an autocrat, like this rich woman. When she 
 took on that orphan she made us support him. She 
 did not beg, she went out and took up a collection of 
 what she needed and would have for that child. She 
 would not keep him clean, but she made the good 
 and bad people of that community contribute funds 
 to get him through school, and the last I heard of 
 htm he was a telegraph operator anxious to remove 
 Sally Tears, then a very old woman, from being a 
 charge on the community. He could not do it. She 
 went on mulcting the church and the sinners for 
 funds which she applied according to her notions for 
 the relief of other people. She was the most auto- 
 cratic philanthropist I ever saw except Mrs. Buck- 
 hart. But I always thought she had more genius for 
 this business, because she used the community as her 
 treasury, and Mrs. Buckhart depended upon her own 
 pocket. I do not know how charitable she would 
 have been if she had had no pocket. 
 
 There was no amen corner in this church at Drum 
 head, and this was hard on me, being obliged to sit 
 with my whole back to the congregation, with no
 
 100 MY SON 
 
 polite way of seeing what was going on behind me. 
 But nothing went on. These people had their pews. 
 They rustled in softly and sat there for an hour on 
 Sunday mornings. It was a sort of elegant acknowl 
 edgment of the Lord they made in his absence. The 
 immortal soul was the skeleton in the closet among 
 them. I had not been there a week before I dis 
 covered that it was indelicate to mention even my 
 own soul, or to say anything about temptation or 
 holiness. I had to learn not to mention the Lord at 
 tea parties. I reckon there was an element of de 
 cency and reverence in this spiritual reserve if only 
 I could have believed it was spiritual. Maybe it is 
 all in the way you are raised. Now I was never em 
 barrassed by a reference to the will of God anywhere, 
 but never in my life have I mentioned my own legs 
 to a human being. If I had rheumatism and was 
 obliged to tell the doctor where, I mentioned my 
 right limb, which had been long afflicted this way, 
 but even the young girls in this church at Drum 
 head talked as freely of their legs, and showed them 
 in a way that made me ashamed to go out on the 
 street with Peter. Maybe it is really more modest to 
 be entirely unconscious of your limbs, even if they 
 attract much public attention, and at the same time 
 to be so conscious of the sacredness of your im 
 mortal soul that you shrink from any social refer 
 ence to it. I am saying that it felt queer to me, not 
 judging them at all.
 
 MY SON 101 
 
 Peter was punctilious about his ritual and the 
 forms of his service. This is gratifying to fashion 
 able people. They are disposed to reduce everything 
 to a mode, and their sensibilities are very delicate. 
 I knew a good preacher once who was not acceptable 
 to a city congregation because he used agricultural 
 illustrations in his sermons, even going so far as to 
 mention by its given name that barnyard product 
 with which land is fertilized. The poor man had 
 preached for twenty years on the country circuits, 
 where the odor of fertilizers pervaded the church 
 itself when farmers came in hurriedly from the fields 
 to attend a quarterly meeting on Saturday. Peter 
 made no such mistake. He was not given to ges 
 tures, as you do not cross your legs in company or 
 show much animation if you are extremely well bred. 
 And if he used an illustration he took it from astrono 
 my or the poets or some source implying his recog 
 nition of the culture which this congregation exhaled. 
 
 I used to sit in this church at Drumhead on Sun 
 day morning and think about those first churches, 
 at Antioch, and Ephesus, and Corinth, and of 
 Timothy, the young pastor whom Paul left in 
 charge. I doubt if they had churches at all. Maybe 
 at first they held services in a back room somewhere 
 or in the home of one of the dutiful widows. They 
 must have had a very real sort of worship. No ritual, 
 no hymns. Maybe they hummed a Psalm or two, 
 and prayed, gathered close together as sheep do in
 
 102 MY SON 
 
 very bad weather. I could see Timothy, pale and 
 worn with anxiety for their safety and the burden of 
 these souls committed to his care. I reckon it was 
 a great occasion when he had a letter from Paul, a 
 prisoner in Rome. When he drew it forth and 
 showed it to them maybe they clapped their hands 
 for joy to know that Paul was still living and remem 
 bering them; and nobody called it "shouting." 
 Shouting in my opinion is a very gross word in this 
 connection, probably used by some person on the 
 back bench who knew nothing of the experience he 
 made it cover. Then I could see the stir among the 
 little company. The "widows indeed" keep their 
 seats a little back in the shadows with their 
 heads properly covered, but the others crowd round 
 Timothy, who is about to read what Paul says ; not 
 all of the letter, but extracts from it. They crane 
 their necks and look over one another s shoulders and 
 listen. And the widows begin to weep softly, even 
 if the instructions Timothy got concerning them were 
 a bit harsh. For some reason or another widows were 
 partial to Paul, maybe because he kept them safe 
 and humble before the Lord. And maybe those closer 
 about Timothy had tears in their eyes as he read what 
 Paul said about enduring all things and if we suffer, 
 we shall also reign with him. And how God had 
 not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of 
 love, and of a sound mind. Then would follow mes 
 sages to this one and that one who "oft refreshed
 
 MY SON 103 
 
 me, and was not ashamed of my chain." Also warn 
 ings against this man or that one who had not been 
 true to the faith. 
 
 I do not question Paul s divine inspiration, but 
 there is no doubt in my mind that he had the over 
 bearing nature and the irascible temper of a great 
 man. But that which has always touched me most 
 was his concern for the people in these little churches. 
 The anguished sweetness of his love for them, his 
 fatherly concern for Timothy, even telling him what 
 to do for his indigestion, and no fear for himself 
 about to be slain. Twelve preachers like this one, 
 my masters, set the world on fire with a new faith. 
 Now half a million of them cannot move this same 
 world trained in the doctrines of the Christian re 
 ligion. There is just one reason they do not be 
 lieve in the gospel they preach. They are beginning 
 to "divide the word of truth." There is only one 
 way to test the Scriptures. That is to believe them. 
 
 I used to sit and listen to Peter s sermons and 
 think on the side about these things which were not 
 in his sermons. He was a good preacher in a way. 
 I doubt if the average person in this congregation 
 missed the thing that was lacking in his ministry. As 
 a pastor he ardently believed in his fellow man. This 
 was one of his limitations. It is written in the Scrip 
 tures that you shall love your fellow man with all 
 charity and sacrifices, but watch him, keep your eye 
 on him, warn him, rebuke him, be his keeper and his
 
 104 MY SON 
 
 brother; but it does not say anywhere that you shall 
 be such a fool as to believe in him. It says believe 
 in God and put your whole trust in him and his word 
 if you hope to be justified. 
 
 Peter was so popular with the women in this 
 church that they invited him to deliver some lectures 
 before the women s clubs. Now modern women must 
 have lectures, of course, because they must obey 
 somebody, and they no longer keep the domestic laws 
 of obedience and service. I do not reproach them 
 for that, though I have never known one who could 
 justify her escape from these bonds. But it made me 
 nervous when these clubwomen spotted Peter as be 
 ing easy enough or vague enough to satisfy their cul 
 tural cravings. I have never heard of a woman s 
 club inviting a plain old-fashioned circuit rider to 
 address them. They want novelists, dramatists, poets 
 and psychics to teach them. They hate the naked, 
 unvarnished truth as if it were an indecency. They 
 live in their imaginations. You cannot tell now 
 from looking at a woman even in church if she is 
 an honest Christian. She may have taken to just her 
 aura or to free thought. She may be bedridden on 
 a theory of mysticism; or a spiritist holding com 
 munications with the dead over an ouija board. Give 
 me a picketing suffragist every time ; not that I could 
 bear one, but she may be arrested and removed, but 
 there is no law for disciplining the innocuously 
 cultured woman. Even if she is not a spiritist
 
 MY SON 105 
 
 she is the medium through which sickly stuff is 
 spread. 
 
 By this time Peter s hair was a trifle thin in front. 
 He had a gray lock on each temple, as if the gravity 
 of a thought had touched his youth there. He was 
 a very handsome man. He had escaped the pallor 
 of the ministry, retaining his rich coloring. And he 
 was still unmarried. So far he had escaped romantic 
 complications, either from celibate reserve or shrewd 
 ness. I could never be sure. He had no spiritual 
 blind side from which some preachers suffer in their 
 relations to women. It was impossible to slip up on 
 him through the Scriptures. Women were shy of 
 confessing their sins to him, I suppose because he so 
 rarely stirred up the seat of sin in his preaching. My 
 belief is that they all felt the merciless sanity of his 
 relations to them as a pastor, and they fought shy 
 of him. But I could not tell what would happen 
 to Peter now in this houri atmosphere of veiled mys 
 ticism which pervaded the Drumhead Women s Club, 
 and I was very uneasy about him. It is bad enough 
 when some prayer-meeting lady saint wants to read 
 Second Samuel with your husband if he is her pastor; 
 but you know what to do with her. It is much worse 
 when a beautiful young woman wishes to consult 
 your son, who is her pastor, on the monism of Par- 
 menides, because if you are a Christian woman you 
 do not know who this Parmenides is, and you do not 
 know what to say to her.
 
 106 MY SON 
 
 Isobel Sangster was a member of Peter s congre 
 gation, though it turned out that she was not a mem 
 ber of any church. She attended services regularly 
 and sat always in the same place, against the wall 
 between the two windows on the right-hand side. 
 She dressed with elegant simplicity, no ornaments 
 of any kind except her brilliant red hair, her brown 
 eyes and her exquisite skin. She always wore the 
 same colors, pale green with the frost of whiteness 
 on it like sage leaves. It was as if she had had a 
 portrait painted of herself and stuck to it. I remem 
 ber thinking the first time I saw her what a beautiful 
 corpse she would make, she was that pale and still, 
 you understand. 
 
 Then I began to notice her a good deal because 
 her eyes clung to Peter when he would be preaching 
 with a sort of hypnotic intensity. I saw that she was 
 not well in her mind. And I did not think she was 
 under conviction for sin, because Peter did not say 
 anything to convict people of their sins. The next 
 thing I observed was that Peter faced oftener toward 
 the right in the pulpit, and devoted most of his min 
 istry to that side of the house. But that girl would 
 get up every time and leave the church without 
 speaking to him and telling him how much she en 
 joyed the sermon. It is a mystery to me yet how she 
 met him and where, but she did. She was only a 
 stranger in church on Sunday morning. She used to 
 pass the parsonage in her electric and bow to Peter
 
 MY SON 107 
 
 on the porch. Then she stopped one day and had a 
 long talk with him about this Parmenides. 
 
 There was no place for me in this conversation, but 
 I remained present. She gracefully relaxed and 
 talked like a dream. Peter conducted himself like 
 a normal m?.n with a beam in his eye. Apparently 
 nothing she said could convince him that she was not 
 a beautiful woman with brown eyes and red hair. 
 His manner meant that. Otherwise he disregarded 
 her, the point of view she held, as if this was too 
 absurd to consider, and as if her complexion was 
 the main thing that interested him. She could not 
 fail to feel this, but she held her note languidly, like 
 a sad squeak in the dark. I heard her tell Peter as 
 she was leaving that the mystical spirit would never 
 be satisfied, if fully developed and fearless, with any 
 thing short of absolute nothing ! I heard Peter laugh 
 as you do when a pretty woman flirts with you under 
 cover. He accompanied her to her car, bestow r ed her 
 in it, and returned, still flushed, smiling and running 
 his fingers through his hair, which is a man s way of 
 kicking his wings when his spirit crows. 
 
 After this he saw a good deal of Isobel Sangster, 
 and I think he would have married her if she had 
 been of disposing mind toward him. But Peter was 
 only one of those experiments she made in the mysti 
 cism of love along her adventurous way. Looking 
 backward I can see that she was good for him, like 
 having the measles and whooping cough when he was
 
 108 MY SON 
 
 a little boy, because she was one of those modern 
 women who disease society, and Peter had to deal 
 with them so constantly from this time that it was 
 just as well he had sufficient knowledge of the type 
 to recognize them. But at the time I was very un 
 easy. I thought he ought to marry, and I frequently 
 told him so; but no mother really wants her son to 
 marry, and I knew it was not in me to bear with such 
 a woman as my son s wife. 
 
 This was the situation early in March of 1917. 
 Peter was preaching essays on the gospels and lectur 
 ing at the Women s Club and courting Isobel Sang- 
 ster. I was crimping my front hair, dressing for din 
 ner and keeping a cook for the first time in my life. 
 I felt wickedly prosperous and could not help myself, 
 because Peter instited that we ought to live up to 
 the social standing of the people in his church in 
 order not to embarrass them or seem mean. 
 
 Since 1914 the war had been going on in Europe. 
 We discussed this war as neutrals should. Peter 
 prayed for the war-stricken nations every Sunday. 
 And we had bazaars to get funds for them. Charity 
 was no longer religious, it became fashionable. Our 
 bounties fell alike on the just and the unjust in this 
 conflict. We sent hospital supplies, food and funds 
 to all the belligerents. We sent a Christmas ship in 
 1914 that left units of dolls at Havre, Liverpool and 
 Rotterdam. Even in 1915, we allowed that flivver 
 dove, Oscar II, to sail as a missionary ship of peace,.
 
 MY SON 109 
 
 though we were never neutrals. No nation can be 
 in a world flaming with war. It may not take up 
 arms, but it is bound to take sides in the conflict. 
 
 Everyone knows what happened in April, 1917. 
 We joined the Allies, and this whole nation went into 
 the war, not simply the great armies we transported, 
 but every man, woman and child in it served. 
 
 It is not for an old circuit-rider s wife to describe 
 the transfiguration through which we passed during 
 this period. I have always carried side arms as a 
 Christian soldier, but this was another matter alto 
 gether. I was not equal to the situation. All I could 
 do was to spin round and round in a circle somewhere 
 inside and watch the world lay hold of Almighty 
 God when I had thought this world was dead in 
 its trespasses and sins. 
 
 The members of Peter s church swarmed like bees 
 into a state of violent activity. Mrs. Buckhart 
 dropped her browbeaten poor people and went in for 
 Red Cross service. She organized a chapter at Drum 
 head and worked us as if that was a sweatshop. 
 Isobel Sangster took one look round and sailed out 
 of it all for France to join a canteen. Peter was at 
 last a preacher. He was exalted and he was sublime. 
 He inspired his people with the wrath of the gospel 
 against our enemies. He prayed with furious passion 
 for the success of our arms. My son became a 
 spiritual man imbued with a declamatory soul. And 
 at last it seemed that we were not only permitted to
 
 110 MY SON 
 
 hate our enemies, it was our duty to do so. This felt 
 very queer to me, but I did it. All along I had al 
 lowed myself a little latitude secretly for compas 
 sion toward all men who fell in battle, and toward 
 all women who lost their husbands and sons; but 
 now I felt obliged to quench my spirit and leave our 
 enemies to the awful mercies of God. 
 
 This record has nothing to do with the war, how 
 ever, except as this war affected my son and his 
 church. He was now not only a preacher but an 
 executive of so much ability that his services were 
 constantly in demand for organizing war work and 
 helping with the various drives for bonds and other 
 funds. I began to entertain a fearful respect for 
 Peter, and I sometimes interrupted the stream of 
 battle prayers flowing into heaven, with a little peti 
 tion that the Lord would forgive me for misjudging 
 my own son. No one, I suppose, could conceive then 
 what the effects of the war would be on our religious 
 life. We only knew that everybody had been con 
 verted and believed in God, and our Annies in 
 France. We sent the Almighty with them in our 
 prayer. We had no revivals in the churches for the 
 duration of the war, not one. We did not say it in so 
 many words, but the idea was: "Lord, dismiss us 
 from thy tender mercies, but be with our sons in 
 France ! Save them if thou canst, but give them the 
 strength and courage to win this war." This .was 
 our faith, that the victory would settle everything.
 
 MY SON 111 
 
 And it transfigured this nation. We literally ful 
 filled the Scriptures. We were ready to spend every 
 thing, sacrifice everything. We lived as original 
 men, in our deeds and emotions. We required a 
 braver language. Fine old words like golden spears 
 buried in the dust of centuries dark and deep must 
 be found and set to martial music. We trod the 
 measures of an epic. 
 
 Three hundred thousand of our young men fell 
 in France. Nearly a hundred thousand died of their 
 wounds. But there was no such thing as death. 
 Nothing remained to be chosen but immortality. 
 They made haste to choose it. They gave their lives 
 as you offer a toast, joyfully, smiling over the brim 
 of the cup that was to be broken presently. 
 
 We obtained the victory as much by faith in an 
 ideal as by the force of our arms. But we did not 
 win the kingdom of heaven, nor peace on earth, nor 
 even the League of Nations to enforce it. This 
 League of Nations turns out to be a sublime figment 
 of the human imagination, too expensive to finance 
 unless we continue to give all our goods to our poor 
 relations in this league, and to be subject to the 
 common devil of discord in all men. 
 
 Sometimes I feel sorry for Mr. Woodrow Wilson 
 in my narrow way and strictly according to the Old 
 Testament part of my faith in the Lord. He re 
 minds me of a clean-shaven Moses who added four 
 teen fine points to the Ten Commandments and ac-
 
 112 MY SON 
 
 tually did lead one people and was by way of lead 
 ing several other peoples with all the fervor of an 
 evangelist and the brimstone anathemas of a prophet 
 through the blazing wilderness of this world. But, 
 like Moses, he only came in sight of the promised 
 land. Because he had done something or other that 
 he should not have done, the Lord permitted him 
 just to have a glimpse of it from a high place as 
 a sort of rebuke for not having behaved well enough 
 to inherit it. I reckon that happens in a small way 
 to all of us. We never do set foot on our promised 
 lands. We just see them from afar, and die before 
 we get there. 
 
 I am just a woman, gray and tired out and laid 
 away a trifle uneasily in my Scriptures, but comfort 
 able enough to feel that I can get along very well 
 without changing my scenes to a new and strange 
 promised land, even if it does flow with milk and 
 honey. I never saw a land yet that produced only 
 milk and honey just flowing. I doubt if Paradise 
 does. We shall probably be obliged even there to 
 keep on earning our eternal livelihood by dealing in 
 stars or something to keep us occupied and out of 
 mischief. 
 
 So, though I believed in this League of Nations as 
 I believe in salvation, not that I ever felt entirely 
 saved, I had my doubts about whether we could 
 afford that much salvation in this present world. 
 And I never did believe we could produce that much
 
 MY SON 113 
 
 harmony. 1 have not lived all my life in the 
 Methodist itineracy without learning that Christian 
 people with different creeds cannot pray and worship 
 the Lord together in the same church. The very 
 seat of perversity in a man is that place in his soul 
 where he keeps his particular spiritual doctrine by 
 which he will be saved, and no other. This house 
 hold of nations contemplated by the league covenant 
 seemed to me dangerously impractical. It is the 
 same idea Ham, Shem and Japheth had of keeping 
 house together for rrtutual protection and to cut down 
 expenses. It will not work because either Ham, 
 Shem or Japheth will not work, and becomes a 
 dead expense with his whole family. And because 
 even if they do work, they will not agree about the 
 domestic details of this hodge-podge establishment. 
 Some day, and very soon after they have shaken 
 hands and said how glad they are to see each other 
 and be fixed up so well for living happy ever after, 
 there will be a family row, and one of the poor rela 
 tions will get kicked out or one of the rich ones 
 will strut out and found a house just close enough 
 by to keep up the row. 
 
 I did my Red Cross duties and all my other duties 
 very quietly during the war because I suffered much 
 from this secret sin of unbelief in what it would ac 
 complish. 
 
 Sometimes I went to a mass meeting where Peter 
 was the chief speaker. He had a gift for public
 
 114 MY SON 
 
 speaking that you would never suspect from the ser 
 mons he preached. He was a perfect aeroplane of 
 eloquence when it came to exciting the patriotic en 
 thusiasm of a crowd. He made gestures, he stepped 
 like a warhorse scenting battle. And he would let 
 out something like this in the sonorous tones of a 
 man who has a tempest in his breast: "The Declara 
 tion of Independence and the Constitution we have 
 are not simply the creed of American liberty but they 
 belong to the New Testament of the liberties of man 
 kind, and if these Scriptures are violated the salva 
 tion of the world is in danger!" 
 
 Then the crowd would shout and Peter would 
 pause to mop his face with his handkerchief. And 
 I would feel my chin quiver and my countenance 
 breaking up and the tears in my eyes, so that I would 
 be obliged to take off my glasses and wipe them be 
 fore I could see my son clearly. All that yes; but 
 at the same time the quiet, plain, bareheaded woman 
 that I am in secret was sitting in the back door of 
 my mind, doubting if it was so, what Peter said, 
 what the people meant when they shouted, even the 
 quality of the tears I was drying off my spectacles. 
 
 I used to go away by myself sometimes as you do 
 when you are about to pray in secret and not pray 
 at all, but just sit and think the thoughts I wanted 
 to think. When you have lived a long time under 
 the impression that the Lord is from everlasting to 
 everlasting, and that his providences are not deter-
 
 MY SON 115 
 
 mined by the flurries in the minds and affairs of men 
 it feels queer to realize suddenly that we have a re 
 ligion for the duration of the war, which was not 
 the kind we had before, nor of a nature to steady 
 men s souls in the long siege of living in what we 
 call peace because it is not war. 
 
 That phrase, "for the duration of the war," 
 troubled me. If you change the laws, life and even 
 religion of a nation to meet a great emergency, what 
 I wanted to know was how we should change back 
 again. Peter said that we should never be the same 
 people again, and the world would never be the same 
 world. It might not be better, but it certainly would 
 be different. The individual man had disappeared 
 off the face of the earth. If you saw one you only 
 saw a digit of the great multiple of mankind. The 
 terms we used were collective peoples and nations. 
 It was a hundred thousand of this and two hundred 
 thousand of that, even if it was a matter of socks 
 and sweaters. You might have only a dollar in your 
 pocket, but you were obliged to think about so many 
 million dollars worth of canteen supplies or so many 
 billion dollars worth of bonds. We lost the strong 
 sense of personal affections, and hate became an 
 international term of inspiration. We were col 
 lected, organized, down to the last thought. My 
 attributes would be your attributes, and yours would 
 be everybody s. Our souls would be like black-eyed 
 peas, all alike.
 
 116 MY SON 
 
 Now I never hoped to be better than other peo 
 ple, but we have the inalienable right to be differ 
 ent, at least as one man s nose differs from another 
 man s nose. I stuck to that and to the prayers that 
 fitted my own bowed head, merely mentioning this 
 war to the Lord in the larger sentences at the end of 
 my prayer, as I formerly reminded him of the heath 
 ens in the uttermost parts of the earth. 
 
 At last, and quite unexpectedly, the war ended 
 and a great many of our best people were suddenly 
 thrown out of employment. I have often wondered 
 why in all the agitation that followed about pro 
 viding emlpoyment for the millions of real work 
 ers turned out of the Army, shipyards and building 
 branches there was no agitation at all about provid 
 ing something to do for these workless people who 
 had worked so hard during the war and had thus ac 
 quired for the first time habits of service. Millions 
 of idle fashionable women were suddenly released 
 and allowed to drift back into the innocuous and 
 vicious diversions of their class, but with their minds 
 stretched by big terms and big notions, current for 
 the duration of the war. 
 
 Two weeks after the armistice was signed the 
 Annual Conference of our church met. There were 
 some queer doings at this Conference. The young 
 Methodist preachers who had felt the call to go over 
 seas with our troops as chaplains had been allowed 
 to go. No one interfered with their consciences in
 
 MY SON 117 
 
 this matter. But when some of them returned in 
 time to take work again at this Conference they had 
 the same experience that the railroad strikers faced 
 in New York recently when they decided to go back 
 to work, and discovered that they had lost their 
 seniority. 
 
 It was not Jesus but Paul who recommended the 
 office of elders and bishops. I have always thought 
 this was a very significant circumstance ; not that you 
 cannot be a Christian and walk softly before the 
 Lord if you are a bishop, but it must be very hard 
 to do it, and the temptation to swat a young preacher 
 over the head sometimes for getting a call to leave 
 the circuit you put him on to serve must be very 
 strong. 
 
 Peter was sent to the First Church in this city. 
 This is the best appointment in the Conference. And 
 certainly Peter was better qualified to fill it than 
 a young circuit rider who had done battlefield drudg 
 ery for the Lord succoring the wounded, comforting 
 the despondent and praying for the dying, and writ 
 ing their last letters home that their hearts might 
 rest easy beneath the little white crosses of honor 
 and sacrifice. That is emergency work, and does 
 not fit a man to become the pastor of a big congre 
 gation nor to manage the affairs of a rich church. 
 
 Peter had the right experience. He was a smart 
 young preacher, to begin with. He had proved ac-
 
 118 MY SON 
 
 ceptable to the exacting and fashionable congrega 
 tion at Drumhead. His war work had given him 
 a practical course in financing on a large scale. He 
 knew all the latest methods of organizing. He had 
 studied the psychology of propaganda as his father 
 studied the power of God unto salvation. He was 
 now familiar with all classes of men, not as a pastor 
 but as a promoter of bonds, patriotism and service. 
 He had been obliged to use the policies of business 
 men and he already had an intellectual man s toler 
 ance. Finally, he had a recent and notable record as a 
 popular speaker. This is the best preacher to choose 
 for a big church with an enormous membership, 
 representing all classes, from millionaires to labor 
 ers and paupers. Such a church is remarkably dem 
 ocratic. I do not know any other organization in 
 the world that anybody can join with the same im 
 punity. 
 
 I will not go so far as to say that I had given 
 Peter up by this time, but I was confused. The 
 world did not appear to me to be safe, but it might 
 be. If the churches were spiritual it was on such a 
 large scale I could not comprehend it, but they 
 might be. If Peter had any communion with the 
 Holy Spirit, if he wrestled in prayer for the souls of 
 his people, he did not show the signs William used 
 to have of the struggle. But I had to admit that 
 he assumed the duties of this terrific pastorate with
 
 MY SON 119 
 
 soberness and courage. It required more than usual 
 firmness on my part to unpack Kitto s Commentaries 
 and place them in the handsome library we had now, 
 because the stewards of Peter s church frequently 
 called on him there. Well, let him explain the best 
 way he could. At least they were not Balzac s 
 novels. 
 
 But I took the old box of sermons up into the 
 attic. My faith in them had not failed, but my hope 
 that Peter would read and study them had failed 
 at last. So I just sat the old box up there under 
 the window, sat down beside it for a little while and 
 thought of William. How different his ministry 
 had been, how hard his life had been, how little 
 success he had, measured by these new church stand 
 ards; and how different everything had been with 
 Peter, who could not hold a light to his father when 
 it came to preaching the gospel and telling men 
 the truth with courage about their sins. 
 
 I always became a little heated and resentful 
 when I compared Peter with his father. So now 
 I took off my glasses, wiped the widow s tears from 
 them, snapped them back on and went downstairs, 
 stepping strong with my head up. 
 
 As it happened, I passed Peter in the hall, and I 
 passed him as if he were not there, which is not 
 my custom. I usually call him "my son" or give 
 him the blessing of a mother s look, but this time
 
 120 MY SON 
 
 I did not turn my head, and I made my skirts swish 
 the way a woman will when her sails are set against 
 the weather. 
 
 "Mother!" I heard him exclaim. 
 
 "Yes, Peter," I answered as if Peter was the gnat 
 on the bull s horn. 
 
 "What s the trouble*?" he demanded, overtaking 
 me. 
 
 "I am thinking of your father, my son," I an 
 swered coldly. "He was a great preacher and he was 
 sent to be the pastor of the poor. He suffered every 
 thing. You are not a great preacher, and you are 
 sent to be the pastor of the prosperous. And you 
 do not suffer, but you have everything. You are 
 like a rich man, Peter!" 
 
 He laughed; he would do that, turn my point 
 against him on his smile. He stepped close to me 
 and drew my head to his breast. 
 
 "There is nobody like you left in this world, 
 mother," he* began, still laughing. "You are still 
 jealous for father." 
 
 "No, not that " 
 
 "Yes," he interrupted. "You are not father s 
 widow. You are still the arc and covenant of his 
 faith, his way and his preaching. Spare me a little 
 of your confidence." 
 
 "You have my confidence, and I wish you had 
 your father s faith," I answered.
 
 MY SON 121 
 
 "Sometimes, just lately, I wish that, too, mother," 
 he said soberly. 
 
 He must have had some premonition of what this 
 coming year held for him. Your Gethsemane can 
 be anywhere.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN the old days, when William was a young 
 preacher on the new ground circuits in the mountain 
 regions of our Conference, we lived in little weather- 
 beaten parsonages far out in the country, and our 
 nearest neighbor was never another family, but one 
 of William s churches. 
 
 I was often lonely, especially when he was away 
 at some distant appointment. The only thing you 
 can say for a church as your nearest neighbor is that 
 it is there, on a higher, greener hill, and that it 
 stands for the best you can hope for or believe, but 
 it never looks across the road and speaks to you when 
 you are sitting alone on your doorstep at night wish 
 ing and listening and wondering how you can go 
 on bearing this silence. It just stands with its belfry 
 sticking up toward the other, brighter worlds over 
 head, terribly white and still in the darkness. The 
 tall tombstones and the lowlier ones stick up be 
 hind it; or they lean a little, not as if they were 
 falling, but trying to escape. Sometimes at night, 
 when there were no voices, no wheels rumbling along 
 the road, no bells tinkling in the distant pastures, 
 the wind used to whisk by on its business and blow 
 
 122
 
 MY SON 123 
 
 shadows across these tombs, glistening in the moon 
 light, so that they seemed to stir and move like long 
 wing feathers and short closer feathers scattered 
 about that church. 
 
 During these first years, when I was still very 
 young and only recently married out of the world 
 into the gospel, William frequently asked if I was 
 afraid to be alone in the parsonage until he returned 
 the next day. And I always assured him that I was 
 not afraid. The bravest thing to do when you are 
 not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly. 
 
 So I always sent William forth to his appointment 
 with a peaceful mind. When he was mounted on his 
 horse I used to run out sometimes, place my foot on 
 his in the stirrup and he would reach down, draw 
 me up, bend over and kiss me. That would be my 
 young husband, but the priest in him invariably 
 looked back over his shoulder and said something like 
 this: "Remember, he that keepeth Israel shall neither 
 slumber nor sleep." 
 
 That might be so, but as he disappeared at a 
 smart canter down the road Israel seemed a long way 
 off. And this way he had of consigning me to the 
 care of just the God of Israel was not so comforting 
 as he imagined. He had the advantage of me. He 
 had the witness of the Spirit. He was never alone 
 anywhere. I had no such experience. I reckon 
 the closest I came to the kingdom of heaven, or 
 Israel, or any of the Scriptural countries, was the
 
 124 MY SON 
 
 sense I had of union with William, who was a citizen 
 of them. I am being hand-raised by his gospel, so 
 to speak, but it was not the same as having fear 
 less faith. And even to this day I seem always to 
 lay my hand confidently in William s faith like a 
 clasp when I pray. 
 
 But at the time of which I write the promise of 
 life everlasting did not satisfy my heart. I wanted 
 the companionship of people who lived and laughed. 
 I used to grow weary of the long peace of the hills, 
 of the quiet days and the still nights. I wanted to 
 take a journey somewhere, anywhere, so it should 
 be a long and swift one. But I never could go and 
 leave William. I felt as close to him as the rib in 
 his side. I had the conceit that he needed me, some 
 one whom he did not have to pray to be present, but 
 who was always literally there in the flesh to care 
 for him on the sly when he did not know he could 
 be comforted at all except by his Lord. 
 
 When I was oppressed beyond endurance by this 
 long imprisonment of my traveling mind in some 
 lonely country parsonage, I remember practicing a 
 certain illusion when he was away on his circuit. 
 I might be sitting on the front doorstep as usual in 
 the moonlit night, but I would imagine myself start 
 ing off on just the earth through space. It was mov 
 ing with incredible velocity, rocking from side to 
 side in its orbit, with the furious oscillations of this 
 spinning speed, making it dark when it turned one
 
 MY SON 125 
 
 way and light when my side swung back beneath 
 the sun. I would sit and imagine how fast I was 
 going until my head was swimming. Then I forgot 
 the church across the way, all the little things and 
 the little pathways up and down the hills of my days 
 and William s days. I could look back at the stars 
 and feel myself swaying at the thought of how many 
 we were leaving behind, mere specks of light on the 
 horizon. I thought of the roar of far-off constella 
 tions as I passed; just myself, you understand, 
 of all the world of men, taking this journey 
 through immeasurable spaces, sitting on my own 
 doorstep, because it was the only way I could leave 
 home. 
 
 William never knew of this star riding I used to 
 do in his absence, for I was always there when he 
 returned, with no sign in my manner of the terrific 
 flight I had made, doing my household duties or 
 watching for him, very prim and demure, with not 
 a hair of my head blown out of place. You may 
 do very queer things in the spirit without its being 
 seen or heard of. 
 
 So many years have passed since then. My star 
 traveling imagination settled down long ago. But 
 now, seated here in Peter s big church on Sunday 
 mornings, like a very placid period of an old woman 
 at the end of a long sentence, my thoughts went back 
 to those first days on the lonely circuits, when the 
 only house in sight was the church across the road,
 
 126 MY SON 
 
 when the season changed from winter weather and 
 the Lord said "Yea! Yea!" to the little green leaves, 
 and they answered from every tiny bud and bough. 
 And they changed the sound of the wind to sweet 
 ness with the grace of their dipping and turning. 
 To me it was like having young company all about 
 the parsonage. 
 
 I do not know why this vast congregation remind 
 ed me of that, unless it was that these people were no 
 company. They gathered like a strange phenomenon 
 of life every Sunday morning in this church, so many 
 strangers, no bond binding them to each other, and 
 dissolving, disappearing at the end of an hour. Then 
 you could not find them. You did not know where 
 they lived, nor how. The whole thing was too big 
 for me. It was like trying to read humanity in 
 diamond type to look at this sea of faces, so different 
 from the little flocks I had known. I could dis 
 tinguish a foreigner from an American by the way 
 his mustaches sat up like an offense on his face, but 
 I could not see a single woman that looked like 
 the president of the missionary society, nor any girls 
 with the faces of prayer-meeting virgins. And for 
 the first time in my life I could not recognize a 
 steward by the way he looked or the place where he 
 sat in this church. 
 
 Only one man shouted "Amen!" when Peter 
 prayed. He was an old bald-headed person with an 
 apostrophe nose and a chin beard cut as square as
 
 MY SON 127 
 
 a shingle, who had apparently been banished to the 
 front bench, which he inhabited alone. I supposed 
 that he was the leading steward until I learned that 
 he was only a carpenter brought over from the past 
 before this became a really great church. 
 
 I had a strange enlightenment as to the manifold 
 characters of a steward when Peter introduced Mr. 
 Cathcart, an elderly katydid sort of man, who wore 
 a sage-green suit of clothes and a sky-blue cravat. 
 He was a club man, a capitalist and the chairman of 
 Peter s board of stewards! Maybe these people 
 were good, but the best goodness I have known never 
 looked so prosperous and worldly. How distant all 
 that plain piety of the hills, and how long ago it 
 seemed now since I had heard the road of constella 
 tions swinging the curves of my dreams in these 
 quieter places beneath the other stars ! 
 
 Peter, however, was in no way confounded. He 
 had the assurance of an able preacher. And these 
 people liked him. More and more he impressed me 
 as a good business man of the gospel, at the head 
 now of a really great business with nearly a thou 
 sand workers under him. He had a financial com 
 mittee. He made bills and O. K. d bills. He saw 
 printers. He had a secretary and two deaconesses. 
 
 This is as good a place as any to set down the way 
 the presiding elder has of checking up the work of 
 preachers under him. Each pastor in his district re 
 ceives a list of printed questions. I have counted
 
 128 MY SON 
 
 them. There are seventy-three in all. The preacher 
 in charge is required to answer them and turn the list 
 in at each Quarterly Conference. Here is a sample 
 of these questions : 
 
 "How many revivals have you held this year?" 
 
 "Who did the preaching?" 
 
 "How many sermons have you preached this 
 year? 
 
 "How many homes have you visited?" 
 
 "In how many homes have you held prayer? 
 (Each time should be counted.)" 
 
 "How many infants have you baptized? (Do 
 you preach it in the homes?)" 
 
 "In your opinion will the charge pay out?" 
 
 And so on and so forth. There is nothing private 
 left between a preacher and just his Lord when he 
 has answered these questions. He cannot have a 
 single secret prayer with a sinner without setting it 
 down in the credit column of his account book with 
 the presiding elder. But the authorities of the 
 church can get a quarterly weather report of the con 
 dition and finances of the whole church, as the Gov 
 ernment gets crop reports. It must be right. I have 
 nothing to say against the arrangement, but it does 
 seem queer for a preacher out making pastoral calls 
 to credit himself with them, and maybe a. prayer or 
 two, or a good deed. No power on earth could have 
 made William do it. He would have lied about his 
 prayers and his alms. But Peter was obliged to call
 
 MY SON 129 
 
 in help before his Quarterly Conference, to add up 
 the things that had been done in the Lord s name, 
 I used to wonder if he gave his deaconesses credit for 
 all the prayers they said. Maybe they were allowed 
 to be decently silent about their little petitions 
 among the poor. 
 
 This was the winter of 1918-19, when the scourge 
 of influenza swept over the country. The churches, 
 schools and theaters were closed. Thousands died of 
 the disease in this city. It was especially fatal 
 among the poor. There were two hundred cases at 
 one time among this class of members in Peter s 
 church, respectable people who worked, but who only 
 managed a living wage in these high-price hard times 
 of war prosperity. 
 
 The first year William and I were in the itiner 
 ancy there was an epidemic of some kind on the Red- 
 wine circuit. And there were not enough well people 
 to nurse the sick. We did it. We went from house to 
 house, some of them miles apart, in the dead hours 
 of the night to care for these afflicted ones. Wil 
 liam comforted the dying and I helped lay out the 
 dead. We did not go home until the survivors were 
 convalescing. Then we both came down with the 
 disorder and were near to death ourselves. I do 
 not remember that we experienced any exalted sense 
 of self-sacrifice in exposing ourselves performing this
 
 180 MY SON 
 
 service. My recollection is that we did it as a mat 
 ter of course. 
 
 Peter managed his epidemic of influenza different 
 ly. I thought, of course, we would devote ourselves 
 to nursing the sick, but he would not hear to it. I 
 must not expose myself. .He would not expose him 
 self unnecessarily. If he performed his duty as 
 pastor of that church he could not afford to come 
 down with influenza. Besides, the church had a 
 committee whose business it was to meet this emerg 
 ency. There was no need to risk our lives when it 
 could be attended to more efficiently and scientifi 
 cally by people who were trained to do it. He called 
 a meeting of his relief committee. They organized 
 the work, provided food to nourish the sick, and 
 established kitchens where it might be prepared and 
 sent to families stricken with the disease. They im 
 ported a unit of nurses and the church kept a doc 
 tor during this epidemic. 
 
 I did my share of the work in one of the kitchens, 
 but I never got over feeling queer and mean about 
 sending soup to sick people s doors and not going 
 in myself to see how they were getting on, to 
 straighten the bedclothes, shake up their pillows, and 
 tell them I could see they were mending fast. 
 
 I am not saying that all this was not done by those 
 skillful nurses whom we commandeered directly from 
 the Red Cross. I admit that this is a wonderful and 
 mobile organization, which can be sent here or there
 
 MY SON 131 
 
 to put down a disease as a regiment of soldiers is sent 
 to quell a riot or to keep a strike within the bounds 
 of law and order, but it does seem to me that the 
 trend of our times is to form corporations to attend 
 to our humanitarian duties in the same impersonal 
 and efficient way that other business is conducted. 
 We have syndicated those Scriptures about the Good 
 Samaritan. Instead of doing the job ourselves, we 
 telephone to the United Charities or to a hospital. 
 Maybe it is all right, but it does not feel so close 
 and humanly kind to hire someone else to take your 
 risks and do your good deeds. That used to be per 
 sonal to you. 
 
 I doubt if in the long run it will have the same 
 effect on Christian character to merely contribute 
 to charity. It says plainly in the Scriptures that you 
 are to perform these services yourself. I never can 
 bring myself to believe that it comes to the same 
 thing if you pay some one else to do it, even if it 
 is better done. The truth is that it is not altogether 
 better done. Why do people dread hospitals so 
 much 4 ? Why do the poor shrink so persistently from 
 the hired ministrations to their ills and poverty 1 ? 
 There is a reason, my masters ! It is not all based on 
 ignorance and prejudice. They miss the human 
 touch of personal compassion. They are the objects 
 of charity, not of love. There is a difference. 
 
 There was a sick woman who fell to my care dur 
 ing this time. She was not a member of Peter s
 
 132 MY SON 
 
 church, and I doubt if she was a good woman. We 
 had a kitchen on one of the poorer streets, and we 
 were sending meals to the people in that neighbor 
 hood who had influenza. Word came one day that 
 a woman was very ill in a room in a tenement house 
 near by. Every nurse we had was already over 
 worked. The doctor went once. He said it was 
 wiser to give his care to those who might recover. 
 The impression I had was that he meant not much 
 would be lost if this woman died, so I slipped up 
 there. 
 
 She was a girl, no more. Her finery was scat 
 tered like radiant filth about the wretched room. 
 She was lying in the bed, very still, as one lies listen 
 ing, waiting for something, her bright hair sticking 
 to her head like a tangled web of gold, her lips red 
 with fever, her face pinched and white, blue eyes 
 staring out of it, meek with an awful terror. 
 
 It was not the things that I did, though I did 
 everything. It was that I called her "my dear" and 
 patted her softly as we do our children when we put 
 them to sleep. She was far past any repose. She 
 was alive with the awful energy of death. The only 
 thing she said to me was: "Don t go! Don t leave 
 
 me! : 
 
 So I called Peter over the phone and told him that 
 I was very busy, and would not be home until I 
 came. 
 
 Then I sat down by this little immortal rag s bed
 
 MY SON 133 
 
 and made the most of the time she had left. I have 
 a good many kind Scriptures laid away in my mind, 
 as you keep soft white things to cover you and com 
 fort you when you are not very well, or strong 
 enough to bear harsher things. I said them over to 
 her, as you tell a bedtime tale to a child who will 
 sleep presently. I made her own confession for her, 
 not troubling her with questions. I took her sins for 
 granted. Nothing mattered now about all that. She 
 would now have a long time in which to do the will 
 of God. There was only one little thing to do, so 
 easy, that she should be wishful for her Lord and be 
 lieve in him, being sorry for her transgressions. 
 Nothing much was going to happen, I told her. She 
 would scarcely notice it the next morning. It was 
 so natural to live again after death. 
 
 Once or twice the dumb terror in her eyes had the 
 best of me, so I had to keep the tears out of my own 
 with an effort. But it would never do to show the 
 white feather of grief now. I remained firm and 
 confident. I chanted Rock of Ages as if it was 
 my natural speech, not a song we sing, until I 
 began to feel a little like a good kind old rock my 
 self. 
 
 I do not know if it was the failing fires of life, the 
 gray embers of death overlying the blue flame, but 
 it seemed to me I saw ease in her eyes at last, a sort of 
 pale peace. 
 
 I have never wished to meet my Lord alone at the
 
 134, MY SON 
 
 very last. I hope I shall be able to look over my 
 shoulder and refer to my friends that their love may 
 recommend me to him. I cannot think that I shall 
 be entirely sure of myself. I shall be anxious about 
 my deeds done in the body. I have a fear that I may 
 forget my virtues, and that I should like to hear them 
 extolled by good people after they think I am too 
 far passed to hear this kind praise. But if they give 
 it my very dust will hear it. How I have wished 
 for love and praise all my life, just to hear the 
 things that people never say of you until you are 
 out of the competition of living with them in this 
 world. 
 
 Thus I let my heart so shine to this girl. I made 
 myself a cloud of witnesses for her comfort and as 
 surance. She might have lived if I had known what 
 to do, but I had her satisfaction of knowing that she 
 died warm and befriended. So many victims of this 
 disease that winter did not. People thought they 
 must be careful. If you had it they sent you soup 
 or flowers according to your station in life, and re 
 mained at a safe distance. 
 
 Now if it is so very important to live they were 
 right; but I doubt if it is of the uttermost impor 
 tance, just to save your own life. William never 
 thought so. He used to take this Scripture, "He that 
 findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his 
 life for my sake shall find it," round with him like
 
 MY SON 135 
 
 a charm when he had some risk to run or a hard 
 duty to perform. 
 
 It is my secret and scornful belief that many peo 
 ple are in danger of disinfecting themselves out of 
 the kingdom of heaven in their effort to escape a 
 mere physical contagion. 
 
 This is one of the reasons why charity is no longer 
 a private Christian virtue. It has become humani- 
 tarianism, one of the big businesses. It is adminis 
 tered by this board of directors, or that board, not 
 given secretly from man to man. If you provide a 
 hospital for the poor you have not fulfilled the law, 
 and you will probably be damned one way or the 
 other. This is the law that you shall know your 
 poor by name ; that you shall visit those in affliction, 
 even if they are not widows and orphans; that you 
 shall contribute to their comfort without letting your 
 left hand know what your right hand is doing, much 
 less the reporters. You cannot cheat your fellow 
 man with impersonal provisions for his misfortune. 
 He has a heart under his ragged shirt. You are re 
 quired to communicate with that. The endowing of 
 an eleemosynary institution for the poor is only 
 paying a tax which you owe in a country where you 
 have made a fortune. You owe it, therefore you do 
 not give it. You have simply discharged an obli 
 gation, not to the poor but to the laws and insti 
 tutions of a country which provides the conditions 
 and protects your interests while you are exercising
 
 136 MY SON 
 
 your wits making this fortune. But it is no proof 
 at all that you are a Christian man, only a decently 
 honest one. The man who we know is a Christian 
 is one who comes over and gives you a day s work 
 if your crops are in the grass and you are in the bed 
 sick of a fever, because he has nothing else to give 
 and really cannot spare this day from his own crop. 
 Or he keeps the undertaker from cheating your 
 widow in the price of the cheap pine coffin if you 
 die of that fever. I have seen Christians like this, 
 thousands of them, and my belief is that they exer 
 cise more influence for good over the life of this 
 nation than many mere philanthropists, though the 
 thunder of their benefactions never deafens the ears 
 of the world. Their little old homely deeds are 
 barefooted and they do not make a noise when they 
 cross the threshold of your house. But they do come 
 when you are not able or are too proud to stand 
 in line for help before one of these institutions 
 endowed for your relief, if by the skin of your teeth 
 you can prove that you deserve to be received 
 there. 
 
 What I am saying may sound like an old pea rat 
 tling in a gourd, the views of a narrow-minded 
 old woman who does not realize that times have 
 changed and that great provisions must*be made to 
 meet great needs. Still, the Lord does not change, 
 and according to his word charity belongs to the re 
 tail department of the Christian religion. And I
 
 MY SON 137 
 
 feel obliged to stick to this nothing is charity that 
 you do not do with your own hands and with your 
 own heart. We are developing a class of religious 
 magnets in this country; the effect of their generos 
 ity is to put the small Christian deed out of counte 
 nance and to encourage us to look to them as a sort 
 of immediate providence which is strictly financial. 
 Never before has the Christian religion had so much 
 capital behind it, and never before was it so near 
 to being merely an international fund for making us 
 more comfortable in this present world. 
 
 Peter preached this kind of gospel with such mov 
 ing eloquence that I was uneasy sometimes lest the 
 people who came to hear him might forget that this 
 was not a rally in the interest of higher living and 
 more giving, and that they would break out in open 
 applause. He used the Lord s mighty Scriptures in 
 this business to encourage these men and women to 
 keep up their wartime enthusiasm until everybody 
 had a job, every child an education, every sick man 
 a bed, and every street woman a comfortable home 
 all to be achieved by funds and good conduct. The 
 thing he left out was, "By my spirit, thus saith the 
 Lord." 
 
 Peace, dear brethren, does not bring peace after 
 all. It is only the statues raised to commemorate 
 victories that are winged and beautiful. Victory her 
 self invariably comes home to us with a tragic face, 
 disheveled, maimed, bearing the scars of many
 
 138 MY SON 
 
 wounds, reduced in fortune, anxious for the future 
 and all of us face to face once more with the 
 graver faults of our civilization. 
 
 So now, in this winter of 1918-19, with the war 
 ended and the world not nearly so safe as we had 
 been led to believe it would be, with peace stand 
 ing round waiting to come in and change its uniform 
 to civilian clothes, and take off its cork leg and get 
 a good rest, every man got busy according to his own 
 spirit and according to his notion of his own 
 particular salvation. Thus we were torn asunder by 
 the awful multiple of spirits, and we were led not at 
 all by the one everlasting Spirit. 
 
 I cannot say how it was in other churches, but 
 Peter s church became a seething caldron of every 
 kind of unrest. There was for a time a sort of human 
 smoke on the back benches after the workman who 
 had been employed in the shipyards came home. 
 These men had been members, were still, but in spite 
 of Peter s courageous sermons urging them to take 
 up the ways of peace and go to work at it they dis 
 appeared out of that church like smoke that a wind 
 drives. And they would not work, not for the wages 
 peace can afford to pay. They would have ten dol 
 lars a day for three dollars worth of labor or they 
 would not labor. 
 
 Then the soldiers began to drift in from overseas, 
 scarred young veterans with considerable indigna 
 tion in their hearts about the way free men had been
 
 MY SON 139 
 
 made to obey military discipline in the Army. They 
 did not mind fighting and dying, but they were mad 
 as hornets, to a man, about this obedience business. 
 And they were determined to take a furlough. There 
 was a committee in Peter s church to provide em 
 ployment for these dear boys. There was no diffi 
 culty about finding jobs for them. The difficulty 
 was in persuading some of them to take these jobs. 
 No, thanks! They had saved the country; they 
 would whiff round and enjoy the country a bit. 
 Where was that fatted calf? With what sardonic 
 youthful humor they must have read every morning 
 in the papers about the efforts of the various employ 
 ment agencies and committees to rustle jobs for 
 them. 
 
 Then came the strikes the steel strike and the 
 coal strike, and ten thousand local strikes. The rail 
 road shopmen and the street-car men and the ship 
 ping clerks, all struck one after another in this city. 
 There were men in every one of these unions who 
 belonged to Peter s church. 
 
 Peter bestirred himself. He took a hand. He was 
 all things to all men in this crisis. He scarcely took 
 time for his meals. He was off to a committee 
 meeting, or he had to see a man, or two or three 
 men. He really expected to exert some influence. 
 But strikers do not like preachers. A preacher is 
 one of the misgivings they have in the order they 
 have set up for themselves. I never knew but one
 
 140 MY SON 
 
 preacher who was popular with them, and he was 
 an agitator who covered his malfeasance with Old 
 Testament derogatory Scriptures. He preached on 
 the rent problem and the high cost of living. His 
 picture appeared in the newspapers almost as regu 
 larly as if he had taken a patent medicine and was 
 now a part of the advertisement of this nostrum. 
 There is a queer thing about some small dangerous 
 men they are made manifest not by their own works 
 but by a crowd or a riot. They are safe only be 
 cause of this vicious protection. This man was like 
 that. 
 
 I had no fear that Peter would go so far. He 
 was for harmony, not discord. But the chairman 
 of his board of stewards was that old valentine of 
 a man w r ho wore a sage-green suit and controlled the 
 stock in the street-railway company. This fact was 
 enough to make the strikers distrust Peter. Every 
 time he urged them to compromise and yield a point 
 or two, they regarded him as the emissary of that 
 capitalist. And if he went back to Cathcart, this 
 chairman of his board of stewards and Peter s pet 
 capitalist, Cathcart would give him to understand 
 genially but firmly that his good offices were not ap 
 preciated. It is one thing to tread water in a church 
 row, and quite another thing to oil them between 
 labor and capital. Peter could manage a church 
 choir with every songster in it tearing the other fel 
 low s hair, but he could do nothing with these motor-
 
 MY SON 141 
 
 men, nor with Cathcart. Still, he kept at it with 
 Christian perversity, making himself such a nuisance 
 that I was anxious lest he should get his name in the 
 papers as a pernicious peacemaker. Peter was by 
 his table as the Methodist Church is by its altar on 
 communion Sunday. Any man may take the sacra 
 ment there, no matter to what denomination he be 
 longs, or even if he is not a member of any church, 
 if for the moment he thinks he is in love and charity 
 with his neighbor. So Peter would invite anybody, 
 from a hungry beggar to a senator dead in his tres 
 passes and sins, to dine with us. During this season 
 of strikes we were constantly entertaining belliger 
 ent motormen and mechanics. 
 
 I must say that I felt drawn to these men. They 
 were more familiar to me than most of the people in 
 Peter s church. They reminded me of the angry 
 brethren with whom William used to deal and pray 
 until they forgave each other. Sometimes I tried to 
 join in the discussion between Peter and one of 
 these fierce guests. 
 
 Maybe I would raise my hand soothingly and say 
 something like this: "Did you say you are earning 
 a dollar an hour, Mr. Hardit*?" 
 
 Whereupon Hardit, who was a shop mechanic, 
 would give me a three-dollar nod of indignation. 
 
 "Then it cannot be so bad," I would return. 
 "Now my husband and I used to do very well 
 on "
 
 142 MY SON 
 
 But I was never allowed to tell how little William 
 and I lived on. Our guest would stand on his hind 
 legs at once and begin to count off the children he 
 had, and what he paid for shoes and doctors bills, 
 especially what the dentist cost. All his children 
 had teeth, he had teeth, and his wife had a plate of 
 false teeth ! How much did I think it cost to main 
 tain the teeth in a family of six? 
 
 I was always a trifle flustered by this question. 
 My plates were made so many years ago, when you 
 could get a good double set of them for twenty-five 
 dollars. And it has been so long since real teeth 
 entered into the problem of existence with me that 
 I have had no experience with modern dentists. But 
 it does seem strange to me how everybody tears 
 round these days about just his teeth. The human 
 tooth is under suspicion. It turns out to be the root 
 of all evil in the body. If you go to the doctor with 
 a pain in your knee he sends you to the dentist, who 
 gags you, taps your teeth, chooses the best molar you 
 have or maybe the only two you have that hit, and 
 yanks them out. Therefore, your knee will be well. 
 This does not follow. I am as innocent of teeth as a 
 new born babe, but I have a knee that still aches like 
 a tooth in bad weather. 
 
 I always felt a trifle nervous about being "raised 
 a spiritual body" in the next world. It sounds thin 
 and unsubstantial, as if I should not be noticed much 
 or have other spiritual bodies bow pleasantly to me
 
 MY SON 143 
 
 as I passed, because they might not see me pass 
 ing. But there is one advantage we shall never 
 have to call the doctor. It is our corruption that 
 makes his fortune. I do not say there will be no doc 
 tors in heaven, but all the signs indicate that none 
 of them will be doctors after they get there. 
 
 One evening during a very serious strike of 
 the railway shop mechanics Peter came in with 
 another guest, whom he introduced as Mr. Kleffler. 
 The moment I set eyes on this man I knew that he 
 was different. He might be a heathen or a poet, 
 but he was no born-and-bred American. And I could 
 see that he was not one of Peter s beloved strikers. 
 A striker has hard red hands, horned knuckles, stub 
 bed finger nails, muscles that crawl under his sleeve 
 when he makes a gesture at you; and he never 
 gestures at random, his arm oratory is straight from 
 the shoulder and in your direction. Also, he has 
 an honest bitter brow, coruscated with wrinkles that 
 you can read and know they mean work, exposure 
 and at present a bad temper. 
 
 This Kleffler was a frail man who had evidently 
 escaped the workingman s hardships. His body was 
 thin. His dark blue suit fitted him as if it had orig 
 inally fitted a larger man and did not care about 
 being on this one at all. His shirt was not clean. 
 His collar was exhausted. His hair was long and 
 laid back from his brow like a black flourish. His 
 hands were very white, sickly looking, but active.
 
 144 MY SON 
 
 They flew up and seemed to make faces at you when 
 ever he said anything. I did not like his hands, 
 which are as revealing a part of the countenance of 
 a man as his nose is. And I did not like his eyes. 
 There was a bright silence in them, like a secret 
 laugh at your expense. But a man cannot help hav 
 ing what looks like a raveled body sometimes; or a 
 head that is two numbers too large for it; or even a 
 malicious eye, if he inherits it. So I asked him to 
 come in to the fire and get warm. I said the weather 
 was very cold. He said yes, it was cold, and sat 
 down, thrusting first one foot, then the other toward 
 the blazing grate. 
 
 While he was doing this he swung a glance round 
 the room. It was the impudent look of a bailiff who 
 estimates the value of your things because he will be 
 back to-morrow to get them. 
 
 "They make you very comfortable," he said. 
 
 I thought this was a queer thing to say, but I 
 answered that they did, that this was the best parson 
 age we ever had, and I was about to go on to tell 
 him about the parsonages William and I used to live 
 in when Peter interrupted me. He wanted to know 
 if there had been any telephone calls for him. I told 
 him, and took the hint. Peter frequently interrupts 
 me when I am about to tell something that I ought 
 not tell or repeat something that I have already told 
 several times before. 
 
 So I sat quietly on the other side of the fireplace
 
 MY SON 145 
 
 with my skirts smoothed out and my glasses fixed 
 politely on Kleffler until I heard Peter calling the 
 numbers I had given him on the phone. Then I 
 asked Kleffler if he lived in the city. He said no, 
 and added after a slight hesitation that he was from 
 Chicago as if on the spur of the moment this was 
 the place he chose to be from, though I did not in 
 terpret it that way at the time. I asked him if he 
 was married, because I always think if you know 
 whether a stranger is married you know something 
 about him. He said yes, as if he said yes he was 
 married in a way. 
 
 I asked him if he had any children, because I al 
 ways think if a stranger says he has a family you 
 know something good about him. He replied that 
 he did have children. I remarked encouragingly 
 that he appeared to be young, hoping he would tell 
 me how many children he had. He astonished me. 
 He said he had six. And he could not have been a 
 day older than Peter, who was thirty-three. 
 
 Another hour passed before I discovered what kind 
 of a man we had in the house, but I may as well call 
 attention to this curious fecundity of radicals here. 
 Nearly every time one of them gets the much de 
 sired publicity of appearing before an investigating 
 committee he proves to be the father of from six to 
 nine children, all born, no doubt, with red topknots 
 on their heads and with no chance at all to become 
 honest God-fearing men and women. If there is any
 
 146 MY SON 
 
 way, I think they should be vaccinated morally and 
 kept out of the Rand School. 
 
 I was considering whether I should ask Kleffler 
 what church he attended, which is a delicate way of 
 asking a stranger if he believes in God and his Savior, 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, when I heard the phone click 
 as Peter hung up the receiver. 
 
 "What church do you attend, Mr. Kleffler ?" I 
 asked hurriedly. 
 
 I had just time to catch a queer sort of grin on 
 his face before Peter came in and headed me off with 
 some remark to him about the postponement of a 
 meeting, where, I gathered from what followed, 
 Kleffler was to have made an address. 
 
 "Now," Peter said, sitting down and smiling 
 amiably at him, "we shall have time to talk it over. 
 You can do all the good in the world here if you will 
 only tell the men the right thing." 
 
 I did not see the right thing in Kleffler s eye, but I 
 caught at this news that he was some kind of speaker. 
 I wanted to know what kind. 
 
 "Do you lecture 1 ?" I asked politely. 
 
 "I teach," he answered grimly. 
 
 Then Peter shot me another look as if he said 
 "Mother!" And I subsided into the silence which 
 I am compelled to keep always in the same chair 
 with me. 
 
 When you are old, but not nearly so dead as your 
 nearest and dearest think you are, and the world is
 
 MY SON 147 
 
 y 
 
 spinning and doing things it never did before, you 
 do crave to know what is going on ; and no one tells 
 you, because what is the use of upsetting you at 
 your age 1 ? I reckon this is why elderly people ask 
 so many questions. It is the only way we can find 
 out enough to live and think on. And it certainly 
 is the quickest way. Many a time if Peter left me 
 alone in the room with some one I should know more 
 about that person when he came back than he ever 
 imagined or dreamed was so. But for some reason 
 he was determined to keep me out of Kleffler s confi 
 dence. I was the more curious because I began to 
 see that he did not himself approve of this man, but 
 that he was preparing to take him dead or alive in 
 an argument. 
 
 Dinner was announced at this moment. And it 
 went off very fast, that dinner. I could not tell 
 whether Peter was hurrying to remove his guest to 
 the safer territory of his study, or if it was because 
 Kleffler took his food coming and going, so to speak, 
 and we were obliged to keep up with him. But it 
 was apparent that Peter was determined he should 
 not talk about whatever it was that Kleffler wished 
 to discuss. 
 
 By this time I was vaguely suspicious. I gave 
 Kleffler his coffee and tried to forgive him for keep 
 ing the spoon in his cup. If you are a good man it 
 is no sin to allow your spoon to stand up like a naked 
 mast in your coffee, or even to take your food ob-
 
 148 MY SON 
 
 soletely with your knife. But if you are not a good 
 man everything is evidence against you. I was dis 
 covering as fast as I could that I did not like this 
 man. The spirit in me was beginning to rise. Peter 
 felt it, because he began to say pleasant, teasing 
 things to me, the way he does when he knows I am 
 about to fire, and must be kept soothed with the 
 choicest filial compliments if my aim is distracted. 
 
 Kleffler escaped as the plates were being changed 
 for dessert. He had been suppressed as long as he 
 could be. He had ideals. He was the traveling 
 salesman of these ideals, and he must show them. 
 He had the habit of eloquence. He said several 
 noble things that made my flesh creep. He told 
 Peter that old orders were passing away. The peo 
 ple were at last coming to understand what the 
 brotherhood of man meant. Within five years at 
 the longest he thought the struggle would be ended. 
 
 "Mankind will have become adjusted to mankind, 
 not to illusions, and we shall hold all things in 
 common!" he exclaimed. "Then, my dear sir," he 
 added, looking at Peter, "we shall have no more 
 strikes. There will be no longer any question of 
 wages, because there will be no capital with which 
 to pay wages. We shall not need it. We shall have 
 everything!" 
 
 All my life I have kept the back of my hand, 
 spiritually speaking, to riches. If I have been for 
 anybody it is the poor; if I am against anybody it is 
 
 \
 
 MY SON 149 
 
 the rich. But what this man had just said sounded 
 to me more dangerous than blasphemy. I looked at 
 him. He returned this look with a sort of forked- 
 tongued merriment in his black eyes. He widened 
 his grin until his nose seemed to flatten like the 
 head of an adder. I smelled the thoughts of vipers. 
 Not until this moment did I recognize him. Peter, 
 my son and a preacher, had brought a red radical 
 into a Methodist parsonage ! 
 
 Now I can dine with anybody. I have done it, 
 but I draw the line at unnatural things. And this 
 man was no longer a man to me. He looked too 
 much like the pale devouring worm of himself. He 
 stood for the rape of Russia, for that strange un- 
 cleanness of mind and soul of which we were hear 
 ing so much by this time. He was the universal 
 rogue, he had a predatory instinct toward every vir 
 tue. He professed peace and made war in the dark. 
 He was the black death of civilization, and he was 
 sitting at my table! 
 
 I laid down my fork and folded my napkin, then 
 I put both hands against the edge of the table and 
 drove my chair back. 
 
 "Peter!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes, mother," he answered, very much embar 
 rassed, "will you excuse us 1 ?" 
 
 "I will. I was about to ask you to excuse me," I 
 answered coldly. 
 
 They went out. Kleffler was laughing. He was
 
 150 MY SON 
 
 not ashamed. He was pleased to show the naked 
 ness of his reptilian mind to an old woman. Her 
 horror amused him. 
 
 I have never acquired the habit of eavesdropping; 
 but I have heard many a petition through a keyhole 
 that William thought he was making to his Lord in 
 secret, because I wanted to know what was the mat 
 ter with William so that I might know what to do 
 for him. And now that my son was holding con 
 verse with the adversary I wanted to know what 
 was going on. 
 
 His study was across the hall from the parlor. 
 The door was open. I went into the parlor and 
 opened that door, not wide, but enough for the 
 human voice to pass through. 
 
 They were discussing the strike. Kleffler claimed 
 the credit of having fomented it. He said you could 
 make men do anything if you could make them be 
 lieve something. He said there would be very few 
 strikes merely for the present good the men hoped 
 to get out of them, but it was the hope they had 
 of disrupting the whole economic system, and of 
 one day controlling trade, markets, transporta 
 tion and all public utilities. It was the business 
 of him and of others like him to confirm them in 
 this faith. 
 
 "If we did not succeed in that," I heard him say, 
 "we should never pull off but one strike in any one 
 industry, because, of course, you know a strike never
 
 MY SON 151 
 
 pays, even if the strikers win. It costs too much. 
 But we keep up this missionary work among the 
 workers everywhere, and we can always go back and 
 call another one." 
 
 "Do you really believe this doctrine yourself?" I 
 heard Peter ask him. 
 
 "It is not to believe, but to make the other fel 
 lows believe it," Kleffler answered. 
 
 "There is Russia " in Peter s voice. 
 
 "Not a fair experiment. As soon as we can wear 
 out a few governments like this one and England, 
 break down capital, we can put it over like a shot !" 
 the other laughed. 
 
 "But you can never do that," Peter again. 
 
 "We are doing it. The honor system among men 
 is weakening. The idea is to destroy the morale, 
 tear things up. That the workingman is demanding 
 shorter and shorter hours is the smallest part of our 
 plan. We are teaching him to be destructive, to 
 harry his employer, to nibble his reputation, destroy 
 confidence in him. It is a sort of universal sabotage 
 at which we aim. Nothing you can put your finger 
 on, but a crumbling under our fingers that goes on 
 all the time." 
 
 Peter was silent. I heard the other man get up. 
 I knew he was standing before the fireplace because 
 I could hear the click of his heels against the tiles. 
 
 "It is taking hold, this idea of destruction. It ap 
 peals to something long repressed and controlled in
 
 152 MY SON 
 
 the minds of men," he went on. "The clerks in the 
 stores, are they so anxious as formerly to sell their 
 employers goods? They are not. But he pays them 
 more. You employ a man. Does he earn his wage ? 
 Certainly not. But you must pay it. You have a 
 big factory with half a million dollars worth of 
 machinery in it. If our men keep some part of it out 
 of order can you fill your contracts ? You have a 
 farm. But have we not raised the standard of 
 wages until you must pay twice as much for half a 
 man? There will be no whole workingman left; we 
 are dividing them. Well, what is happening"? As 
 we progress in efficiency of propaganda this wast 
 age will increase in volume. 
 
 "You do not realize it yet, but we have the ad 
 vantage of you so long as you have anything that 
 can be wasted or destroyed. When you have not you 
 will join our ranks. You must. That is what we 
 count on. Our object is to destroy confidence, your 
 confidence in the man who works for you, his con 
 fidence in you. Thus we will destroy credit, and 
 without credit or confidence how will you do busi 
 ness? How long will property last? Or your Gov 
 ernment, or your boasted religion, which is the frail 
 est illusion of all?" 
 
 "No!" I heard Peter exclaim. "That cannot 
 happen. Even admitting your infamous plan works, 
 which I do not for a moment concede, so much mis 
 fortune will drive men the more earnestly to seek
 
 MY SON 153 
 
 that which always remains, the consolation of re 
 ligion." 
 
 "You think so," Kleffler retorted, "but you think 
 so in the face of facts. The churches are not win 
 ning, they are losing; they will lose half a million 
 members this year. You see we we are offering 
 mankind a salvation he can see with his eyes, taste 
 with his lips, feel on his back!" 
 
 "I don t understand that you are," Peter answered. 
 
 "Yes, all that he can take," the other said. 
 
 "But not earn," Peter put in. 
 
 "That is your word, not mine," the other laughed. 
 
 "What will become of the weak 1 ?" 
 
 "What does become of them in Nature? They 
 die and fertilize the strong. Your foolish senti 
 mentalities, your pious charities, your laws growing 
 out of these sickly emotions have filled the world 
 with weak people, incompetents, a frightful and 
 senseless burden! Well, they will pass. When we 
 are done only the terribly competent and strong will 
 survive." 
 
 Peter said something that I did not catch, about 
 honor and mercy. 
 
 "Terms used to conjure with," Kleffler answered. 
 "We shall leave them out of our minds. It is all 
 about you, this new order, forming, drawing out, 
 clearing the way; and you do not see it. Even the 
 children have it. The other day five hundred school 
 children struck in one of your cities. Did you notice
 
 154 MY SON 
 
 that? We have our word everywhere. The easiest 
 people to teach are those who do not know that 
 they are being taught. What you call your ig 
 norant classes. They are becoming learned," he 
 laughed. 
 
 I have read Job, but never before have I heard 
 Satan in the flesh speaking. 
 
 What Peter answered him in reply I do not set 
 down. It was the argument of an honest man who 
 believed in law and religion. But it is useless to 
 offer righteousness to the devil. There is no com 
 mon ground upon which you can meet him. He is 
 unspeakable and unthinkable. 
 
 Finally I heard Peter talking, very low. He went 
 on for a long time. I could not hear what he said, 
 only a short laugh from Kleffler now and then. But 
 I could tell that Peter was using a good man s cuss 
 ing voice. They have it, every one of them, a curious 
 authority for telling a man that he must and shall 
 be damned. I reckon Peter was saying something 
 along that line, because presently Kleffler came walk 
 ing with a jerky step toward the door. 
 
 "All right, I ll go," he said, snickering, "but I ll 
 be in your church to change it, in your house to 
 break it, in your pockets to empty them, and in your 
 Government to destroy it. You cannot get rid of me 
 by turning me out of your door. I am everywhere." 
 
 Then I heard him slam it and run down the steps 
 into the street.
 
 MY SON 155 
 
 I went to close the parlor door, passing a window 
 that overlooked this street. I saw two men move 
 from behind the wall of the next house and join this 
 man. They seemed to be very intimate and went 
 away arm and arm with him. 
 
 After closing the door very softly I came back, 
 sat down in my corner beside the fire and waited for 
 my son. I was crocheting a mat for the center table. 
 This was to be a mark I would leave of myself in 
 this parsonage that did not have a single hand 
 made thing in it. 
 
 Presently Peter came in. He looked years older. 
 His face was pale and drawn like a man who has 
 seen a terrible vision. He dropped into the chair 
 on the other side of the fire and stared at the coals. 
 
 I went on crocheting, pretending not to notice the 
 change in him, feeling that the sight of me there, 
 serene and undisturbed, about to go to my prayers 
 and bedtime peace, was the best thing I could do for 
 him. 
 
 "Mother," he said after a while, without looking 
 up, "evil forces are at work everywhere." 
 
 "They always have been, my son," I answered 
 quietly. 
 
 "But not with brains. They were blind forces, 
 instincts, appetites. Now it is different. Evil has 
 become a science." 
 
 "I never respected the sciences as you do, Peter," 
 I replied. "There is just one knowledge that counts,
 
 156 MY SON 
 
 the knowing of his will. There is one duty, the 
 doing of his will." 
 
 "It sounds simple, but it is not simple," he re 
 turned. 
 
 "If this world could have been damned the devil 
 would have accomplished that long ago. He cannot 
 do it, my son." 
 
 Peter was silent. I do not think he heard what 
 I said. It filled his ears like an old song which you 
 do not really hear. But I know this was a good thing 
 because I had it from William, who was always pull 
 ing Satan s tail and injuring his reputation when he 
 had the chance. 
 
 Then, looking over my glasses at Peter, who had 
 his face in his hands like a defeated mourner, I 
 uttered a blasphemy against man, which is per 
 missible in extreme cases. It was my own, not Wil 
 liam s. 
 
 "Peter," I said, "do you know what I think the 
 devil really is*?" 
 
 "What? he asked. 
 
 "Only a temporary weakness in man, or mankind. 
 Nothing permanent. A streak of ordinary human 
 heinousne ss from which we suffer now and then like 
 any other sickness." 
 
 Peter sat up and regarded me as if he saw his old 
 orthodox mother coming down the road with a grass- 
 green heresy on her head. There was a whoop of 
 astonishment in his eye.
 
 MY SON 157 
 
 "I have always thought Satan was a figure of 
 speech in the Bible," I began again, "a sort of para 
 ble meant to convey the truth, like that tale of the 
 whale that swallowed Jonah. I am not saying that 
 a fish could not swallow a missionary, you under 
 stand; but I do say that Jonah was in no condition 
 to preach that same day. He would have been 
 obliged to lie round and get his breath and clean 
 up a bit." 
 
 I did not look at Peter, but I could hear his chair 
 creaking as if he were stirring about and bracing 
 his back for a jolt. 
 
 "If Satan had been a separate and distinct entity 
 he would not have been at all. The Lord would 
 have seen to that in the beginning. But when 
 he created man and endowed him with considerable 
 powers and gave him dominion over all things, it 
 turned out that the devil was the intimate personal 
 creation of Adam himself. No way to get rid of 
 him without destroying man. We do it ourselves, 
 by faith in God," I concluded, feeling that I had 
 held my note too long. 
 
 "If you will notice the works of the devil they are 
 always performed by men. If you notice the works 
 of God you know that no man or devil could have 
 done them. They are too altogether and perfectly 
 good and everlasting. They work, Peter ! The ma 
 chinery never gets out of order; his systems and 
 seasons go on. The grass always springs. The rain
 
 158 MY SON 
 
 always falls with justice. The sun shines, and we 
 always get a night at the end of each day in which 
 to trust him more fully than we can in the light, 
 and so that we can rest, blessed and folded away in 
 his starlit care !" 
 
 "Mother! That is just poetry!" Peter answered. 
 
 "It is the truth," I retorted; "but does anything 
 wrong we do, last*? It does not. It will not work, 
 Peter. Every force in us is against it, as life is 
 opposed to death. To live we must destroy that 
 which is evil that we do; that is what the gospel is 
 for, to teach us how!" 
 
 "We are a long time learning," he said after a 
 pause. 
 
 "We have so much to learn," I retorted, looking 
 across and fixing my eyes upon him, over the tops 
 of my glasses. "For example, you should know bet 
 ter than to bring a man into your house who rejoices 
 in his own demoniacal possession." 
 
 "That was a mistake, having the fellow here," he 
 admitted; "but I hoped to well, convince him that 
 he was wrong. I wanted to help settle this strike, 
 keep the church s influence to the front in this time 
 of stress," he explained. 
 
 "You cannot exorcise the devil in a man who 
 has chosen evil to be his god," I told him. 
 
 "You heard what he said to me*?" he asked. 
 
 "I saw him. That was enough. He is a crim 
 inal," I answered, not willing to admit that the
 
 MY SON 159 
 
 parlor door had been ajar when he knew that I 
 always kept it closed. 
 
 I usually look at the paper before Peter comes 
 down in the morning so as to be able to discuss the 
 news while he is reading it later at the breakfast 
 table. This may interrupt him but it keeps me from 
 sitting too dumb and effaced at my end of the table. 
 The next morning after Kleffler s visit I laid it with 
 the other mail beside his plate, and when he came in 
 to breakfast I did not annoy him as I sometimes do 
 by telling him the news before he can see it for him 
 self. I merely said, "Good morning, Peter," in that 
 tone of virtue women use when they have a head 
 ache or a grief. 
 
 Peter spread his paper over his plate when he 
 opened it, as he usually does while he waits for his 
 toast and coffee. Then he snatched it up and made 
 a sort of Adam curtain of it before his face. I could 
 see only the top of his head growing pink where his 
 hair is thin. The headline on the front page that 
 held his eye announced an arrest by Federal agents 
 the night before. The interview with one of these 
 agents which followed gave a fairly complete ac 
 count of Kleffler s operations. He was known only 
 as a labor agitator until recently, when he had been 
 identified as the man wanted for complicity in a 
 number of bomb outrages. 
 
 The last paragraph stated in a small cool voice
 
 160 MY SON 
 
 that Kleffler had been arrested as he was leaving 
 the residence of a "prominent minister, where he had 
 dined." 
 
 I knew when Peter finished reading that last 
 damning sentence, for he looked over the top of it 
 at me. 
 
 The most regretfully prideful moments in a 
 woman s life are those when she knows she has better 
 judgment and more sense than the reigning man in 
 her family. I experienced the pangs of this dolor 
 ous superiority now. 
 
 "It is mete and proper to associate with sinners 
 and even Republicans, Peter many of them are 
 worthy people but it does not say anywhere in the 
 Bible that a preacher ought to break bread with a 
 radical," I said in my headaching voice. 
 
 He made no reply. He slurred his breakfast and 
 immediately retired to his study, where he remained 
 all c?.y, which was Saturday. There was only one 
 thing he could do, and he did it. The next morn 
 ing he preached a powerful sermon against commun 
 ists, anarchists and socialists. He was very severe. 
 He cleared his skirts in this discourse of any stain 
 that might have been left on them by his recent 
 guest. On Monday morning excerpts from this ser 
 mon appeared prominently in the same papers that 
 carried the news of Kleffler s arrest as "he was leav 
 ing the residence of a prominent minister." 
 
 The strikers went back to work on this same day.
 
 MY SON 161 
 
 I thought the arrest of Kleffler had much to do with 
 the end of the strike, but many people in Peter s 
 church insisted that the startling exposures he 
 had made of what radicalism really meant in his 
 Sunday morning sermon had its weight with the 
 strikers. 
 
 My son is a very smart man. He can turn a sharp 
 corner with astonishing speed and arrive in the 
 straight and narrow way where everybody can see 
 him before anyone can form an adverse judgment 
 about what he was doing round that corner. I will 
 not go so far as to say this kind of moral agility in 
 a preacher is wrong, but I do think Peter would 
 not have been obliged so frequently to finance his 
 harmlessness of a dove with so much serpent wisdom 
 if he had had at this time a clearer vision of his 
 offices as a minister of the gospel. 
 
 During the early spring of this year 1919, the 
 earth that the Lord has made was in its usual health. 
 All the seed sown came up for harvest. Not a 
 single thing was changed in this silent order of 
 Nature, established in the beginning. But there were 
 unimaginable disturbances in the other order, that 
 we make and unmake for ourselves. The world, for 
 which so many young men had just fought and died, 
 seemed to be slipping. It rocked and swayed like a 
 little foolish thing in the wind of many minds. In 
 vain did the echo of our own mighty idealism re-
 
 162 MY SON 
 
 verberate across the seas. We paid no attention 
 that is, not any high and noble attention. We were 
 still examining our "long loose leg," counting the 
 jerks it had suffered, and wondering why we had 
 offered it so carelessly. We would not join the 
 League of Nations to enforce peace, though we were 
 pledged to it and ought to do it, because after the 
 experience we had over there it looked too much like 
 another way of offering this member to be pulled in 
 definitely. We felt twitchings and pains as strong 
 as bitter memories in our financial muscles. We 
 turned round as a nation and regarded that great 
 idealist and evangelist, Mr. Woodrow Wilson, whom 
 we had come near to worshiping for the duration of 
 the war, with considerable curiosity, which was not 
 worshipful, nor altogether friendly. He was still 
 in Paris at this time, but our leg was paining us 
 even before he went over there. And now it was 
 giving us fits. 
 
 Sometimes I have my doubts about risking a man 
 in his spirit to determine the policies of a great na 
 tion. He may not be entirely in his senses. It de 
 pends upon how you interpret and apply the truth 
 to practical affairs whether it turns out to be not the 
 truth at all but a dangerous doctrine. This is why 
 your Simon-pure idealist is dangerous if you take 
 him out of his attic and away from his books. He 
 has a streak of red in him that shows up when he 
 gets hold of your Government, your Army and your
 
 MY SON 163 
 
 treasury. He means well, but what he means does 
 not turn out well. He skips the unalterable fact of 
 human nature namely, that you cannot take what 
 belongs to one man or one nation and give it, how 
 ever gloriously, free, gratis and for nothing, to 
 another man or another nation without rousing the 
 very honest devil of possession that is in us all. 
 Enough of a thing is enough, and that is what no 
 idealist ever finds out. 
 
 But this stir in Washington was not the worst of 
 it. The cost of everything went up as it did not go 
 up during the war. We had one sort of famine after 
 another. If it was not gas it was sugar, and for the 
 first time in my life I paid twelve dollars for a pair 
 of shoes, not nearly so good as I used to get for 
 three dollars. We paid fifty cents a pound for steak. 
 
 I never realized how futile human statutes were 
 until men gathered in councils, legislatures, Con 
 gress everywhere, to pass laws to correct this abuse 
 or that abuse. Nothing was mended. 
 
 The general opinion was that these disordered con 
 ditions were due to the war. No doubt they were; 
 but what I want to know is, why a merchant who 
 showed up as a working patriot with his arm round 
 every farmer s neck persuading him to buy bonds 
 with his cotton money when he had never had any 
 money before, sold this same farmer a suit of clothes 
 for fifty dollars that cost him only ten dollars ? 
 Patriotism is far more emotional than religion and
 
 164 MY SON 
 
 not nearly so lasting in its effects on character. I 
 could look over Peter s congregation every Sunday 
 and see many back-slidden patriots in it, men who 
 gave their time and their eloquence to war work; 
 now they seemed strangely shrunken and ignoble. 
 There were no worse profiteers among us. It was the 
 same everywhere. 
 
 In the summer of this year, with everything going 
 wrong and the few anxious pop-eyed dollars thrifty 
 people had saved to get them through the bad 
 weather of life being spent for the bare necessities, 
 the high cost of the heathen struck us. We had spent 
 billions of dollars for war bonds, we had given mil 
 lions more to finance every kind of war service. 
 Now the Christian churches took a hand. Each 
 denomination in quick succession put over a drive 
 for funds. 
 
 We had to fight the war and we had to have the 
 money to pay the costs, and for the waste and senti 
 mentalities of war. But what will happen to us if 
 too many other interests adopt Mr. McAdoo s 
 methods ? The plan for raising the centenary fund 
 in our church was patterned after them. In a 
 few weeks our Methodist churches raised seventy- 
 five million dollars without leaving even a souvenir 
 bond behind to show for what we had given. And 
 we put it all over Mr. McAdoo when it came to the 
 cost of the campaign, which was only one and a half 
 per cent of the amount raised !
 
 MY SON 165 
 
 Peter s church during this period looked like a 
 motion-picture palace. There were billboards on the 
 street outside covered with highly colored posters. 
 The subjects of these pictures varied from several 
 different scenes from the life of Jesus, including the 
 crucifixion, to others of heathen and savages to be 
 saved presumably by this fund. But there was not 
 a single one portraying a profiteering capitalist or a 
 labor agitator or a common backslider, which in my 
 opinion was about half doing this poster business. 
 My feeling is that a Christian church ought not to 
 have backbitten the heathen by exposing them to 
 such a disadvantage in these pictures if we did not 
 have the courage to show up our own sinners in 
 the same high colors. 
 
 I try to be a reasonbly good woman. When I can 
 not live in charity with my neighbor I resort to liv 
 ing in silence with him. But there is a sort of spite 
 in the best of us that never dies. It only dies down 
 until something happens to stir it up again. Sitting 
 in Peter s church on Sunday with these posters in 
 side and outside of it, I recalled the embarrassment 
 the guests used to show at tea parties when I first 
 came to this city, and so far forgot proprieties as to 
 mention the Lord and his mercies. I decided in the 
 light of these posters that whatever the reason for 
 this embarrassment it was neither reverence nor 
 spiritual modesty. 
 
 I will not go so far as to say that this financial
 
 166 MY SON 
 
 activity in the name of the Lord was wrong. By 
 this time I was so befuddled that I could not tell my 
 moral right hand from my spiritual left hand. But it 
 does something to people, even Christian people, to 
 handle, have and hold large sums of money. One of 
 the oft-repeated promises made during this drive for 
 our centenary fund was that no preacher should re 
 ceive a salary of less than one thousand dollars a 
 year. This was a popular appeal in a section where 
 many of them even in these hard times were living 
 on six hundred and their sublime faith in God. We 
 understood that these men s salaries would be sup 
 plemented from the centenary fund. What hap 
 pened was that certain churches, already heavily 
 burdened with the obligation they had taken to pay 
 so much each year for five years to this fund, were 
 notified that they must raise their pastors salaries 
 to at least a thousand dollars! They did, out of 
 the pockets of their members, not the centenary 
 fund. 
 
 Peter s church was among the many that over 
 subscribed the assessment levied on it for this fund. 
 Preachers are the best agents in the world for col 
 lecting money. I have no doubt that if this Govern 
 ment had turned over the whole business to them of 
 getting finances for the war with Mr. McAdoo, of 
 course, to advise them they would have done it 
 without the artifice of selling bonds, and so the 
 country would have been saved the enormous taxes
 
 MY SON 167 
 
 we must pay for a lifetime, because in that case 
 there would have been no excuse for imposing these 
 taxes. 
 
 There was now very little Ph. D. stuff left in 
 Peter, and no poetic mysticism at all. He had 
 passed, still like the shooting star of himself, out of 
 the women s clubs, and the seat of his popularity 
 had been transferred to the firmer sex, which, you 
 will observe, is never the case with a man whose 
 personality makes him the hero orator of strictly 
 feminine organizations. 
 
 Peter made a rise. He was made a member of the 
 Add and Carry Club. The membership was com 
 posed of prominent business and professional men, 
 and it was nearly as large as that of Peter s church. 
 This club could do anything from promoting the 
 best interests of the city to entertaining the manager 
 of a vaudeville circuit with a complement of his lady 
 stars. 
 
 I was opposed to his joining it, but he reminded 
 me that other leading ministers belonged to it. He 
 still insisted that to serve you must get down among 
 men, when the gospel plan is that preachers ought 
 to stay up among men. I thought my son could be 
 the patient long-suffering brother of his fellow man 
 without becoming his buddy. Maybe this was 
 spiritual pride, but when his own stewards who were 
 in the thing began to call him "Pete," when they 
 motored by to get him for a game of golf, I felt
 
 168 MY SON 
 
 queer. I wondered if they still thought of him as 
 "Pete" on Sunday, when he preached and prayed 
 and pronounced the benediction. Familiarity does 
 beget contempt, and contempt is very bad for a 
 preacher. 
 
 One evening the phone rang. I answered it. A 
 woman s voice inquired if this was the residence of 
 the Rev. Mr. Peter Thompson. I said it was. Was 
 he at home"? I said yes. She wanted to speak to 
 him, please. I called Peter. Like most public men 
 he was always suspicious of the phone. He asked 
 me to find out who this was. I went back and asked 
 that question. She said: "Never mind; I am sure 
 Mr. Thompson will be glad to speak to me." 
 
 I told Peter what she said, and he came grumbling 
 to the phone. I stood back, you may say maternally 
 anxious, waiting to hear who this was, having a 
 vague recollection of this mewing voice, but not able 
 to place it. 
 
 Peter took the receiver and said: "Well, this is 
 Mr. Thompson." 
 
 Then I saw him rake his hand through his hair, 
 clamp the receiver tightly to his ear as if he feared 
 it might leak a word, and look over his shoulder 
 at me. 
 
 "That s all right, mother," he said. 
 
 I took the hint and went back to the parlor, but 
 I left my mind out there in the hall eavesdropping 
 Peter. This can be done. You have only to know
 
 MY SON 169 
 
 a little in order to infer the rest of what may be 
 going on behind your presence. I reflected that if 
 this was Mrs. Smith, wanting to consult Peter about 
 something, he would have said, "How do you do, 
 Mrs. Smith*?" and so on. And at the same time he 
 would have frowned confidentially to me because 
 this woman was one of those church pests who in 
 sisted upon consulting her pastor at every turn of 
 her Christian conscience. And if this was one of his 
 deaconesses asking instructions he would have given 
 them in his business tone of voice. But his manner 
 and voice were not those of a pastor talking to one 
 of the Dorcases of his flock. This was the man of 
 him obviously speaking to the woman of somebody 
 else at the other end of the phone. 
 
 Presently he came to the door with his hat in his 
 hand and said he was going out for a while and that 
 I need not wait up for him. 
 
 I noticed this unusual consideration because it was 
 not my custom to stay up when Peter was out in 
 the evenings. I had not done such a thing on pur 
 pose since he was a boy. But when a sensible good 
 man in his thirties suddenly shows signs of furtive 
 adolescence it is time to take notice and act accord 
 ingly. I was determined to keep my light burning 
 until Peter returned that night. I did not doubt my 
 son, but I doubted that woman whose voice I had 
 heard over the phone. I make no excuses for my 
 anxiety. Every good woman knows that she must
 
 170 MY SON 
 
 develop enough evil-minded ability to suspect some 
 of the worst in her own sex if she protects the men 
 in her family. Even then she may be obliged to do 
 violence to her candid Christian virtues and resort 
 to spite if she does her duty.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WHEN Peter went out in the evening to meet some 
 engagement he always came in for a little bedtime 
 talk if I had not retired to my room. Or he would 
 sit in that comfortable silence your elder children 
 have after they have outgrown the wing feathers of 
 your nearer love and care. So on the night when 
 he had gone to pay that mysterious call I made a sort 
 of maternal illumination of my waiting wakefulness 
 by turning on all the lights in the parlor. But when 
 he came in at eleven o clock he paused at the open 
 door only long enough to say, "Still up, mother 1 ?" 
 and went directly to his room. 
 
 It is only when a wife or a maid desires to be 
 deceived by a lover that any man can deceive a 
 woman at all. They are singularly apparent to the 
 searching feminine eye. If one of them knows he is 
 doing what his legal womankind believes is right 
 and proper he is the most candid of all creatures, 
 but lacking that approval he becomes the most eva 
 sive and secret. It is the one universal form of 
 masculine cowardice, which goes under the profes 
 sion every man makes to himself of not wishing to 
 disturb you about what is not your business but his 
 
 171
 
 172 MY SON 
 
 own private personal business. This is why anxious 
 elderly mothers are frequently obliged for conscience 
 sake to watch and meddle with the inalienable rights 
 of their bachelor sons. And as I have said many 
 times before, you cannot be too particular if your 
 son is also a preacher. 
 
 Peter had passed the youthful period of celibacy 
 when a young man instinctively guards his liberty 
 and rarely marries without being overhauled by the 
 strength of his emotions, and he had reached the 
 stage when a bachelor sometimes faces about and 
 makes up his mind deliberately to take a wife. I 
 thought something like that was going on. And I 
 feared even more that some lady-doll saint in Peter s 
 church might be arranging for an innocent flirtation 
 with her pastor. I hoped the Lord would lead me in 
 the matter, and I made up my mind to be led on the 
 slightest provocation. 
 
 It is the little things out of which jokes on the 
 funny page of a Sunday newspaper are made that 
 are frequently the most serious things in the actual 
 experience of living. A cartoonist might have found 
 excellent material for such caricaturing in our home 
 during the next few days. Peter was not himself; 
 fc was his other self, reserved, but secretly ani 
 mated. I was not myself, either. I felt like an old 
 gray-haired key that could not turn in the lock of 
 the younger, dearer life of my son. Peter said I 
 was not looking well and suggested that I should go
 
 MY SON 173 
 
 to a quiet place in the country for a good long rest. 
 I told him that I preferred to stay right there and 
 look after him. 
 
 "It will be time enough, Peter," I added, "for me 
 to get that rest when you marry some good Christian 
 woman who can take care of you." 
 
 This description of his future wife seemed to 
 widen the breach between us. His relations to me 
 took on the elegance of filial diplomacy. 
 
 I always answer the phone to save him from that 
 class of people who use it as a highwayman does 
 his gun, to hold up a busy man or a tired one and 
 rob him of his time or his rest. But now when, 
 the phone rang I could never get to it before he was 
 already there. If he was in the midst of preparation 
 for his Sabbath service he could hear it if the thing 
 barely clicked, and he would be out of his study like 
 a shot. Some time during the evening he invariably 
 received the call he expected, if he was not out call 
 ing in person. 
 
 One day Mrs. Buckhart came in from Drumhead. 
 She talked for an hour, but I knew that she had not 
 said the thing she came to tell. She had the morally 
 inflated look a maliciously good woman has when 
 her mind is full of something which is not good. 
 
 "Did you see the announcement in the paper this 
 morning about Isobel Sangster?" she asked casually 
 as she was going. 
 
 I had not seen it, I told her; but suddenly I real-
 
 174 MY SON 
 
 ized that this was something I had been expecting 
 for a week. 
 
 "She had an interview about her work in France. 
 I can t think how she dared to do it," she went on. 
 
 "Why?" I asked. 
 
 "Well, she was in France only a short time, when 
 she first went over. She has been in London for a 
 year. She was married there." 
 
 "Married! Did you say she is married?" I ex 
 claimed. 
 
 "No; I said she was married, to Captain Gleate, a 
 British army officer. That is what I mean. She is 
 back here representing herself still as Isobel Sang- 
 ster." 
 
 "Where is her husband?" I asked, trying not to 
 show what was going on in my mind. 
 
 "He has left her. That is why she came home. 
 She cannot find anything of her husband but his 
 lawyer. And this lawyer has cut off her allowance, 
 according to instructions he received from the in 
 visible Captain Gleate, on account of Isobel s doubt 
 ful conduct." 
 
 She took out her handkerchief and patted her 
 powdered face, which was perspiring. 
 
 "Mrs. Sangster told me," she went on, "in strict 
 est confidence. She is very much upset, poor thing, 
 and had to tell somebody. I did not intend to men 
 tion it, but I was in to see the Sangsters last night.
 
 MY SON 175 
 
 Isobel is not conducting herself as a married woman 
 should." 
 
 There was a little silence such as women use when 
 they mean more than it is prudent to say. The one 
 thought I held was that Peter had been out the 
 evening before, and it was not prayer-meeting night. 
 
 Mrs. Buckhart had risen to take her leave before 
 I could gather my wits. 
 
 "Do you know what is going to happen?" she 
 demanded. 
 
 I implied that I did not, without saying so. 
 
 "Well, for the next ten years these marriages for 
 the duration of the war are going to split the morals 
 of this country. These pro tern brides will be pop 
 ping up, and these modern Enoch Arden husbands 
 will be drifting in from the ends of the earth to 
 press their haggard faces against the windows of in 
 nocent people s domesticity." 
 
 She went down the steps to the street, waving her 
 hand at my parlor window, which was very sug 
 gestive. 
 
 That night when the phone rang I was sitting be 
 fore it with the receiver to my ear when Peter came 
 down the hall from his study. 
 
 "That must be for me, mother; I will answer," 
 he said. 
 
 "No; this call is for me, my son, and I am answer 
 ing. It will take only a minute," I said in an aside 
 to him.
 
 176 MY SON 
 
 "Yes," I went on over the phone, "this is Main 
 two-six-seven. Yes, he is here." I heard Peter 
 make a quick step forward. "This is Mrs. Thomp 
 son speaking. Can I take the message*? . . . No, 
 not unless you give your name. . . . Yes, I remem 
 ber you when you were Miss Sangster. I only heard 
 of your marriage this morning, Mrs. Gleate. I am 
 sure my son does not know of it at all. I will tell 
 him who is calling. Hold the line please. . . . No 1 ? 
 Very well then. Good night." 
 
 I hung up the receiver and looked at Peter. 
 
 "I had to do it, my son. You will forgive me 
 presently," I said. 
 
 Then I told him what I had heard. 
 
 "And you see she does not deny it!" I added. 
 
 He was pale, no doubt with anger. A man can 
 be as mad with the woman who saves him from mak 
 ing a fool of himself as he is with the other one, 
 who is ready to betray him. I had the guilty feeling 
 of having done my duty as I watched Peter, who 
 had not said a word, walk back up the hall to his 
 study and close the door. 
 
 This affair was never mentioned between us 
 again. But I often wondered who was responsible 
 for the announcement of the Sangster girl s mar 
 riage, which appeared in the afternoon paper the 
 next day, but not among the social news items. It 
 was as scathingly brief as a warning, and headed
 
 MY SON 177 
 
 that column in the advertising page which contains 
 "Notices to the Public." 
 
 I do not say that the women sent to France during 
 the war for a great service, which most of them 
 rendered with admirable courage and fortitude, 
 should not have married over there. The amazing 
 thing is that so small a number of them did marry 
 when you consider how easy it must have been under 
 the circumstances to choose a husband. But I do 
 think the last one of them who came home should 
 have been required to stand a civil-service examina 
 tion as to her matrimonial qualifications before being 
 allowed to enter the country. And if the military 
 authorities had brought back a roster of the men 
 who married abroad this would have prevented 
 much confusion. In that case many young soldiers 
 who take a brief course in French matrimony 
 would not have married so glibly when they came 
 home. 
 
 The hard times William and I had in the itiner 
 ancy were real. They were intelligible and personal 
 to us. We could lay our fingers on it and say, "This 
 is poverty." Or William was sent to a poor ap 
 pointment when he deserved a better one. The worst 
 thing that ever happened to us was when he held 
 a revival and preached and prayed in vain because 
 backsliders would not be reclaimed and sinners would 
 not confess and believe. He passed through a 
 period of depression at such times, but he invariably
 
 178 MY SON 
 
 came out of it strengthened in his faith. If things 
 looked bad for us he would remind me of that Scrip 
 ture which says, "The kingdom of heaven is within 
 you." He derived great comfort from this idea of 
 carrying his native country round with him, removed 
 and safe from the trials and vicissitudes of our mortal 
 existence. 
 
 Sitting here in this fine city parsonage with 
 nothing much in reach of me to do in the Lord s 
 name, but with all the world about me unsettled and 
 disturbed by bitterness, violence and strange doc 
 trines, I can see us as we were then and as the world 
 was then, comparatively safe and peaceful, two tired 
 travelers on the road somewhere between William s 
 churches dingy and dusty and very little script in 
 our pockets, but having still the kingdom of heaven 
 within us. 
 
 The tears will come when I think of them now, 
 those plain sweet days. I remember little stretches 
 of the road where the shadows lay cool as blessings 
 in the hot summer days. I can recall the sheep 
 pastured behind Redwine Church, and the lambs that 
 strayed at will among the tumbled gravestones of 
 the churchyard. I can see the faces of so many men 
 and women whom we knew then, and the way we 
 thought of them, either as the obedient children of 
 God or the disobedient ones, but always every one 
 of them, his children. And all the time I am really 
 looking down upon this city street, filled with the
 
 MY SON 179 
 
 stir and bustle of traffic and with the hurrying feet 
 of men who seem so far removed from being obed 
 ient or even disobedient to God. j 
 
 I have said my prayers and tried to do my duty, 
 but I shall never be again as good a woman as I 
 was then, keeping up with William when he ascended 
 his mountains, comforting him when he passed 
 through some valley of defeat, always sure of that 
 kingdom of heaven within him, not worrying 
 because I had no such deep personal sense of it 
 myself. 
 
 Toward the end of his ministry, when his memory 
 failed along with his strength, he used to forget 
 himself and preach twice in succession from this text 
 to the same congregation. Even if he promised me 
 to preach some other sermon and actually did start 
 off the next Sunday with a different text he would 
 invariably return to his kingdom of heaven geo 
 graphy and devote the remainder of his discourse to 
 telling of the blessings of this fair country. It was 
 not until his memory failed and he could not find 
 his thoughts on this subject that his faith failed and 
 he took up with Job in the Scriptures. 
 
 During all these years there were no world prob 
 lems in our lives, only those connected with life 
 in the world to come. I formed the habit of shar 
 ing William s anxiety about the saving of souls. If 
 the morals of a community were not good he preached 
 repentance and faith. The futility of changing
 
 180 MY SON 
 
 men s lives by any other means never occurred to 
 him. The mind we had was far beyond fortune or 
 misfortune. Sometimes we had a panic of a presi 
 dential election, but we were so safely and scrip- 
 turally poor that financial oscillations of securities 
 and bonds in the markets did not affect us or the 
 people whom we served. My national sense of things 
 was very vague, and the only intentional sense I had 
 was strictly missionary and had to do with the 
 heathen for whom we prayed and took up collections 
 without ceasing. If you think in the lateral terms of 
 this present world, such an existence was narrow; 
 but if you are accustomed to think in the terms of 
 faith, it was high. There was all the length and 
 breadth of the spaces between the stars in our 
 thoughts. 
 
 I seemed now to have passed entirely out of that 
 existence. I heard so much bad news and saw so 
 much that was not good that I could not keep my 
 thoughts fixed on things above. Sometimes I used 
 to go about attending to my household duties and 
 saying over to myself, "For the kingdom of heaven 
 is within you!" But it was not there. I had lost 
 that sublime effulgence of faith. I began to tremble 
 in my earthly shoes. For the first time in my life I 
 was mightily concerned for just the carnal safety of 
 mankind. No matter how earnestly you may desire 
 to fix your thoughts upon higher things it distracts 
 your attention and makes you nervous to see all the
 
 MY SON 181 
 
 familiar landmarks of your merely human existence 
 flying round like feathers in a tempest. 
 
 I continued to read my Bible and the Christian 
 Advocate, both of which seemed to give foreign 
 news of a world that had passed out of sight; but 
 I also read the secular papers, those daily serials of 
 our civilization. And they read like so many chap 
 ters of a doubtful dime novel. Nothing good seemed 
 to be going on in the world. We had spent more 
 money for war expenses than there was in the world. 
 One kind of ruin or another stared us in the face 
 every morning in the headlines of these papers. The 
 cost of living continued to rise. And labor was still 
 running round like a chicken with its head off, in 
 creasing capital by every kind of thriftless extrava 
 gance, and fighting capital at the same time with a 
 sort of senseless malignancy. That inner law which 
 binds men to God and a good conscience was laid 
 aside, and the whole nation waited for Congress to 
 pass other laws, which would protect us against our 
 selves and our neighbors and especially the profi 
 teers. But the two great political parties at Wash 
 ington seemed to have forgotten the nation. They 
 engaged in a free-for-all fight, apparently on the 
 peace treaty, but really it was a political wrestling 
 match in the interest of their own affairs. 
 
 I have sometimes wondered that the worst shrink 
 age in the securities of this nation has not occurred 
 in the character, honor or judgment of her statesmen.
 
 182 MY SON 
 
 William always said that a man who cared more 
 about the doctrines that distinguished his denomina 
 tion from another than he did about the salvation 
 of souls was a sort of mean Christian, if he was a 
 Christian at all. And it does seem to me that our 
 leading statesmen care more for the fortunes of the 
 political parties they represent than they do for the 
 safety of this country. 
 
 I suffered spiritually for the first time in my life 
 from the miasma of political news. I was very un 
 easy about my country; no less because now at last 
 it seemed highly probable that women would obtain 
 the ballot. I am not a parading suffragist, but I have 
 always been one for conscience sake. There is no 
 possible doubt that women can clean up this coun 
 try and make it safer for men as well as women and 
 children to live in. But the question is whether they 
 will do it, or add confusion worse confounded to 
 that which we already have. They are born poli 
 ticians. They practiced politics long before men 
 practiced anything but brute force to obtain their 
 rights. They have been obliged always to resort to 
 persuasion and policies to get what they wanted 
 even in the small one-woman relation to one man. 
 Now that they have won the opportunity to exer 
 cise these well-developed gifts in national affairs 
 nobody knows what will happen. My own suspicion 
 is that the great majority of them will not exercise 
 it at all, but they will still devote themselves to
 
 MY SON 183 
 
 getting elected to and by the one man, for the same 
 old office of love and sacrifice which they have 
 always held. But the thing that troubles me is this : 
 So far, men, rightly or wrongly, have borne the chief 
 reputation for guilt in the world. They have done 
 the cheating and swindling in the public eye while 
 the pretty pilferings of vain women, who are mere 
 ornaments, have been concealed good-naturedly by 
 their mankind. The men have shared their sex s 
 reputation for not being moral with a grin of secret 
 satisfaction even when they were quite moral. They 
 have conducted the business and elections of this 
 nation with successful unscrupulousness or any 
 other way they pleased. And it has been very diffi 
 cult to embarrass them about their deeds done in 
 the body. They take a marauding satisfaction in 
 these bodies. 
 
 But now the woman citizen will be subject to all 
 the rigors of adverse publicity. What women really 
 are in secret will be known in the open for the first 
 time since their gender and gentleness made them 
 sacred to just men. They will not be sacred. Maybe 
 they are not entirely so, anyway, but it is some 
 times more dangerous to destroy an illusion than a 
 civilization. What would happen to us if we sud 
 denly discovered that men really are not brave? It 
 would be a terrific loss. What will happen if 
 women are dismantled and picked to pieces in the 
 shambles of political life 4 ? Even if they do not de-
 
 184 MY SON 
 
 serve it this will happen. Besides, somebody must 
 be meek and long-suffering. With all their follies 
 and vanities and limitations it has been the women 
 who have always practiced this negative but essen 
 tial virtue. 
 
 I may be mistaken, but it seemed to me that 
 the very rumor of suffrage has upset the depend 
 able patience of my sex. A few years ago the 
 women belonging to the missionary societies in our 
 church owned and administered some millions of 
 dollars worth of property and funds. At a certain 
 General Conference they allowed the bishops to take 
 it away from them without a murmur. Quite re 
 cently these same women have stewed and stirred 
 things until they have obtained, in spite of these 
 bishops, a kind of suffrage in church affairs under the 
 name of "laity rights." I mention this instance not 
 to condemn it but to indicate that the bonds which 
 formerly held women no longer bind them anywhere. 
 
 It is not the growth of the divorce evil in this 
 country that is so significant now as the kind of 
 women who are demanding divorces. As a rule your 
 divorcee has been married only a few years or she 
 is of the sporting class who marries for alimony only; 
 but it is not unusual now to read the account of some 
 old gray-haired wife who sails into the courts and 
 demands a divorce from the husband with whom she 
 has lived for thirty or forty years. And she will 
 ask for it on the same grounds she has endured with
 
 MY SON 185 
 
 meekness all those years. I do not say she ought 
 not have it. What I claim is that something awful 
 is going on when women of that age can rise up and 
 swear themselves out of wedlock. 
 
 The activities of the church were never so well 
 advertised as they are to-day; but the spiritual ex 
 periences of Christian men are not. If there could be 
 or ever is now such a thing as an old-fashioned love 
 feast where somebody besides dingy, forlorn 
 preachers at an Annual Conference praise the Lord 
 for his blessings, there would be no sign of it the 
 next morning on the streets or in the world s places 
 of business. If a very rich and prominent man 
 should rise up in an experience meeting and tell what 
 the Lord had done for him, and maybe let go enough 
 to move about shaking hands wi + h the brethren, I 
 reckon this ought to be regarded as sensational news, 
 because it so rarely happens. Your rich man may be 
 generous, but you almost never see him prance in the 
 spirit. I doubt if a man can with his pockets full of 
 money. Still, if it did happen the papers that men 
 tion everything else he does would suppress this. I 
 do not know why, unless the witness of public 
 opinion, which is far more drastic than the witness of 
 the Spirit, might test his professions to the point of 
 bankruptcy according to that Scripture which says: 
 "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the 
 poor." I reckon that verse in the Bible has kept many 
 an old rich man from going too far under the stress
 
 186 MY SON 
 
 of spiritual emotions. But what happens in the 
 world reports itself like a ticker in the church. The 
 trend of the times comes in with the congregation and 
 sits bolt upright during prayers, looking round when 
 it should be on its knees. 
 
 Peter had barely collected the hundred thousand 
 dollars for the centenary fund which had been 
 assessed on his church when Mr. Cathcart, who con 
 tributed most liberally to it, became involved in a 
 scandal. This was a well-staged blackmail perform 
 ance shockingly personal to Mr. Cathcart, not to go 
 into the details. He was innocent. The papers 
 insisted that he was, but they published every scrap 
 of this news about Cathcart. Everybody said he was 
 innocent, but very few believed that he was entirely 
 so. I suppose this was because it is very difficult for 
 a man to be entirely innocent of anything. 
 
 Straight on, now, what happened in the world 
 began to happen in that church. Peter and the press 
 and the prominent members had scarcely got Cath 
 cart out of his difficulties more dead than alive and 
 his pastel-colored clothes changed to the pepper-and- 
 salt tones more becoming to a man of his age when 
 Mrs. Hunk became insanely jealous of Mr. Hunk, 
 and we all heard about it. This was one of those 
 cases of matrimonial blackmail which occurs fre 
 quently without attracting so much public attention. 
 Many a husband lives and dies in an atmosphere of 
 distrust created by his wife, whom no one else sus-
 
 MY SON 187 
 
 pects of this meanness. And there are so many 
 women whose married lives are long penal sentences 
 served beneath the groundless suspicions of their hus 
 bands. 
 
 Mr. Hunk and his wife are members of Peter s 
 church. He is meekly prominent there, she is ex 
 cessively so. He is one of those dull men who suc 
 ceed in business by sticking to it, admirable, decent 
 and distressingly homely. His large nose sits a trifle 
 sidewise on his face, as if it perpetually dodged the 
 thought you aimed at it. He has a double chin but 
 not much of a real chin. His large blue eyes are 
 bloodshot, always suffused with a sort of physical 
 tearfulness. 
 
 Mrs. Hunk is a dark, elderly woman with a 
 wrinkled skin and a snap in her black eyes. She sug 
 gests still the spiteful prettiness of her youth. But 
 now she dresses like a virtue, which is never a becom 
 ing way for any woman to dress, but always accusa 
 tive. She wears her skirts longer and wider than the 
 fashion is, her waist tighter and buttoned up. She 
 walks with a swish, and pops her heels on the floor 
 as if authority was vested in these heels. It was not 
 that she always preceded Mr. Hunk down the aisle 
 of the church on Sunday morning, it was the subdued 
 way he followed her that was significant. 
 
 One hot afternoon when everything was going 
 from bad to worse in this turgid city, Mr. Hunk 
 called on Peter. They went into the study together.
 
 188 MY SON 
 
 From where I sat in the parlor I saw Mr. Hunk go 
 back and close the door of the study, which meant, 
 of course, that he had something very private to say. 
 
 They were in there a long time. I could hear the 
 rumble of Hunk s voice, but nothing at all in reply 
 from Peter. Silences fell, then the same voice would 
 begin again in broken sentences like that of a man 
 overtaken in prayer by the stress of his emotions. 
 
 I endeavored to fix my attention on the trimming 
 I was crocheting for a pair of pillow cases, but it is 
 very difficult to do that at my age when something is 
 going on in the next room and you do not know what 
 is going on. 
 
 Finally they came out in the hall. I heard Mr. 
 Hunk blow his nose, though it was summer weather, 
 when people rarely have occasion to blow their noses. 
 He said something in the raucous voice of a man 
 whose very words ache with grief, and Peter an 
 swered soothingly, as he took leave of him, that he 
 did not think it was serious and that it would soon 
 pass away. This sounded like a boil, but I knew it 
 could not be a boil. 
 
 Then Peter came in and sat down. He had the 
 mystified look a young doctor must sometimes wear 
 when he is called to attend a patient whose complaint 
 is one in which he did not graduate as a medical 
 student. 
 
 "Mother," he said presently, "I wish you would 
 call on Mrs. Hunk."
 
 MY SON 189 
 
 I regarded him inquiringly. 
 
 "It is a case I cannot handle," he went on. 
 
 "What is the matter with Mrs. Hunk?" I asked. 
 
 "She is insanely jealous of her husband," he an 
 swered with a slow grin, probably at the expense of 
 Hunk s ludicrous unattractiveness. 
 
 "He was in here a while ago to see me about this. 
 Mrs. Hunk has become a crisis. He is all broken up, 
 humiliated. Never given her the slightest cause. 
 They have been married nearly thirty years, and this 
 is a new development, though he admits that she has 
 always been inclined to well, keep an eye on him," 
 he concluded dryly. 
 
 I told Peter that I was willing to do my Christian 
 duty, but that the Spirit had never led me to the folly 
 of trying to restore the confidence of another woman 
 in her own husband. I said that jealousy was a 
 disease, a form of hysteria, and in Mrs. Hunk s case 
 I thought it was probably a virulent form of 
 malicious hysteria. 
 
 "But something must be done. He says he can t 
 stand the inferno of her suspicions," Peter insisted. 
 
 "Well, that is the remedy," I answered. "If he is 
 innocent she knows it. So soon as she discovers that 
 he will not endure her persecution she will stop it. 
 Tell him to show his teeth at Mrs. Hunk!" I advised. 
 
 Peter laughed. 
 
 "All women are instinctively afraid of men," I 
 explained. "If Mr. Hunk went home this evening,
 
 190 MY SON 
 
 roared in his strictly masculine voice, found fault 
 with the dinner, kicked a chair across the room, and 
 growled a look at his wife, she would be a changed 
 woman. She would forget her jealously in this real 
 emergency of soothing a savage beast." 
 
 Peter laughed again. He said he had no idea I 
 could think up such a fiercely unchristian doctrine. 
 I told him there was much in human relations that 
 did not come under the head of Christian doctrines. 
 
 "The trouble is poor old Hunk is not a savage 
 beast," he said. 
 
 "And he is a good man," I added, "else he would 
 have found out long ago how to manage Mrs. Hunk. 
 That is frequently the reason why bad men keep their 
 domestic relations in order. They create a diversion 
 by being so disagreeable at home that they achieve 
 meekness instead of suspicion in their wives." 
 
 Peter said that as Mr. Hunk s pastor he doubted 
 the wisdom of giving this kind of advice. 
 
 I went on crocheting and thinking after he had 
 gone back to his study. This affair of the Hunks, 
 I decided, was another case of the general insolvency 
 of faith that had existed and that no longer existed 
 between these two people. Not to believe had be 
 come the habit of men and women. 
 
 On the previous evening Peter had four young 
 men in to dine with us. They were members of his 
 church and prominent in business and professional 
 circles. After dinner the conversation did what it
 
 MY SON 191 
 
 frequently does in my house. It drifted out in a 
 discussion of conditions in the world at large, and 
 left me sitting in my silence, merely listening. 
 
 I was greatly entertained for a time, as an elder 
 person is with the more or less declamatory opinions 
 of young people. Then I had a queer experience. Seth 
 Wilkes, who is a banker, was talking when I sud 
 denly discovered that no one in the parlor except 
 Peter believed a single word Wilkes was saying. I 
 was indignant. I felt sorry for this earnest young 
 man. Presently Mr. Hickson, who is a lawyer, had 
 the floor, and I was astonished to realize that no one 
 believed what he said, or even in his sincerity, ex 
 cept my son Peter, who sat with his legs crossed, his 
 excellent countenance lifted and lighted with the 
 animation of perfect faith in everybody s sincerity. 
 This is why I say Peter is a good man. He can so 
 cheerfully and easily believe in anybody and every 
 body. He was far from suspecting the fact that on 
 this evening it was his own radiant confidence which 
 inspired his guests to talk so freely; but I laid down 
 my work and witnessed a strange thing, as if I had 
 been behind the scenes of these men s inner minds, 
 and I knew before the evening was over that not one 
 of them had any confidence in the sincerity of the 
 others. They were trained to doubt. They could 
 not have believed just the simple word of a man 
 unless it was indorsed, with enough collateral put 
 up to make it and keep it good.
 
 192 MY SON 
 
 Now you may restore confidence in the markets 
 of the world that way, with just capital, but you can 
 not restore the confidence of man in man with any 
 thing but the renewal of faith in the honor and 
 integrity of men. Religion is not the only faith by 
 which we live. All human relations must be based 
 upon belief. This is the ruin that we face, more 
 disastrous than war or famine. It is a pestilence that 
 attacks the very soul of mankind. Wisdom is becom 
 ing cynicism. And all the news of the world is bad. 
 Nobody ever marries and lives happily ever after in 
 the morning paper, but they are divorced. I won 
 dered what would happen if we read a press dispatch 
 some morning that a lady had just died after living 
 forty years with a cantankerous and unworthy .hus 
 band, that she had performed her love and duties 
 faithfully and patiently, brought up a large family 
 of excellent sons and daughters, who were doing well 
 and honorably in the world. Well, it would not be 
 regarded as news. The universal suspicion would be 
 that a little old Christian obituary had crept across 
 the wires by mistake. But if a woman has murdered 
 her husband and flung her innocent babes in a man 
 hole of a sewer it would be news, telegraphed to 
 every paper in the country. 
 
 I mentioned this to Peter that evening at dinner. 
 I wanted to know why there was so much bad 
 news and no news of goodness. He said a queer 
 thing.
 
 MY SON 193 
 
 "Goodness, mother, is sacred, and it is not talked 
 about much. Our virtues are private; but the evil 
 that we do concerns the safety of society and is 
 handled by the public." 
 
 Peter sometimes mentions the subconscious mind 
 in his sermons when he is digging his congregation. 
 I thought when he offered this explanation he had 
 stated one of the subconscious truths of human ex 
 perience. And I had not more than thought it before 
 he offered the conscious truth and the real reason 
 for the popular currency of sensational news, which 
 it seems our virtues never produce. 
 
 "Besides," he went on, "the people demand it. 
 And they will have it." 
 
 I retorted that giving the people what they wanted 
 was not giving them what they ought to have. I was 
 tempted to add that this was the trouble with the 
 ministry, as well as with the gossips and the news 
 papers. Preachers were softening the gospel so that 
 it would not waken a man dead in his trespasses and 
 sins. But I try never to hurt Peter s feelings or to 
 discourage him, so I did not say it. 
 
 In return for this alms which I gave my son in 
 secret I reckon the Lord blessed me with an idea, for 
 I had one, like a shot, from somewhere. 
 
 I asked Peter why goodness could not be featured. 
 "Like, well, the posters we had to advertise the cen 
 tenary campaign," I concluded. 
 
 He turned the point of this question, as he fre-
 
 194 MY SON 
 
 quently did when I had him cornered, by offering 
 me a compliment. He said I was one fine large 
 feature of goodness myself and all I had to do was 
 to go on living. 
 
 I retired early that night, but not to bed. I had 
 a bee in my bonnet. Why shouldn t some one start 
 a propaganda campaign advertising that which was 
 good in men and women 1 ? I sat in my room and 
 thought about it. Then I put on my spectacles and 
 turned on the light above my desk, took out some 
 paper and sharpened a pencil. 
 
 I was never able to feel the assurance of having a 
 message for the world. The few people I have 
 known afflicted this way labored under an absurdly 
 egotistical illusion. Rather, I felt now like an old 
 woman who is about to write a letter from a far 
 country to my whole dear human family, just a letter 
 giving them the news of goodness, and nothing else. 
 The extent of my literary labors so far had been the 
 book which I wrote years ago about William. This 
 was not, strictly speaking, an act of letters, it was 
 the way I had of putting a crown on William s head 
 that could never be removed by the elders and 
 bishops. This book was not published on account 
 of its literary merit, but because it recorded the life 
 and the merits of a singularly good man. It ap 
 peared anonymously, and the authorship was at once 
 claimed by so many different women that if I had 
 not been William s only wife I might have doubted
 
 MY SON 195 
 
 my own identity as the real author, especially since 
 I could never write the same way afterward. But 
 now all at once as I sat there before my desk I felt 
 that same singing power of words, and I began to 
 set down the thoughts that came to me. I do not 
 claim that it was well or smartly done, but the 
 matter was excellent paragraph pictures of the 
 good people I had known, with no more connection 
 than there was between the divorce notices in the 
 morning paper. 
 
 I wrote a sketch of John and Sarah High- 
 tower. John Hightower was the meanest man 
 I ever knew. He was ill-tempered in his home. 
 He was so stingy that Mrs. Hightower was re 
 duced to picking up the faulty apples in their 
 orchard and selling them to get the money for her 
 missionary dues. The only variation she ever had 
 in the hard monotony of her life was when he was 
 drunk and behaved worse than usual. She could 
 have had a divorce for the asking, any time, but she 
 never complained. She stood by him and their chil 
 dren. She had a curious happiness in these children. 
 She was their secret providence. After a while, when 
 his sons and daughters had grown up and married, 
 old Hightower s temper seemed to wear out. He 
 loosened up a bit. And Mrs. Hightower had a few 
 things she had always craved. They say one day he 
 looked at her and said: "Well, Sarah, we were 
 happily married, after all !" And they say she told
 
 196 MY SON 
 
 somebody that she had always known John was a 
 good man if he hadn t been so worried with living. 
 The marriage that turns out well is the happy mar 
 riage, no matter how hard a time the two people in 
 it have had bearing with each other. 
 
 I had company that night in my heart, so many 
 men and women I had known seemed to come back 
 with their little good deeds to be recorded. As fast 
 as I could set down as briefly as possible how Brother 
 Hicks, at the age of seventy, waited on his bedridden 
 wife, cooked, cleaned and made a living for her on 
 a little old rabbit-skin farm he had, I would recall 
 someone else who had been the patient good man in 
 the community where he lived, but who could never 
 get on very well with the saints in the church because 
 he was so busy defending and building up the sinners. 
 
 I had more than a dozen of these little tales of 
 honor and cheerful long-suffering written before 
 Peter came up and asked me what I was doing 
 up so late. I told him I had been writing a few 
 letters. You are justified in concealing the truth 
 sometimes. 
 
 The next morning I added a few hopeful sen 
 tences, like the smart paragraphs we see on the edi 
 torial page of a newspaper, only they were not smart 
 and they did not bite. Good little words sowed in 
 sentences which I hoped would come up and grow 
 in the minds of those who read them. 
 
 When you are not accustomed to writing it wakens
 
 MY SON 197 
 
 you in the night and you get up and put down some 
 thing that you forgot to tell. I did this for a week. 
 I was up and down so much with my memories that 
 Peter heard me one night and wanted to know 
 through the door between our rooms if I was ill. I 
 told him no, that I had heard a noise and had risen to 
 see what it was. You may be permitted to use a 
 figure of speech sometimes, which is the symbol of 
 the truth concealed. The noise I heard was of tired 
 feet on a country road long, long ago, when Jasper 
 Wood came in the dead hours of the night to get 
 William to go to old Tim Herndon, who was dying 
 and had made up his mind to repent if they could get 
 a preacher in time to do it. I had forgotten to put 
 Jasper in. He was a rich poor man who lived on 
 the Rocky Road circuit. He had a hard task mak 
 ing a living because he was everybody s good Samari 
 tan. If a man was in trouble he went to see Jasper 
 about it and stopped him from plowing his corn 
 until he had relieved his mind. If anybody wanted 
 something quick he went to Jasper and borrowed it, 
 even if he never paid it back. If someone was sick 
 he sent for Jasper. And in spite of being dragged 
 hither and thither by his good heart Jasper man 
 aged to prosper. 
 
 When I had written many pages of this stuff I 
 sent it without a word of explanation to the editor 
 of our leading daily paper. 
 
 Nothing happened for two weeks. I endured the
 
 198 MY SON 
 
 strange suspense of an author. My only comfort was 
 that no one knew that I was "hair hung and breeze 
 shaken," as the old preacher used to say, between the 
 editorial wastebasket and the world of letters. I still 
 appeared to be the mother I had always been to 
 Peter, and nothing else. Maybe a trifle absent- 
 minded at times, having thought of another good 
 deed that I might have put in, or feeling a little de 
 pressed, as no doubt real authors do when they fear 
 the dangerously variable weather of an editor s judg 
 ments. 
 
 I had lost hope when the third week passed and 
 there was no sign of a breach in the editorial policy 
 of this paper to publish the worst and nothing but the 
 worst that was going on. 
 
 One Sunday afternoon Peter, who is not above 
 taking his Sunday paper on the Lord s Day, was in 
 the parlor reading it. I was in the dining room 
 helping the maid clear the table. Then I heard 
 Peter laugh. He has a laugh that comes out of him 
 with a joyful whoop and ends in a strictly mascu 
 line giggle. I thought he must be looking at the 
 funny page, because he is not above that, either. 
 
 "Mother! I have something to show you!" he 
 called out. 
 
 "I will come presently, Peter," I answered, going 
 on with what I was doing. 
 
 The next moment he came in, grinning broadly.
 
 MY SON 199 
 
 "Look at that!" he exclaimed, spreading a page 
 of the paper before me. 
 
 There was the picture of an old man and woman 
 seated side by side, looking grim and strong in their 
 years, as if they had made a long journey together 
 and knew they had come the right road. Beneath 
 was printed: "Happily Married." Two or three 
 smaller pictures, of plain virtuous-looking men and 
 women, appeared below, the kind you see in old 
 family albums, and made long before photographers 
 learned the lying art of touching up their negatives, 
 but left the light to tell the truth about your grand 
 mother s wrinkles and her old-fashioned breastpin 
 and the mole on your grandfather s nose. 
 
 I stared at these illustrations and glanced up in 
 quiringly at Peter, as you do when you fail to see 
 the joke. 
 
 "But you have not read the headline!" he said, 
 crinkling his eyes to a keener humor at me. 
 
 Then I saw printed at the top of the page in tall 
 type: 
 
 GOOD NEWS 
 And beneath, in a smaller type: 
 
 THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 
 
 Long paragraphs and short ones followed, each 
 with some good old motto for a title.
 
 200 MY SON 
 
 I experienced an overwhelming sense of guilt, con 
 founded with the gratification of a secret pride. My 
 name was not there, but I myself had appeared in 
 print. I forgot for the moment the pious purpose I 
 had when these sketches were written. I was flushed, 
 elated and very fearful lest my son should suspect 
 me. 
 
 "Peter, these are not my reading glasses. I can 
 not make out what it is all about," I said faintly. 
 
 "Well, it is all about what you talk of so much 
 the things good men have done, the patience with 
 which good women have endured. It sounds so 
 much like you that I could almost suspect you have 
 been giving an interview to one of these smart young 
 reporters !" he said teasingly. 
 
 "You know I would never do such a thing!" I re 
 torted. 
 
 "Well, some fellow has put over a good thing. It 
 comes corking near to being literature. Listen to 
 this," he said, running his eye down one of the col 
 umns, and then beginning to read aloud what I had 
 written about Jasper Wood coming along the dusty 
 road at night like a whole regiment on his two feet 
 to fetch the preacher for an old sinner who was about 
 to die in his sins, because he would not make his 
 peace without a minister to receive and witness his 
 confession. 
 
 "Now that sings!" Peter exclaimed. "You hear 
 the whir of wings about that old man of God, hurry-
 
 MY SON 201 
 
 ing with his salvation for that old scout about to 
 pass." 
 
 I regarded Peter s back thoughtfully as he passed 
 through the door into the parlor, still scanning this 
 page of the paper. It was strange that he did not 
 recognize this preacher as his own father. How far 
 removed he was still from those great substances in 
 the lives of men out of which alone poetry, religion 
 and literature are made. 
 
 Then I took an indignant turn on my own heels 
 because he was so far from even suspecting that his 
 old sundown mother had written this thing. They 
 who know us best know only our limitations best. 
 You are much more likely to surprise your family 
 than the world if you achieve something. 
 
 Vanity must be a very quick growth ! Here I was 
 as secretly resentful at Peter because he failed to 
 recognize me as the author of these little candle-lit 
 tales as if he had seen the picture of his own mother 
 and did not know her face because her name was not 
 written beneath it. 
 
 I went back to the table, my hand trembling so 
 that the top tittered against the rim of the butter 
 dish when I put it on. It is a wonder to me how real 
 authors endure the excitement of their own per 
 formances. 
 
 Later in the afternoon, when Peter had gone some 
 where I went in and read the whole of this Good- 
 News page, much as you repeat the prayer you said
 
 MY SON 
 
 last week. My memory is not very good except for 
 Scriptures and hymns, but I reckon I could have re 
 peated every word on that page before I was done 
 with it. It is odd how curious we are about the 
 simplest little image of our own minds we create, 
 as the homeliest woman studies the reflection of her 
 own face in a mirror. I doubt if this is due to 
 vanity, but probably to a sort of perpetual astonish 
 ment that what you really are is so completely hidden 
 by this countenance. So it was a sort of miracle to 
 see the insides of my mind spread in type on this 
 page, and to know that no. one would suspect that, 
 least of all the feeling and purpose with which I had 
 written. 
 
 At last I took the scissors, cut this part of the 
 paper and climbed the stairs to the attic, where Wil 
 liam s sermons lay neatly folded in the old tin box. 
 What sublime imagery they contained of a good 
 man s heart, how much more bravely they have stood 
 out than these pale shadows of mine which I laid 
 among them. I closed the lid and remained awhile 
 on my knees before it, not to pray but to grieve that 
 William s son was not such a preacher, that so much 
 of the faith that William had lay folded away out 
 of the thoughts and minds of men, like these yel 
 lowed pages of his old sermons. 
 
 This Good-News page created much favorable 
 comment. The wedded life of the Hightowers and 
 Jasper Wood s cheerful goodness became the topics
 
 MY SON 203 
 
 of social discussion. I was obliged to exercise con 
 siderable repression at a missionary tea during the 
 week, when a smart young matron said Mrs. High- 
 tower was a fool, and that the modern wife would 
 know a sight better how to take care of herself in 
 the married relation, or get out of it! 
 
 Peter met Mr. Quick, the editor of the paper, at 
 the Add and Carry Club. He said Mr. Quick told 
 him that he had long considered some such feature 
 as this for his Sunday edition, and considered him 
 self lucky to have hit upon the right idea; the people 
 needed a change from the catastrophic, and he 
 thought there would be a reaction toward old- 
 fashioned religious idealism. He invited Peter to 
 contribute something to this page. He said the 
 machinery of press news was not adapted to furnish 
 ing material for such a feature, and that was the only 
 trouble he anticipated in keeping the thing going. 
 Peter said he thought he had a thing or two that 
 might help Quick out in this emergency. He had 
 asked Quick where he obtained the copy for that first 
 page. 
 
 "He grinned and told me that was a secret, but 
 he admitted what I suspected, that nearly all the 
 copy came from the same source," Peter said when 
 he was telling me later of this conversation with 
 Quick. 
 
 "But I doubt if he can depend on it," he added, 
 "and I imagine he plans to get the preachers of the
 
 204 MY SON 
 
 city to help him carry the thing. There will be one 
 difficulty." 
 
 "What is that?" I asked. 
 
 "Most of them will want to sign their names, 
 and he prefers that all the copy should be anony 
 mous," he explained. 
 
 "Why should they?" I wanted to know. 
 
 "Well," he answered, smiling wittily, "preachers 
 are like other folks they want their children to 
 bear their names. It is customary and natural. A 
 man s thoughts are as much the offspring of his mind 
 as they are of his body." 
 
 The following Sunday there was a fine short essay 
 at the top of the Good-News page on "Be ye doers 
 of the word," which I suspected Peter wrote because 
 it was so rational and ethical, but he did not legiti 
 mize the thing with his signature. 
 
 Meanwhile I was resolved that Mr. Quick should 
 not lack for the soothing copy I thought the people 
 needed. You may say that I entered the ministry 
 secretly, with none of the brethren to lead me in 
 prayer, and no choir to sing, beyond the tune of my 
 own memories. I worked my recollections to the last 
 little decimal of a tale. Finally I worked out, and 
 had to begin on the secret prayers and deeds of my 
 own life. Here I discovered an inexhaustible supply 
 of secret matter. It is astonishing how much we 
 have lived and suffered and believed and hoped when
 
 MY SON 205 
 
 we have been compelled to live better than we really 
 are. 
 
 And every Sunday my little stories filled most of 
 this page. Peter said the only fault he had to find 
 was with the editor. He said Mr. Quick strutted 
 and aired himself like a hypocrite about his Good- 
 News feature. He said the man was positively in 
 sufferable he was so boastful about how easy he 
 found it to get more copy than he could publish. 
 Several of the most prominent ministers in town had 
 their contributions returned, and so on and so forth. 
 
 I do not know how this adventure might have 
 ended for me, but for a circumstance characteristic 
 of this strictly commercial period of doing every 
 thing by advertising and collecting a fund to carry 
 it on. 
 
 The campaigns of various religious denominations 
 for funds, totaling many millions of dollars, were 
 scarcely over when the rumble of the much greater 
 Interchurch World Movement smote the ears of all 
 churches in all nations. At last the Lord God was 
 to be securely established in the hearts of all men, re 
 gardless of creeds, by a fund. One of the officials of 
 this organization passed through the city and saw 
 what an excellent medium the Good-News page of 
 our leading Sunday paper would be for his purposes. 
 Thereafter it was devoted exclusively to the propa 
 ganda of latest colossal spiritual enterprise for the 
 saving of the world.
 
 206 MY SON 
 
 The eighteenth amendment went into effect in 
 July of this year. Peter had looked forward to pro 
 hibition as the solution of many problems. He 
 thought liquor fomented strife and stirred the evil 
 passions of all classes. We all do. But now we had 
 a shock. The first effect we had from prohibition 
 was a flare of indignation among many worthy citi 
 zens who had no active relation with evil forces. 
 Those who habitually drank to the point of drunken 
 ness had little to say. But what disturbed Peter 
 was the exaggerated sense many members had of 
 their constitutional rights which had been violated by 
 this law. He was obliged to stop calling on Mr. 
 Hobbs to lead in prayer because, though he had long 
 been known as a consistent member of the church 
 and had the gift of prayer, he was violently opposed 
 to prohibition. Mr. Steward, on the other hand, was 
 a rabid prohibitionist, and would not be led by 
 Hobbs in prayer. 
 
 Men are queer people. I do not say that they are 
 so deviously queer as women, but their queerness is 
 far less consistent with the reputation they have ac 
 quired for being reasonable. They are by nature and 
 inclination lawmakers. They hang one another for 
 committing murder. A man is punished who steals. 
 He is sued if he does not pay his debts. He is 
 watched in business, lest his profits interfere with 
 another man s rights. Any one of them will get him 
 self elected to the legislature so that he may pass
 
 MY SON 207 
 
 more stringent laws. He will not allow you to ex 
 pectorate on the street, even if you have a bad cold 
 and ought not to do it in your own pocket. But the 
 moment his own Government, which he has made 
 and which represents him, undertakes to enforce a 
 law against one of his physical appetites he is up 
 in arms. It makes no difference which appetite it is. 
 If an ordinance should be passed against the drink 
 ing of buttermilk he would die by the churn. 
 
 As for intoxicating beverages, he does not care 
 for the stuff, never touches it, he tells you, but it is 
 the principle of the thing to which he objects. It 
 means paternalism in Government, and paternalism 
 means the overlording of law. A man could not call 
 his soul his own! This was Mr. Hobbs argument. 
 Presently they would take his tobacco and coffee 
 from him ! He belonged to the great minority. He 
 was entitled to representation. 
 
 I thought this was queer, considering how earnestly 
 he favored the Government s laying a chastening 
 hand upon profiteers. But being only a woman may 
 be I do not understand paternalism. I feel that it 
 is a figurative term in politics and does not mean 
 what it ought to mean. 
 
 In vain Peter reasoned with Hobbs, reminding 
 him that nearly all crime, poverty and disease may 
 be traced directly to indulgence in strong drink. That 
 was not the point, he said. This was a free country. 
 Somebody was tampering with the inalienable rights
 
 208 MY SON 
 
 of free men to choose whether they would be sober 
 or not sober. And for one he would not submit 
 tamely to this oppression. There were more ways 
 of killing a dog than choking him in butter, he an 
 nounced darkly. 
 
 The primary preludes of electing officers for the 
 city government came on. Hobbs espoused the wet 
 ticket. Steward was the raging lion of the dry 
 forces. They met in joint debate and accused each 
 other in public places. They published cards villify- 
 ing each other. The whole congregation of Peter s 
 church took sides. Apparently there were no more 
 good Christian people, but the majority of those who 
 had gone under this name were overwhelmingly for 
 those candidates pledged to enforce prohibition. 
 Nevertheless, every man on the wet ticket was nomi 
 nated. 
 
 The next Sunday Mr. Hobbs appeared, after sev 
 eral weeks absence, at the Sabbath services as usual, 
 sitting prominently, looking satisfied and mild, like a 
 man who is now willing to take the gospel, having 
 carried his point in that secular matter of the elec 
 tion. And Mr. Steward transferred his membership 
 to another church. 
 
 I do not know which is the best time to hold a re 
 vival. If you have it before a political campaign 
 many of your most influential members backslide, 
 boosting their candidate. And if you hold it after 
 ward the mischief has already been done. And
 
 MY SON 209 
 
 though a man may repent of everything else he will 
 not repent of the candidate whom he helped elect, 
 no matter how unworthy he may be to hold office. 
 Peter held a series of perfunctory services after this 
 political upheaval, much as you hold a Chautauqua. 
 Nothing happened. 
 
 If I take a bad cold, that is the least part of my 
 trouble. What worries me much more is how I 
 came to get it. I recall every draft that came 
 through an open window. I remember the times I 
 have risen in the dead hours of the night, thinly 
 clad, and gone upstairs and downstairs to make sure 
 that I really did lock all the doors before retiring. 
 I consider the soles of my shoes and try to remember 
 whether I wore my rubbers the last time I went to 
 prayer meeting, which was on a damp evening. But 
 I never can decide which imprudence gave me the 
 cold. 
 
 I was in the same doubt during the latter part of 
 this summer, about a marked change in Peter. He 
 went doggedly on with his work, but not with the 
 enthusiasm that had always been characteristic of 
 him. He had lost his buoyancy, which in my opin 
 ion was never spiritual but due to the hardy con 
 science he had, a good conscience, but not sensitive, 
 and never introspective. He digested his deeds, his 
 prayers and his sermons, and lived on them as you 
 forget the food that sustains you. But now he was 
 not doing very well. He was moody. He practiced
 
 210 MY SON 
 
 silence as a garrulous man practices speech. He de 
 voted more time to the preparation of his sermons 
 and preached like a man with a stone hung round 
 his neck. 
 
 And this was not the worst of it. His church 
 was more than half empty. This had never hap 
 pened before, even in the warmest weather, when 
 many members of his regular congregation were away 
 on their vacations, because he had a sort of float 
 ing audience from the outside which more than com 
 pensated in members. Now these cheerful sinners 
 were not there. Some popular virtue had gone out 
 of him and his ministry. 
 
 I perceived that at last my son was beginning to 
 be uneasy, like a man who fears he may receive his 
 sight soon and be obliged to change his course. I 
 thought he was losing that artless faith in his fellow- 
 men which had sustained him since he entered the 
 ministry, and which is not justified. He was at last 
 confounded by the confusion of spirits in men which 
 drove them this way and that like the demoniacal 
 possessions mentioned in the Scriptures. The moun 
 tains were shaking at last, and I trembled for my 
 son, for I could not be sure whether he would yield 
 to a purely rational defeat or turn to God for a right 
 understanding of his ministry. 
 
 I experienced once more the old burdened feeling 
 I used to have when William passed through a 
 spiritual crisis. I could never be sure he would re-
 
 MY SON 211 
 
 ceive the blessing he desired of his Heavenly Father, 
 nor what would happen if he did not get it. But I 
 knew he would not go on preaching the gospel with 
 out it. Now in the same way I was anxious about 
 what was going on in the heart of my son. I desired 
 above all things that he should remain in the min 
 istry, and I knew that this question was up for settle 
 ment in his mind. He was an honest man. He was 
 beginning to realize what I had known from the 
 first that his ministry had not accomplished its 
 purpose. That he should understand this was neces 
 sary if he ever became a true priest, but what courage 
 it requires in spiritual things to overcome defeat by 
 faith ! I did a sight of blind praying that summer to 
 the one end that the Lord would guide Peter.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE best of men choose strange bedfellows when 
 they go a-fishing. I never could understand it. 
 They do not want their own kind, but their other 
 kind when they take to the woods and streams. A 
 dignified old judge, associated in everybody s mind 
 with the rigors of the law, will pack up and go off 
 with a doubtful young sportsman who has no dignity 
 and very little appreciation of law. I reckon it is 
 on the same principle upon which Socrates took Alci- 
 biades with him when he wanted a complete rest 
 from being a philosopher. And by the same token a 
 good-natured hardened sinner will invite his pastor 
 to go fishing with him, though he has endured the 
 chastening rod of this pastor s severest preaching 
 since the last time they were off fishing together. I 
 reckon this is also on the same principles that Alci- 
 biades preferred the companionship of an intelligent 
 man like Socrates when he was about to be in his 
 cups. 
 
 Anyway in August of this year Peter went off on 
 a two weeks camping and fishing trip with Mr. Hick- 
 son, who is not a good man but a good fellow; Mr. 
 Trollop, who is president of the Add and Carry Club, 
 
 212
 
 MY SON 213 
 
 an office which requires no sort of Christian endeavor 
 to fill; Judge Bitterwater, who is a good lawyer 
 and a good fisherman, but not distinguished for any 
 other excellence; and the Reverend Mr. Charles 
 Stickney. 
 
 Fathers are usually ready to recognize the fact 
 when their sons are grown men, and even anxious to 
 make the point. But mothers know very well that 
 there are no grown sons in this world, and so long as 
 they live they experience faintly and futilely those 
 anxieties they felt when these men-children were lit 
 tle boys, lest they should go astray or fall into bad 
 company. I can never get over that feeling about 
 Peter. I was not concerned about the secular mem 
 bers of this fishing party, but I was by his going 
 off with Stickney as I used to be when I caught him 
 reading one of the Henty books, which are regarded 
 as harmless because they are innocuous. 
 
 Brother Stickney is the pastor of the next larg 
 est Methodist church in this city. He is a modern 
 preacher as contrasted with Peter, who was by way 
 of being a modern thinker in the pulpit. That is to 
 say, Stickney is accomplished in the art of entertain 
 ing his congregation, something of a comedian, and 
 not too much of a tragedian. 
 
 Earlier in the summer while he was conducting 
 a series of services there appeared an electric sign 
 above the door of his church. It was one of these 
 variegated on-and-off signs. It would flash out,
 
 214 MY SON 
 
 "Jesus is Here !" wink back into darkness, and come 
 again. At the close of the meeting a week later this 
 thing was promptly and artlessly removed. 
 
 Peter and I attended these services. He had to 
 sit in the pulpit and I sat politely in one of the front 
 seats. This was the nearest I have ever been to at 
 tending a vaudeville performance. It looks queer to 
 see a minister of the gospel standing bench legged 
 before his congregation with the elbows of these legs 
 crooked outwardly as sharply as his real elbows, play 
 ing the title role of some scene in the Bible. I do 
 not say this is wrong, but it is very difficult to fix 
 your mind on spiritual things while it is going on. 
 My feeling is that if you are born with the instincts 
 of a comedian, and the Lord calls you to preach in 
 spite of this defective levity, you ought to curb it. 
 But many ministers enliven their discourse these days 
 with light dramatics based on some of the noblest 
 scenes in the Bible. I am thankful that whatever 
 Peter s faults have been, he never made pulpit 
 parodies of the Lord s gospel to please his con 
 gregation. 
 
 But you cannot tell what men talk about when 
 they go a-fishing. I knew that Peter was anxious 
 and discouraged about his ministry. I knew he had 
 come that far at least, and I did hope and pray he 
 would not confide too much of his doubts and fears to
 
 MY SON 215 
 
 Brother Stickney, nor be tempted to adopt Stick- 
 ney s methods. 
 
 I need not have worried. Peter might mistake effi 
 ciency for salvation, but he would never mistake buf 
 foonery for gospel truth. He had an honest mind 
 and a level head. He used his legs to stand on, not 
 to gesture with. 
 
 I spent the time while Peter was away, on the old 
 Redwine circuit with Maggie Fleming. I remember 
 the night, more than thirty years ago, when William 
 received Maggie into the church and the very way 
 she looked then a little girl in a white dress which 
 was a trifle smaller than she was, wearing her shoes 
 and stockings as if these were her sad and painful 
 Sunday morals, not to be endured on other days. I 
 can see the faint radiance of the candlelight on her 
 fair hair, which stood out fine and straight from her 
 small head as if this was no time for hair to lie down 
 and be at peace. Something was happening ! I can 
 see the drops of baptismal water fall and glisten on 
 this head, bowed so low before the altar, and Maggie, 
 drawn down in her terrified humility to a mere spot 
 of whiteness with her childish face hidden in her 
 little brown hands. And William standing young 
 and tall above her saying his tremendous church 
 prayer over this little mite : 
 
 "Almighty God, we thank thee for founding thy 
 church, and promising that the gates of hell shall not 
 prevail against it. ... We especially praise thy
 
 216 MY SON 
 
 name for enabling this, thy servant" meaning 
 Maggie ! "to avouch the Lord to be her God. Help 
 her to perform the promise and vow which she has 
 made, to renounce the devil, the world and the flesh; 
 to believe the record which thou hast given to thy 
 Son, and to walk in all thy commandments and ordi 
 nances blameless to the end of her life." 
 
 The solemn and binding words of this prayer went 
 on rumbling and thundering over Maggie s head 
 down to the last Amen. Then she arose with the 
 drops of water still clinging to her hair, and started 
 on that long journey of walking blameless to the end 
 of her life. I doubt if anybody can do it except in 
 the sight of the Lord, who no doubt is not so critical 
 of us as we are of one another. 
 
 Maggie was a little child then, and I was a grown 
 woman. But now there is not much difference in our 
 ages according to our experiences along the way we 
 have come. Every year I go up there to rest in her 
 house because we know the same things by heart and 
 can talk about them as a nun tells her beads, one 
 memory at a time, old songs that we used to sing, old 
 saints that we used to know. 
 
 But there is one difference between us: Maggie, 
 who has brought up a family and seen her children 
 married, and who has been a widow for many years, 
 and been obliged to meet her world face to face, 
 knows so much less than I do of the evil in the world. 
 I do not tell her. Nothing would make her believe
 
 MY SON 217 
 
 it. This is indeed to be blameless. Sometimes it 
 has occurred to me that if I was as good a woman as 
 we are commanded to be in his name, I should know 
 less than I do about what is wrong with everybody. 
 But maybe the Lord will know how to make allow 
 ances in his tender mercies, for a woman who has 
 been called in her old age to be the mother of a fash 
 ionable city preacher and who was never before 
 accustomed to the ways of the world, which, in 
 spite of Maggie s innocent faith, are not religious 
 ways. 
 
 I attended services at Red wine Church on Sun 
 day. The same old church, a little more weather- 
 beaten outside, a darker richer brown within, but no 
 sign needed above the door to announce the pres 
 ence of the Lord. The pastor was an old circuit 
 rider, on his last legs in the itinerancy. But you could 
 tell by the lean gospel strength of his countenance, 
 by his fine beak of a nose and the eagle clearness of 
 his eye that he had been a fighting preacher in his 
 day and had wielded the doctrines of his church with 
 that ancient effectiveness attributed to another man 
 of faith who achieved such astonishing execution 
 among his enemies with the jaw bone of an ass. But 
 like most preachers of the elder militant order he 
 was simmering down now to just the sweetness of 
 the word. He preached on the Fatherhood of God, 
 nothing new, and with no wisdom of words, but he 
 took it here and there from the Scriptures, merely
 
 218 MY SON 
 
 feeding his lambs, so to speak, not arguing with them 
 or urging them to believe. Their faith it appeared 
 had been confirmed long ago. 
 
 From the window where I sat in the church I could 
 see the stone above William s grave. It had begun 
 to lean a little. I went back the next day. and had it 
 set up straight. I usually spend a good deal of my 
 time in this churchyard when I am visiting Maggie. 
 Most of the people to whom William preached the 
 first year after we were married are buried there 
 now, the good ones and the bad ones side by side. I 
 doubt if it matters much when we have slipped down 
 into the common dust, whose dust this used to be that 
 lies nearest our own. The differences that living 
 made between us are past, and what is left of us 
 comes up kind and kin to the grass at last. 
 
 I felt very quiet about myself in this place. A 
 hundred miles distant the life of the turgid city, 
 from which I had come, still seethed. There were the 
 crowds and crowds of people hurrying and knotting 
 and snarling like a hank of human threads that no 
 body knows how to unwind. But in the shadow of 
 this old church with only the epitaphs of so many 
 men and women whom I had known to keep me com 
 pany, and with the little seed plumes of the grass 
 above their graves bending in the soft summer wind, 
 this city, these people and the fever of their strange 
 disorders seemed infinitely removed and unimpor 
 tant, like little moments of time you waste when you
 
 MY SON 219 
 
 have been in a great hurry to do something. It will 
 be done, that something. But you will not do it. 
 You will have become a part of this peace and this 
 silence long before these people find the way and 
 catch step with the march of stars to the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 I could not worry enough in this quiet place even 
 to pray for Peter, who had been constantly on my 
 heart of late. An assurance came to me as clear as a 
 voice which speaks, that all would be well with my 
 son. I should live to see him know the truth and 
 suffer for it. I should see him broken by the world 
 and established in the Lord. Then I found myself 
 weeping for Peter, thinking of what he must endure, 
 grieving for that life of a man and a man s hopes 
 which he must yield in exchange for this terrible 
 peace. 
 
 I reckon one reason why the Lord does not frighten 
 us too often with an answer to prayer is because it 
 requires real courage to face one when we are put 
 to the test. Maybe this is why he spares us and goes 
 on attending to our needs without making us quake 
 beforehand by letting us know what we must pay in 
 pain and sacrifice. 
 
 I went back to the city the last week in August. 
 Peter returned the next day on the late evening train, 
 lean and tanned. But he did not look like a man 
 who had been off on a fishing frolic. He had noth-
 
 220 MY SON 
 
 ing to tell of his exploits or of his comradeships. To 
 all my questions he returned brief answers as if 
 speech was an effort. Yes, he had been very well. 
 Yes, he understood that the fishing was good, but 
 he had not fished. He had spent most of his 
 time tramping. Mountain country, miles of for 
 est, no roads, not even a trail to follow when you 
 were far enough inside. He had been lost several 
 times. 
 
 "It was like finding myself," he added, catch 
 ing my eye merely in passing to his own next 
 thought. 
 
 He wanted to know if I had ever experienced the 
 strange animation there is in the silence of a deep 
 wood. He supposed not, he added, no doubt refer 
 ring to my timid domestic gender. It was confiden 
 tial and personal, that silence. I told him I liked 
 one shade tree, or maybe two, as much as anybody, 
 but that nothing but trees depressed me, just as I 
 should feel lonesome and diminished in a com 
 pany of awfully great men and with no other ladies 
 present. 
 
 Sometimes when I said a quick foolish feminine 
 thing like this Peter would laugh. But now he did 
 not even smile, and I perceived that he had not been 
 listening. I began to regard my son with the atten 
 tion you give a sick person when you do not know 
 what ails him. Peter was not a poet nor a mystic. 
 I never thought he was much of a philosopher,
 
 MY SON 221 
 
 though he was to my mind unfortunately erudite in 
 the philosophies of other men. Therefore I thought 
 it was queer that he had not fished and shared the 
 life of the camp instead of musing round alone in 
 the woods. 
 
 He leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands over 
 his head and passed into a coma of silence. I went 
 on talking of my visit to Maggie Fleming, giving him 
 the news of Redwine Church who had married, 
 who had died and how many had been born again 
 during the revival they held this year. Presently he 
 interrupted me. He said he thought he would go 
 up and try to get some sleep, as if the getting of sleep 
 had become a difficult business. I noticed this be 
 cause Peter has always been what you may call an 
 enthusiastic sleeper. 
 
 An hour later when I went upstairs there was a line 
 of light beneath the door of his room, and several 
 times during the night I heard him stirring about. 
 The next morning he was in his study when I came 
 downstairs, though the early bird of him was not 
 in the habit of showing up before breakfast. I sup 
 posed he was pressed for time to prepare his sermon 
 for the following Sunday, as this would be prayer- 
 meeting night. But he did not conduct this prayer 
 meeting. Then it developed that he would not 
 preach on Sunday. He had invited another minister 
 to fill his appointment. 
 
 I do not know how it may be with other Christians,
 
 222 MY SON 
 
 but with me it has always been difficult to keep that 
 assurance won in answer to prayer. It will pass from 
 me when I need it most, and I am obliged to get down 
 on my knees and pray forit again. So now the sense 
 of security I had about Peter that day in the Red- 
 wine churchyard was gone. I began to be anxious 
 about him again. His failure to preach meant some 
 thing. I wanted to know if* he had a sore throat. 
 Many preachers suffer from this ailment. William 
 frequently did, especially if he indulged too often in 
 the singing of his favorite hymns. And he could 
 never resist certain tunes like this one, which ap 
 pealed to his shepherd spirit : 
 
 There were ninety and nine that safely lay 
 In the shelter of the fold. 
 
 When he reached the line picturing the one sheep 
 that had gone astray Away on the mountains wild 
 and bare he invariably keened his voice to such a 
 pitch of vocal anguish that I always had to make 
 him gargle something for his throat when he came 
 home. 
 
 But Peter declared irritably that nothing ailed 
 him, implying that all he desired in the world was to 
 be left alone, which is the state of a preacher who is 
 not well off with his God. 
 
 He spent every day and the most of every night in 
 his study. This study was no longer the orderly
 
 MY SON 223 
 
 place of a methodical student. It was a scene of the 
 wildest confusion, as if the man in it had been search 
 ing for something he could not find. The books were 
 disarranged on the shelves, piled on the floor, dis 
 carded in corners as if the hand that flung them there 
 had disavowed them. Some of his favorite authors 
 on the moral law had contributed volumes to this 
 disheveled pile. But Kitto s Commentaries stood 
 gray and undisturbed on the top shelf along with 
 William s other books. I kept my eye on this study, 
 finding in it the only news I had of my son. He was 
 not doing any work that I could see with the naked 
 eye, but one morning when I slipped in there for a 
 moment while he was out I found a long page filled 
 with references to texts and passages in the Scrip 
 tures. 
 
 I looked up a few of these and found that they 
 had to do with prophecies, the Holy Spirit, and 
 faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior of men. Peter 
 always seemed to sidestep the doctrine of his Lord s 
 divinity in his sermons, which no preacher can do 
 and see the fruits of the word in the lives of his peo 
 ple. I do not know what laws of rationalism must 
 be violated in order to believe in the divinity of the 
 Son of God, but I do know this is essential to be 
 lieve. Maybe if I had acquired Peter s learning and 
 had developed my logical faculties at the expense 
 of my spiritual instincts, this would not have been 
 so easy to believe. I reckon intellectual egotism has
 
 224 MY SON 
 
 kept many a smart man out of a prominent place in 
 the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 I felt the old anguish of suspense as I withdrew 
 softly from Peter s study that morning, as I used 
 to feel it about William when he was in his wrest 
 ling-Jacob mood. And I experienced a strange sense 
 of guilt toward Peter. If he had been more like 
 his father, not so much my son, if he had not in 
 herited from me some mettle of the spirit, more of 
 this world than that other world, I should not have 
 been so anxious. As it was I did not know what 
 would happen. And when you do not know that, 
 something you are not expecting at all usually hap 
 pens before you can turn round and say, "Lord, have 
 mercy !" 
 
 On the afternoon of this same day, which was 
 Saturday, Mrs. Woodberry sent for me. She is a 
 widow and a member of Peter s church. During the 
 influenza epidemic of the previous winter she had 
 lost her daughter, Arwin, a splendid young woman 
 and her only child. She was one of those courageous, 
 eminently sane women who can digest a sorrow like 
 this and go on living without acquiring the habit of 
 grief so depressing to other people. She had recog 
 nized the fact which we all discover, that there is a 
 conspiracy among the living against the dead, to the 
 end that these shall remain buried out of mind, and 
 not exploited to win that royalty of sympathy which
 
 MY SON 225 
 
 those who are bereaved continually covet long after 
 they cease to hope for it. 
 
 Months had passed now since I had heard Mrs. 
 Woodberry mention Arwin. And I was the more 
 astonished therefore to find her in a terrible state 
 when I came in. She was upstairs in her bedroom, 
 laid out of her own accord, as if she had just died of 
 horror, but was still alive. 
 
 "What has happened*?" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Read it," she whispered, making a faint gesture 
 at something on the floor. 
 
 Then I saw a letter lying open with a bit of yel 
 low paper folded in it. 
 
 I reached for it, put on my glasses and looked first 
 at the signature. The name did not set well with me. 
 It was signed "Isobel." 
 
 "Isobel ?" I repeated, glancing at Mrs. Woodberry 
 inquiringly, meaning "Which Isobel?" 
 
 "Sangster. She was in school with Arwin years 
 ago," she explained faintly. 
 
 It was no more than a note saying with consider 
 able affection that she, Isobel, had not had the cour 
 age to intrude upon dear Mrs. Woodberry s grief 
 since poor Arwin s death until now, when she could 
 offer her the immeasurable consolation of a message 
 from Arwin, which she had herself received through 
 the medium of automatic writing. She inclosed the 
 message exactly as she had taken it.
 
 226 MY SON 
 
 "What foolishness is this*?" I exclaimed indig 
 nantly. 
 
 "You have not read the message," she said. 
 
 The writing on the yellow paper was a clever 
 forgery of Arwin Woodberry s own hand. 
 
 "Mother is not to worry," I read. "I am much 
 better and very happy." 
 
 "How will she know this message is from you*?" 
 in Isobel s own handwriting. 
 
 "She will find the papers she has been looking for 
 on the shelf of the closet in my room," was the an 
 swer. 
 
 I folded the paper and stared at Mrs. Woodberry. 
 Her lips were trembling, tears lay upon her cheeks. 
 
 "You do not understand!" she sobbed. 
 
 "No!" I admitted coldly. 
 
 "Those papers," she said; "no one knew of them 
 but Arwin and myself. She had them. Since her 
 death I have looked for them everywhere. To-day 
 I found them on the shelf in that closet." 
 
 I have never doubted that there is such a thing 
 as mind reading. Nobody can, who has a mind with 
 the telepathic antennse of their emotional natures 
 sufficiently developed, any more than one is surprised 
 to see a blind bug feel its way by the same method. 
 But it is a bug. I thought Isobel Sangster was sin 
 ister enough to have practiced that sly degeneracy 
 on this poor woman. In her subconscious mind 
 the door of which is always open to these spiritist
 
 MY SON 227 
 
 bugs! Mrs. Woodberry had certainly canvassed 
 the shelf in this closet along with every other pos 
 sible place in the house where these papers could be 
 found. 
 
 I tried to explain this to her. 
 
 "Yes," she answered, "I have thought of that. 
 Some one has been sending me literature on psychic 
 phenomena, and I have read Sir Ole Lost s books. 
 One keeps going round in a circle trying to pierce the 
 awful silence love leaves when it is gone." 
 
 She paused, her lips quivering. 
 
 "You cannot know how strong the temptation is 
 to to believe a thing like that," she murmured, 
 glancing at the yellow paper which I still held in 
 the tips of my fingers. 
 
 "I should think Arwin would have communicated 
 directly with you," I suggested indignantly. 
 
 You must not think I do not, with my reason, 
 know all that," she answered. "But they tempt us, 
 these people, when we are weakest. I would give 
 anything, everything, my very life gladly to know 
 that message really came from Arwin," she sobbed. 
 
 "Not to believe, if it is true, is to deny her the im 
 measurable consolation of her thought still of me. 
 They count on that, these spiritists. They take their 
 prey from among the desolate like me!" she con 
 cluded. 
 
 I began to understand the outrage that had been 
 committed upon this mother s defenseless heart. The
 
 228 MY SON 
 
 devil, dear brethren, is usually one of us, not so often 
 a foreign prince of darkness as we suppose. 
 
 I said what I could to restore Mrs. Woodberry s 
 mind on a proper Christian faith in immortality, and 
 went home, because I did not know what to say to 
 her. I was feeling a little queer and creepy up and 
 down my own spine. It is a discomforting experi 
 ence to be knocked out of your senses down into your 
 aboriginal superstitions. You get a glimpse of where 
 you came from. 
 
 I walked home, though it was some distance. Pres 
 ently I knew I was coming to, as we say when some 
 body has a fit, because I began to feel my temper 
 rising, which is always a good sign of the return of 
 your normal relation to yourself. 
 
 I hope I am a Christian woman, though an honest 
 person must have his respectful-to-God doubts at 
 times about that, because every one of us must jerk 
 a commandment out of place now and then in the 
 mere business of living with his fellow man. And 
 we may be obliged sometimes to turn the corner of a 
 beatitude with considerable shrewdness, or subject an 
 acquisitive neighbor to the temptation of taking an 
 unchristian advantage of us. There have been 
 moments when I have had at least a vision of holi 
 ness, but I have my suspicions of any man who can 
 pass clean through his own and get into some 
 body else s spirit, until he can actually forge 
 the handwriting of an immortal soul. When
 
 MY SON 229 
 
 it comes to spiritism I am a firm believer in 
 the Monroe Doctrine. I am teetotally against all en 
 tangling alliances with the spirits of another world. 
 I believe it is the most damaging and disintegrating 
 illusion ever offered in exchange for a nobler faith. 
 And though there may be such people, I have never 
 known one single up-and-doing Christian who be 
 lieved in spiritism. You must be a sort of latitudi- 
 narian in your faith and abnormally concerned for 
 your own crazy comfort before you can accept this 
 vagary as a personal experience. It is like getting 
 your picture on a bottle of patent medicine with your 
 testimonial beneath saying how it almost raised you 
 from the dead and made you skip like a unicorn 
 when you had been walking on crutches for years. 
 Nobody believes you or buys the stuff except neuras 
 thenics who might be as easily cured with peppermint 
 water if it was so recommended. 
 
 Besides, if you believe in spiritism you must be 
 lieve in immortality. And if you believe in im 
 mortality you must believe in a further state of exist 
 ence beyond the grave. The only history we have of 
 this state is the Bible, which has withstood longer 
 than any other record the assaults of every kind of 
 doubt. Now if one has passed out of his dust into 
 this kingdom of spirits, his corruption has put on in- 
 corruption, he has been raised a spiritual body, and 
 he is literally a native of that place. Therefore I 
 should have my very grave doubts of any spirit with
 
 230 MY SON 
 
 whom I could possibly communicate. I should know 
 that he had not qualified as a saint and citizen of that 
 country, therefore not a proper spirit with whom to 
 associate and take into my confidence. 
 
 No man can have faith who demands evidence. 
 And for some reason which the Lord knows is good, 
 it is faith, not evidence, that develops the spiritual 
 attributes we need for eternal life. I reckon it is the 
 wing practice of the spirit we get while we are still 
 in the flesh. I would rather believe what I feel and 
 cannot prove than accept the word of a new-fangled 
 fortune teller about immortality, whose character in 
 this world rarely shows enough units to qualify him 
 for these communications he professes to receive 
 from another world. 
 
 My notion is that probably we shall be very much 
 engaged in psychical research in that world, where 
 there will be a good deal of it to do before we get our 
 records straight. But it is no legitimate occupation 
 to carry on in this one. Maybe this is not the intelli 
 gent view to take, but it is safe, and I never cared 
 much about being intelligent so long as I am in a 
 position to fall on my knees and say, "Lord, I be 
 lieve !" That is going a long sight further than the 
 cerebral portion of your anatomy will ever take you. 
 I never knew of any kind of eavesdropping that was 
 not dishonorable, even if you did not hear anything. 
 This is what psychical research is close kin to, eaves 
 dropping the dead, and telling tales on them to their
 
 MY SON 231 
 
 living friends and relatives. If it is not the meanest 
 kind of mischief it is bound to be the silliest sort of 
 folly, and the most dangerous in this world, because 
 if it is accepted in good faith it destroys real faith 
 with fallacious evidence, which is not evidence at all, 
 but superstition. 
 
 There is a silence that cannot be broken, like the 
 distances between stars that cannot be passed. Let 
 somebody find out the time of day on Mars, let him 
 skeet out into space and bring back one single green 
 leaf from the nearest planet. That should be easy 
 compared to getting messages from immortal spirits. 
 There may be some of us who have lived a long time 
 according to the spirit rappings on our own con 
 science who will be tempted to risk a seance with 
 Moses or Enoch or some prophet whom the Scrip 
 tures recommended. 
 
 As a Christian woman I have my prides, of which 
 I have never been chastened. One of them is that 
 I may be permitted to turn up my spiritual nose in 
 Paradise at some old diminished philosopher, whose 
 writings were beyond my comprehension in this pres 
 ent world. Another is that I may witness the severe 
 operation by which these spiritists have a real sense 
 of immortality grafted to their stunted faculties. 
 
 I was thinking along these lines, which is a sort 
 of psychic way I have of spanking people whose way 
 of thinking and acting does not agree with my 
 temper, as I came home from this visit to Mrs.
 
 232 MY SON 
 
 Woodberry. And I was feeling calmer by the time 
 I reached the door of my own house. 
 
 When I entered the hall Peter was ushering two 
 men out of his study, politely, but with that finicky- 
 ness of manner the best of men have when it is their 
 duty to make some kind of moral distinction. One 
 of these strangers was an elder person, tall, with a 
 lean face and long musical-looking hair, the kind 
 worn by band masters. The other was a short, 
 stodgy man, young, but remarkably bald as to his 
 head. He was dressed in the fashion of many men 
 whom we see in the streets, but whom we never 
 meet. He seemed to glow from his cravat to his 
 spats. 
 
 I went upstairs to take off my bonnet and to change 
 my shoes to a more peaceful pair of slippers. When 
 I came down Peter had returned to his study. I 
 paused before the closed door and considered whether 
 I should go in. One cannot help being curious about 
 strangers in her own house. And when my curiosity 
 is aroused I may as well yield to it at once and 
 avoid the struggle. So I opened the door and 
 went in. 
 
 Peter stood before the window with his hands 
 clasped behind him. He glanced back at me, mean 
 ing that I was interrupting him. But I sat down. 
 A man always wants his mother even if he does not 
 want her that minute. I frequently comfort myself
 
 MY SON 233 
 
 with this assurance when Peter indicates by a little 
 movement, or by the whelping up of the frowns 
 on his forehead, that he finds my presence a little 
 trying. 
 
 "Who were your visitors, my son*?" I asked 
 amiably. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know, mother," he answered. "A 
 couple of strolling rascals, most likely." 
 
 He came back and sat down before his desk, but 
 I kept my eyes raised to him inquiringly. 
 
 "The younger one is a shoe salesman," he went on, 
 "and claims to be a medium for the spiritists. The 
 other is his manager. A medium must have a man 
 ager, you know !" 
 
 It never rains but it pours, I thought, recalling 
 the scene I had just passed through with Mrs. Wood- 
 berry. 
 
 "What did they want?" I asked. 
 
 "They came to invite me to the meetings of the 
 Society for Psychical Research," he answered. 
 "There is one here, it seems," he went on. "They 
 showed me a list of those who belong to it. You 
 would be surprised. Practically all of them promi 
 nent people, men as well as women. Many of them 
 members of my church." 
 
 I was not surprised. Sedative cults appeal to peo 
 ple of this class as certain drugs do to other people. 
 It is simply a more enterprising and intellectually 
 epicurean way of indulging a jaded appetite with
 
 234, MY SON 
 
 illusions, frequently by proxy and for the price they 
 pay the accomplished medium. It is a more ad 
 venturous form of the old art of fortune telling. 
 Your honest clodhopping mountaineer climbs his 
 own mountain because he must. Upon the face of it 
 lie his fields and his way up and down in the daily 
 business of living. But it takes the tourist with no 
 real ambition for achievement to climb the Matter- 
 horn, a useless distinction. These spiritists are the 
 same kind of tourists. 
 
 I was fumbling along with some such reflection! 
 as these when Peter glanced at me and said dully; 
 "Some of the pastors of churches in this city are at 
 tending these spiritist seances." 
 
 I returned his glance accusingly. What I meant 
 was that this was the rule with pastors now, to follow 
 their people, not to lead them. 
 
 "They pointed out to me that a preacher who is 
 not interested in psychic phenomena is behind the 
 times," he went on. 
 
 "What did you say to that?" I asked. 
 
 "Nothing. I was showing them to the door when 
 you came in," he answered. "The Gleate woman 
 sent them," he added after a pause. 
 
 I experienced a pang of satisfaction at this defini 
 tion of Isobel Sangster. I told him of the effort she 
 was making to convert Mrs. Woodberry to spiritism, 
 the monstrous trick she had played on her, and the 
 condition I had found her in that afternoon.
 
 MY SON 235 
 
 Peter remained silent with his head bowed surlily. 
 I retorted with the pressure of my own silence, hop 
 ing he would say something of what was in his mind. 
 From time to time I offered a remark. I gave him 
 my opinion of spiritism. Silence is a form of hys 
 teria in men, as laughter and tears are with women. 
 Peter was suffering from a fit of dumb hysterics. It 
 was Saturday night. I had no reason to believe that 
 he had made any preparation for his service the next 
 day and I was anxious, lest another Sunday should 
 pass with him out of his pulpit. 
 
 The clock struck six. He glanced up at it as if he 
 said, "Thank you!" because he knows I never can 
 remain seated where I am when the clock strikes six. 
 I must always go out and perform some duty con 
 nected with this hour of the day. 
 
 I got up slowly and started reluctantly for the 
 door. Dinner would be served presently, I told him. 
 He replied that he did not care about it, that he was 
 not hungry. 
 
 When a healthy man loses his appetite it is serious. 
 I went back to my chair and sat down again. 
 
 "Peter," I began, "men and women are born credu 
 lous. It is the strongest instinct they have. They 
 must believe something even if it is the cynic s stupid 
 conviction that everything is wrong and mean and 
 contemptible, or the rationalist s limited faith in just 
 what he can prove like a little sum in figures. There 
 is no such being as a man without faith. Every one
 
 236 MY SON 
 
 of them has an overwhelming passion for believing. 
 But if they are not taught faith in God they will be 
 lieve in something, however false or silly, because 
 they must." 
 
 "Oh, mother," he exclaimed bitterly, "it is not this 
 fad of spiritism that is troubling me. Their experi 
 ments are as childish as rubbing a black cat in the 
 dark to see the electric sparks fly from the hair when 
 you do not know what a natural thing electricity is. 
 They are only rubbing one another s backs, stirring 
 up the common animus of telepathy, combining it 
 with imagination and calling it psychic phenomena!" 
 
 I was relieved by this answer. But if he was not 
 disturbed about the advent of spiritism in his church, 
 what else had happened, I wanted to know. 
 
 "Nothing has happened, mother," he answered, 
 "it is myself that is giving me all the trouble. What 
 do I believe? How much"? Where do I stand in 
 times like these as a minister 4 ? It requires courage 
 to preach with the four winds of the world blowing 
 against you !" 
 
 "The Lord give it to you, my son," I said and went 
 out. 
 
 I dined alone that evening and retired early to 
 bed, but not to sleep. I lay for a long time feeling 
 like a wordless old prayer in the dark for my son. 
 
 At last I heard Peter come upstairs, then the click 
 of the switch when he turned out the light in his 
 room, which I had left on. Then the measured
 
 MY SON 237 
 
 tread of his feet for hours, back and forth across the 
 floor. 
 
 I read something once about the "spiritual isola 
 tion of darkness." There is such a thing. As a rule 
 you do your best deeds in the daytime. You make 
 your reputation. You are somebody or nobody 
 among men. But at night when the lights are out 
 and you are alone, removed in consciousness even 
 from resonance of all other human life, the sense you 
 have of yourself is different. You meet the man you 
 really are, face to face, in this mirror of darkness, 
 no longer enhanced or diminished by the adjectives 
 of other men s opinions. At the moment when you 
 think you are about to fall asleep, the witness of your 
 own spirit comes in, sits up with you and audits 
 your accounts to the last secret deed and thought you 
 have had in the wrong direction. 
 
 Then though you may be a good man or a great 
 one, you discover that you are in a state of spiritual 
 insolvency and you must have a bout with your 
 wrestling angel until the dawn, to square things up 
 and get the blessing you need. I reckon this was the 
 sort of spiritual isolation through which Peter was 
 passing that night. He was at last face to face with 
 the God who calls men to preach the gospel, not to 
 lecture on morals and the mere ethics of human con 
 duct. 
 
 He showed the ravages of the struggle the next 
 morning when he came down to breakfast. He was
 
 238 MY SON 
 
 pale and strangely calm. For the first time in my life 
 I felt infinitely removed from him. He was differ 
 ent. I was late getting off to church that morning. 
 When I arrived they were already singing the open 
 ing hymn, which was really a hymn with a hymn s 
 tune, not an aria in the name of the Lord, one of 
 Charles Wesley s: 
 
 Come, Thou, Almighty King, 
 Help us Thy name to sing. 
 
 I paused a moment outside the door to listen and 
 wonder, because there was a roll and volume to the 
 music with an old man s groaning bass and an old 
 woman s high treble sticking about two notes above 
 the tune. This was not the singing of any church 
 choir, I concluded, and hurried in to see what was 
 going on. 
 
 There was no choir, only the organist, Peter stand 
 ing in the pulpit and the whole congregation singing. 
 I had scarcely reached the place where I sit in this 
 church before he said, "Let us pray !" 
 
 And now a queer thing happened. I have never 
 been able to follow Peter when he leads in prayer, 
 because he does it so well, with such studied smooth 
 ness of his purely earthly periods that my old hob 
 bled spirit cannot keep up with him. But this was the 
 halt, lame and blind prayer of a man who has cast 
 aside the vanity of fine words, and I found myself 
 stumbling along with him, a little shaken and tearful.
 
 MY SON 239 
 
 Peter took his Old Testament lesson from the first 
 chapter of Habakkuk, which is a prayer for the re 
 vival of the Lord s work among his people. 
 
 There is a fire and a fleetness about the verbs of a 
 prophet in a prayerful mood that surpasses the imagi 
 nation of ordinary men. 
 
 "Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, 
 and are more fierce than the evening wolves," I heard 
 Peter chanting in a voice that rose and fell like a 
 mournful curse. "And their horsemen shall spread 
 themselves and their horsemen shall come from far: 
 they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat," he 
 read, and it seemed to me I saw all the ruthless furies 
 of our times riding down the souls of these people. 
 "They shall come all for violence: their faces shall 
 sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the 
 captivity as the sand." 
 
 I cannot tell how or why, but suddenly these Scrip 
 tures fitted the secret thoughts and fears of that con 
 gregation, though Peter did not stop to interpret 
 them into the crueler violences of our own day. He 
 turned immediately to the fourteenth chapter of 
 John and read "portion" of it, as William used to 
 say, and took the sixth verse as his text: "Jesus saith 
 unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no 
 man cometh unto the Father, but by me." 
 
 In the old days I formed the habit of easing down 
 after William took his text. I permitted myself to 
 be mulled in the word, merely keeping my eyes open
 
 240 MY SON 
 
 and fixed on William for the sake of appearances. 
 But Peter s preaching had never afforded me this 
 somnambulent peace of the spirit. I always had to 
 sit up on the pins and needles of my mind and listen 
 to what he was saying, because it was never kin to 
 me, and kept me disturbed. Now suddenly I real 
 ized that something strangely soothing and familiar 
 was going on. 
 
 Peter was bending over the pulpit, speaking gently 
 with a sort of tenderness not at all in his usual tones, 
 but as you do to children who must be comforted. 
 He was assuring them of something as if this was a 
 matter of life, not death. To believe this settled 
 everything, not that Jesus showed the way, but that 
 he is the way, the truth and the life. To be en 
 compassed in the security of his life, and his truth, 
 was to know God. 
 
 If you are not a preacher you cannot preach nor 
 give life to the word. So I cannot interpret that 
 sermon. It was made of all the simple promises that 
 men do not believe now. It offered those rewards 
 men no longer crave to have. And yet this church 
 was changed to a holy place. And there was in it 
 the stillness of hearts that listen. Now and then a 
 sentence fell from Peter s lips that echoed in my ears 
 like the refrain of something heard years and years 
 ago. 
 
 There was the usual congregation, people whom 
 I had seen every Sunday for nearly a year, but did
 
 MY SON 241 
 
 not know. Now I recognized the faces of these 
 strangers here and there as if they were the kindred 
 of my heart, elder men and women who exchanged 
 a glance as if they said "Amen !" 
 
 I took out my handkerchief and wiped the tears 
 from my eyes. What was happening to me^ This 
 was Peter, not William, saying over the gifts of God 
 to his people. Then suddenly I saw that Peter was 
 like his father. Strange that I had never seen this 
 resemblance before. The same expression, aloof and 
 sad, the same bemused gesture of touching his brow. 
 William used to do that! Now he was bringing 
 the sermon to a close with a tender invocation that 
 they should believe, and love one another and fear 
 not. William used to do that! And now we were 
 singing. "How firm a foundation " That was his 
 father s favorite hymn. The music of it rolled and 
 billowed beneath the high nave of this church as if 
 imprisoned souls had been released in these great 
 words. 
 
 When the service was over I waited for Peter, who 
 always came down to greet his people, receive their 
 compliments and bow himself handsomely this way 
 and that down the aisle to the door. But he did not 
 come, and the people did not wait for him. They 
 were going quietly away like men and women who 
 have just prayed and are not ready to laugh. For 
 a moment I stood alone in the nearly empty church.
 
 242 MY SON 
 
 Then I saw the half -open door behind the altar and 
 knew that Peter had gone. 
 
 On Sunday afternoons I sometimes went to the 
 attic and looked over William s sermons in the old 
 tin box, not to read, having heard them so many 
 times, but just to take them out and put them back 
 again as you unfold and fold precious memories. 
 
 I went up there this Sunday afternoon. When I 
 came to the top of the stairs I saw the lid of the 
 box open, and one of the packages lying unfolded 
 in the chair that I keep to sit in up there. 
 
 At the top of the page was written in faded script : 
 
 "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, 
 and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but 
 by me." 
 
 William s handwriting grew dimmer before the 
 tears in my eyes. I remembered the Sabbath so many 
 years ago when he preached this sermon for the first 
 time. Peter had taken the lift of a sentence here 
 and there from it to steady his desperate courage that 
 morning. They were all marked as if he acknowl 
 edged a debt to be paid. 
 
 I was sitting in the parlor, feeling blessed and 
 peaceful when he came in from his evening service. 
 
 There are wounds for those who triumph as well 
 as for those who fail. And it is not wise to touch 
 them when they are freshly made. So I said 
 nothing to my son about what had happened that
 
 \ 
 MY SON 243 
 
 day. Thus for a time there was silence between us. 
 Then I caught Peter regarding me with a beam in 
 his eye. 
 
 "So it was you, mother, who wrote the copy for 
 the Good-News page? I might have known it," he 
 said, smiling. 
 
 "But you did not even suspect it," I retorted, still 
 nettled because I had not been suspected. 
 
 "The very good can rarely write so well about 
 goodness," he offered. "I found the clippings of 
 your Good News in father s old box of sermons," he 
 explained. "Father had the sense of God, as other 
 men have the sense of things," he went on after a 
 pause. "I quoted from his sermon on the same text 
 this morning." 
 
 "Yes," I answered gently. 
 
 "You recognized the passages?" 
 
 "No, not in the way you mean," I returned; "but 
 I recognized the truth. It is always familiar." 
 
 "Mother, I may need those sermons now," he 
 said, as if "now" was to be very different from the 
 past. 
 
 "They are the legacy of a rich man, Peter," I 
 answered, "but not like gold that can be squandered. 
 The sermons in that box reach back far behind your 
 father s day. In the very bottom you will find one 
 preached by your great grandfather, who received 
 one vote for the bishopric at the General Conference 
 in 1870."
 
 244 MY SON 
 
 From that we went abroad in the years and I told 
 him of this line of preachers from which he hid 
 sprung the lives they had lived, the triumphs they 
 had enjoyed, always poor in the world, always rich 
 in God. It was the way I had of ordaining Peter 
 and anointing his head with oil. 
 
 History is usually dull because it is a record of 
 conditions, institutions and deeds, not of the lives 
 of the people who achieved them. Very few men 
 inhabit history, because historians are not interpret 
 ers of life but mere recorders of facts, the calendar 
 keepers of civilization. And the reason why the 
 characters portrayed in fiction are doubtful is because 
 it requires a great man to interpret virtue, while any 
 man with a fatal facility of expression can interpret 
 vice. And the reason why it is easier to dramatize 
 a scandal or a comedy is because Ichabod, instead 
 of Isaiah, writes the lines and the monkey phrases 
 for the actors and the comedians. Only a great artist 
 can paint the epic scenes of our common life. Even 
 then only great people with the eyes to see know 
 what is in the picture. It is not that the people want 
 to read about the littleness and meannesses of men, 
 nor that they cannot appreciate the drama of what 
 is good, but it is that they do not get it. 
 
 For all these reasons I also am unable to set down 
 with the distinction it deserves the record of my 
 son from this time. I am an old woman. I could 
 never learn the art of writing, though I have tried.
 
 MY SON 245 
 
 The words I need grew up long ago in the Scriptures 
 and in the best poetry. I cannot find them, nor put 
 them together again, to fit this new life of my son. 
 But if I could do it it would be something to tell 
 how he became plain, like the blessings we enjoy 
 without thankfulness, and made himself of no repu 
 tation in a world where his honors and success had 
 been assured. From this day he never enjoyed the 
 fame of a popular preacher. His ministry drew him 
 quickly out of sight of the rewards and judgments 
 of men. But before the end of the year I saw with 
 my own eyes a miracle wrought in this church. 
 
 Peter began to preach from the Scriptures, not 
 from his own mind or the philosophies of other men. 
 He preached with the earnestness of a man who be 
 lieved in the word with a sort of anguish for the 
 souls of men. 
 
 One day a reporter called after the service. He 
 said he supposed Mr. Thompson knew that his 
 preaching was attracting a great deal of attention 
 in the city. Peter said "No." Well, it was quite 
 sensational in fact, the reporter informed him, and 
 would Mr. Thompson mind furnishing a copy of his 
 morning discourse for the paper*? Peter told him 
 that he had no copy. He had got most of it from 
 certain passages in the New Testament. What about 
 an interview, then 1 ? He v/as sure Mr. Thompson s 
 views on the problems of the times would be a good 
 feature for the Sunday edition of his paper. But
 
 246 MY SON 
 
 Peter was not disposed to backbite his day and gen 
 eration, and he told the young man that he was done 
 with all problems save the eternal ones of repent 
 ance, faith and salvation. The answer sounded silly 
 and insincere to that young man. He went away 
 smiling at the joke. 
 
 I doubt if I could ever have been cured of a com 
 plaint by a woman doctor, however skillful she 
 might be in the practice of her profession. And I am 
 certain I could never have been converted under the 
 ministry of a woman preacher even if she spoke with 
 the tongue of men and of angels. I should know 
 them both too well. They could not command my 
 confidence or my imagination, which is essential. I 
 should know that this doctor had a back that was 
 sister to my back, that it ached morbidly at times, 
 and she could not stop it from aching until it cleared 
 up of its own accord ! Therefore she need not give 
 herself airs about my back and offer to cure it with 
 a pill, because there would be no illusions between 
 us upon which to base the efficacy of that pill. 
 Whereas if your physician is a man you may deceive 
 him about what is really the trouble, and he can also 
 deceive you into thinking he is deceived. You relax 
 accordingly and his nostrums revive you. 
 
 By the same token, a feminine-gendered evangelist 
 could never by the most wrathful and searching 
 preaching convict me of my sins, even if I was dead 
 in them and knew it. In the first place, her voice
 
 MY SON 247 
 
 would be too thin. You cannot awaken a trespasser 
 to repentance in the high treble tones of "Curfew 
 shall not ring to-night!" All the prophets had 
 thunderous voices. You can tell that by the kind of 
 language they used. And no woman could think or 
 rumble such curses. Also, however assured her min 
 istry might be, I should know that her faith was just 
 a woman s faith after all, born on its knees, and 
 liable to stay there. Very few women will ever enter 
 the gates of Paradise carrying Hosanna banners ; they 
 will come meekly, with tears in their eyes, and a 
 moving tale of suffering and sacrifice on their lips. 
 I know all that, being a woman myself. And I am 
 bound to confess I should feel safer if my salvation 
 were led through this vale of tears by the regular 
 bifurcated priests of the Lord, who do not know 
 these things or who concede them to us as a part of 
 our religious nature. This is only a notion, of course, 
 and I do not recommend it to other women, but I 
 am just telling the truth about how I feel. It is 
 my nature, and I believe it is the natural nature of 
 most women to feel most comfortable when under the 
 safe conviction of the superiority of the man or man 
 kind nearest her in life, except of course in the mere 
 matter of her more delicate feminine virtues and the 
 censored language she uses. I always felt happily 
 and immeasurably inferior to William, though I had 
 streaks of alien light in my mind very helpful and
 
 248 MY SON 
 
 illuminating to his feet in the straighter path through 
 the wilderness of this world. 
 
 In my relation to Peter, however, during these ten 
 years of his ministry I had missed this comfort. I 
 suffered much from the depression of being some 
 where far beyond him in the spirit. It was not that 
 I was his mother, nor yet the difference which years 
 and experience make. And it troubled me to have a 
 profounder spiritual sense of life than he had, stand 
 ing in his pulpit preaching the Lord s word. Now, 
 quite suddenly our relations were changed and I ex 
 perienced the ineffable satisfaction of being properly 
 in the rear of my son, a peaceful meekness all women 
 have toward a true priest. I went about my duties 
 with this blessed feeling. And Peter went about 
 doing his pastoral visiting in a new siprit. 
 
 He was away the whole of every afternoon and I 
 supposed he was visiting the poor, which is what 
 a good man usually does when his vision clears. And 
 I should not have suspected the new kind of poor 
 he was visiting if Mrs. Buckhart had not come in 
 one day. She said Brother Thompson was certainly 
 stirring things up in his church. I said, yes, the 
 congregation was mending, that every seat was filled 
 now at every service. She said that was not what 
 she meant at all, and I asked what she did mean then, 
 seeing that she had a smile in her eye which did 
 not look pious to me. 
 
 She told me that Peter was after the stewards in
 
 MY SON 249 
 
 his own church; she said it was out all over town. 
 
 I was alarmed. Sometimes a closer walk with God 
 tempts a preacher to discipline members of his church 
 for transgressions with which they have been per 
 manently endowed, and of which they will no more 
 repent than they will of the few remaining hairs on 
 their head. I did hope Peter would not develop this 
 harsh kind of piety. 
 
 Mrs. Buckhart read my anxiety and said, "Oh, I 
 don t mean that he is doing anything radical. But 
 he is sitting up with Cathcart and Mixon and Way- 
 land, every one of his stewards, for all I know," she 
 exclaimed, laughing. 
 
 "But what for 4 ?" I asked. 
 
 He wants them to repent of their sins, seek for 
 giveness, become Christian men," she answered. "Mr. 
 Cathcart is very much upset," she went on. "It 
 seems that Brother Thompson told him that he was 
 only a rich man, a prominent citizen and a steward 
 in the church, but that the fruits of the Spirit were 
 not in him!" 
 
 She threw up her hands and shrieked with laugh 
 ter. 
 
 "Did you ever hear of such a thing! It is done 
 not in polite Christian circles," she exclaimed. 
 
 "What what are the charges against Mr. Cath 
 cart?" I stammered, remembering a dark circum 
 stance earlier in the year, and believing sleeping
 
 250 MY SON 
 
 scandals as well as sleeping dogs should not be dis 
 turbed. 
 
 "That is what Cathcart wants to know," she re 
 turned. "Mr. Wayland was present. He told me 
 what happened. He had made exceedingly short 
 shift for himself it seems. He said Brother Thomp 
 son was in Cathcart s office, talking to him about re 
 penting and and well, you know, really getting 
 down to the business of letting his light shine as a 
 Christian, as it does now as a railway magnet. What 
 fault did Brother Thompson find in him, he wanted 
 to know. Didn t he give his goods to feed the poor? 
 Yes. Didn t he support the church*? Yes. And 
 attend to his duties as a steward? The material 
 ones, yes. Wasn t he a decent man in his walk and 
 conversation? Yes. Well, then, why had Brother 
 Thompson hopped on him, with forty dozen out 
 doing sinners in his church that really needed jacking 
 up? And what else did Brother Thompson want 
 him to do resign his stewardship? No, certainly 
 not. He wanted Cathcart to go down on his knees 
 and pray the Lord to renew a right spirit within him. 
 He said Cathcart s mind and spirit were centered 
 on the things of this world and that was what was 
 the matter with him. Which is the truth about all 
 of us," she concluded. 
 
 "Mr. Wayland said he did not mind the way 
 Brother Thompson talked to him," Mrs. Buckhart 
 went on, "but Cathcart was all broken up. He had
 
 MY SON 251 
 
 gone to see the presiding elder about it. And I heard 
 that the elder saw Brother Thompson. Nobody 
 knows what happened between them, but it had no 
 effect, because Brother Thompson had a meeting of 
 the stewards last night after prayer meeting, and he 
 gave them well, you know Wayland, a nice fellow, 
 but not very refined he said Brother Thompson 
 gave them the once-over, and that he prayed one 
 of the most scarifying prayers he ever heard in their 
 behalf." 
 
 She said that though she regarded Brother Thomp 
 son as a fine preacher she had always thought of him 
 as easygoing, spiritually speaking, and that she was 
 surprised at the new development in his ministry 
 and she did hope he would not carry it too far. 
 
 "Well, I hope he won t become an evangelist, that 
 sort of thing," she answered. "He has been so well 
 received by the best people. I heard one of the mem 
 bers of his church say he had the elegance of brains. 
 She said his sermons were the finest tapestries of 
 thought. He is popular with people who have some 
 appreciation of talent. He is one of the few preach 
 ers we have who could fill acceptably the pulpit of 
 a cosmopolitan church." 
 
 I listened, and thought how far removed now 
 Peter was from this worldly praise of his ministry. 
 
 "You know it is one thing to be a popular preacher 
 and quite another thing to be a popular revivalist. I 
 cannot imgaine Brother Thompson drawing a crowd
 
 252 MY SON 
 
 like that. People whose religion begins by such a 
 shocking exposure of their emotions to the harsh 
 weather of the gospel! Shouting and going on, 
 Ugh!" she concluded with an expressive shrug. 
 
 I regarded her thoughtfully, wondering why she 
 liked me for I had never liked her or her charities, 
 and least of all her advice. And though she was no 
 longer a member of the church Peter served she 
 would drive nine miles to give it. I reckon I have 
 suffered more advice from incompetent people than 
 any other woman alive unless she has spent nearly 
 forty years in the Methodist itinerancy. 
 
 "And you know it will ruin him in the Confer 
 ence," she said, rising to go, as she always did when 
 she uttered a depressing prophecy. 
 
 It was her way of leaving her dead to bury them 
 selves. 
 
 "The Conference did not call Peter to preach the 
 gospel," I answered, rising to get her parasol, which 
 she always tries to leave behind my parlor door, that 
 she may come back for it and say something else 
 about Peter which she has not the courage to say 
 to him. 
 
 "No, but the Conference can send him back to 
 the little towns and circuits to preach where the 
 people have their regular August fits of religion," she 
 returned grimly, as she went out. And she hoped 
 I didn t mind her speaking so plainly since she was
 
 MY SON 253 
 
 interested in Brother Thompson and did not want to 
 see him make a mistake. 
 
 I told her, no, I did not mind in the least and 
 allowed the screen door to bang behind her as harsh 
 ly as it would slam. 
 
 Then I went back and sat down in the dust of my 
 hopes for Peter. I had yielded long ago any taste 
 I had for the pomp and circumstances of this present 
 world, but it was not so easy to think of Peter strip 
 ped of his fine reputation as a popular city preacher, 
 sent back to live the life his father had lived in the 
 itinerancy. Moses and that other cloud of wit 
 nesses are not the only miracles of the same kind. 
 We are all subject now and then to a fog of memo 
 ries out of which appear and disappear the faces of 
 just men made perfect through sacrifices that lasted 
 for years and were not merely the burnt offering of a 
 good deed here and there. It is a vision of William 
 I have at such times, and never in a cloud of glory 
 surrounded by the long-bearded Major prophets, but 
 I see him an obscure preacher of the word traveling 
 down the years, growing old and bent beneath the 
 burden of souls and his own prayers, his fame barely 
 reaching from one circuit to the next one. The 
 church is founded upon the faith and sacrifices of 
 these dead and forgotten men of God. No one knows 
 to whom Paul addressed some of his greatest epistles, 
 like those to the Romans. I reckon he sent them to 
 the "preacher in charge," who preserved them, but
 
 254 MY SON 
 
 whose own name does not appear in the Scriptures. 
 Many a time I have comforted myself with reflec 
 tions like these about William. 
 
 But one s son is different. When I considered 
 Mrs. Buckhart s prophecies about Peter I could not 
 endure so much meekness. I was not willing to see 
 him pass out among the inglorious faithful saints as- 
 his father had done. I cast about for some other 
 happier future for him. And I reckon for the first 
 time in my life I pinched off a little of William s 
 halo with a diminishing thought. It might be after 
 all, I reflected, that William lacked some quality of 
 mind or nature essential to a great preacher, which 
 Peter, my son, did have. The church must recog 
 nize this quality in him, and he must therefore con 
 tinue to be a preacher of great power and influence. 
 He was better equipped than his father for detect 
 ing and combating the shrewd fallacies of our times, 
 and so on and so forth. Then I caught myself sit 
 ting with closed eyes praying for the bishops and 
 elders of our church, which is a thing I never did be 
 fore, because in William s day they were the thorns 
 in my side, and I did not care particularly about 
 commending them to the attention of my Heavenly 
 Father. 
 
 But now I prayed that they might be enabled 
 to recognize the worth and quality of my son, 
 and that they would continue to reward him with 
 the best appointments. A mother will do such
 
 MY SON 255 
 
 things. The Lord in his kindness only knows how 
 unscrupulous and grasping she can be for her chil 
 dren. If her son is blind, or dead in his trespasses 
 and sins, she will pray for his redemption, but once 
 she is sure of his salvation she whirls right in and 
 prays with equal fervor for the success of his for 
 tunes in this present world. I must say this prayer 
 yielded me some comfort and a stronger faith in 
 the governing powers of our church. It may be if I 
 had prayed of tener for our bishops I should have bad 
 more confidence in their wisdom, but it is very hard 
 to believe fearlessly in the disinterested wisdom of 
 an autocrat. 
 
 Early in the spring of this year Peter conducted 
 the usual series of meetings in his church. But now 
 about the middle of October he announced one Sun 
 day morning that there would be services there every 
 evening until further notice. He invited all sin 
 ners, and those who desired a closer walk with God 
 to attend. The implication was that neither the 
 saints nor the public were wanted. 
 
 Late in the afternoon Mr. Cathcart called. He 
 came to tell Peter that he would handle the press 
 end of the revival and would insure him all the pub 
 licity he needed. He had already engaged a reporter, 
 he said, to take stenographic reports of his sermons. 
 He told Peter that he really wanted to do all he
 
 256 MY SON 
 
 could to help and he hoped Peter would feel free 
 to call on him. 
 
 "For anything, Thompson, but to lead in prayer ! 
 I can t do that!" he exclaimed. 
 
 "All right," Peter answered, "I won t ask you to 
 lead in prayer. I never have, because I do not think 
 you are fit, Brother Cathcart. A lot of our members 
 do not believe you are a Christian man." 
 
 "Now don t start that again, Thompson," he ex 
 claimed. "I m beginning to believe a little in my 
 forbearance at least or I d never take the er drub 
 bings you have been giving me of late!" 
 
 "But I shall take you at your word and call on 
 you for what you can do," Peter went on. "And 
 there is something you can do that will be of great 
 assistance." 
 
 "What is it?" Cathcart asked with the cordial look 
 of a little boy who wants to win favor. He really 
 was a good man, I believe, a better Christian than 
 Peter thought he was, seeing that he suffered all 
 the time the mortal temptation of being president 
 of a big corporation. 
 
 "I want you to disengage that reporter at once," 
 Peter informed him. 
 
 "Oh, very well," Cathcart returned, taken aback. 
 
 "You know the editors of our three daily papers 
 personally, don t you?" Peter went on. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do a lot of business with them, ad 
 vertising, you know," Cathcart answered.
 
 MY SON 257 
 
 "Well, I am going to ask you to use your influence 
 to make sure that no mention whatever of these 
 meetings appears in the papers," Peter informed him. 
 
 Cathcart wanted to argue this point. He thought 
 at least the papers should carry an announcement. 
 He said it was customary, and how would the people 
 know of these services? 
 
 "If I can preach with the right authority, if I can 
 make only a few believe, that church will be filled. 
 We do not want publicity. We want some personal 
 private repentance. There is no such thing as the 
 power of the press unto salvation. It is the power 
 of God we need. The church has suffered more than 
 anything else from exploitation, experiments and ad 
 vertising. This meeting is going to be a private af 
 fair, between the Lord and just us. The people who 
 attend these services shall be made to feel this sanc 
 tity in our church and nothing that goes on there 
 shall be exposed to the world," Peter concluded. 
 
 Cathcart was impressed. He said it was a novel 
 idea and it might work. My impression is that he 
 thought this might be a shrewder, more enticing form 
 of advertising. 
 
 Peter preached that night from the eighteenth 
 chapter and fourth verse of Ezekiel: "Behold, all 
 souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the 
 soul of the son is mine : the soul that sinneth, it shall 
 die." 
 
 It was what I call a powerful sermon. He claimed
 
 258 MY SON 
 
 these people, and all people in his Lord s name. He 
 was like a man seeking in the rubbish and confusion 
 of the world for that which belonged to his Father. 
 He brushed away the world and its problems and 
 laid hold of what always remained, the imperishable 
 spirit of man. 
 
 But it was not until he came to the last clause of 
 his text, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," that a 
 change came over this congregation. This church 
 was filled with a fierce wind which came blowing on 
 us from down the ages. Peter s very words seemed 
 to smoke. The heat of damnation doctrines singed 
 our very ears. I glanced about hurriedly in this 
 storm of denunciation and saw the pale faces of the 
 people. No man looked at his neighbor. Cathcart 
 and Wayland were sitting together on the front 
 bench like targets. "And Peter was not missing a 
 single shot. 
 
 I am as willing as anybody to be convicted of my 
 sins. I am used to it, and am not so much cast 
 down on account of the practice I have had in re 
 pentance, but I felt queer, as if we were all being 
 drawn forcibly back in time when the doctrine of 
 damnation was still a hot doctrine, and Hades a very 
 real place of fire and brimstone. It seemed to me 
 every minute Peter would go as far as that. But 
 he kept clear by a margin so narrow that you could 
 almost smell the inward torment of souls. He was 
 using strong, old-fashioned words and there was an
 
 MY SON 259 
 
 aged majesty in his sentences, like old prophets 
 marching out to throw dust over their heads and 
 pray for their straying people. 
 
 Presently it dawned on me what was happening. 
 Peter was preaching to this modem city congregation 
 his great-grandfather s sermon on The Soul that Sin- 
 neth! It was a naked picture of the Promethean 
 tragedy of evil, such as the imagination of elder 
 preachers produced. 
 
 I leaned back and felt easier. But no one else 
 did. Whatever happened later he had certainly 
 awakened the consciences of those present. 
 
 For nearly a week he preached from the bottom of 
 that old box of sermons. And after the third night 
 the church could not hold the crowds that came to 
 hear him. Then one evening he invited penitents 
 to the altar for prayers. 
 
 This was the test. It is not so difficult for plain, 
 honest-to-goodness men and women to admit that 
 they are sinners, but this was a church filled with 
 fashionable folk, and people of this sort are no more 
 inclined to take a penitential role at the altar of the 
 church they attend than they are to spring upon the 
 stage and take part in the play at the theater they 
 attend. The stuff must be brought to them, sitting, 
 whatever it is, whether amusement or salvation. So 
 I thought Peter was taking a terrible risk when he 
 invited them to confess their sinfulness by coming up
 
 260 MY SON 
 
 for prayers. I was so nervous I could not sing, Just 
 as I Am, which I have sung a thousand times. I 
 held my hymn book open and watched the congre 
 gation. It was like watching a fine house built on 
 the sand. I could see it swaying a little, about to 
 crack and crumble. Then poor old Brother Cath- 
 cart sneaked out from near the front and knelt at 
 the altar. The breach had been made. In a moment 
 the aisles were crowded with men and women, some 
 coming timidly, doubtful, as if they had never done 
 this before and did not know how it would look, 
 others walking boldly as if they used to do it, and 
 knew how, and were glad of the chance to be decent 
 and honest about their transgressions. 
 
 In the old days we always had helpers round the 
 altar, seasonable Christians who talked to the peni 
 tents. So, now, after many years I walked again 
 among these kneeling sinners as I used to do in the 
 little backwoods churches on William s circuits, 
 telling them how to pray, how easy it is to be 
 lieve in God if they would renounce the world; the 
 same old promises, the words of comfort I used to 
 say. 
 
 There was a very small gray seismic disturbance 
 at one end of the altar with Peter bending above it. 
 I thought I had seen Brother Cathcart kneel there. 
 Then I saw Peter step over the altar rail and start 
 down the aisle toward the rear of the church. Pres 
 ently he returned with a very red-faced man, who
 
 MY SON 261 
 
 stood and glared down at these penitents as if he 
 doubted something he had heard. Then Peter 
 plucked Cathcart out of the midst of them, looking 
 disheveled and as if he was about to be drowned 
 with every thread on him dry. The red-faced man 
 glared at him. Cathcart made a face at him, which 
 may have been the cramps of repentance in his 
 countenance. They retired to the amen corner and 
 had some words. Then they both came back and 
 knelt at the altar. The red-faced man was the fore 
 man of Cathcart s railway shops. Peter told me 
 afterward that at last he had found out how to avert 
 a strike. 
 
 Incidents like this happened now every day, as 
 they always do in real revivals. Enemies forgave 
 each other. Labor knelt with capital, and there was 
 no trouble in inducing both of them to acknowledge 
 their faults and make amends and concessions. 
 
 I reckon the reason why the people acted so freely 
 according to their feelings was because nothing was 
 published about these services. That church became 
 a household. Never was so much sensational copy 
 wasted in this city. And Peter even took one of the 
 editors of our morning paper into the church at the 
 close of the meeting along with three hundred other 
 converts. This man said he had already made up 
 his mind to quit the newspaper business anyhow. I 
 do not know what he meant by saying that. 
 
 It was while these meetings were in progress that
 
 262 MY SON 
 
 Peter came home one evening and asked me if I 
 noticed "that girl." 
 
 "Which girl ?"I asked. 
 
 He did not know her name. He had never seen 
 her there before, but he had noticed her particularly 
 because she was different. 
 
 "How do you mean, different?" I asked. 
 
 "I do not know," he answered. 
 
 "Did she come up for prayers ?" I asked. 
 
 "No, she has been converted. I am sure of that," 
 was the astounding answer. 
 
 "How can you be sure?" 
 
 "By her face. It is a little verse of goodness with 
 a short upper lip and a turned-up nose," he laughed. 
 
 The next night I kept on my long-distance glasses 
 and looked for this girl, but I could not find her by 
 the description Peter had given. 
 
 He wanted to know again if I had recognized her. 
 "She was sitting in the fifth row from the front in 
 the middle aisle," he said. "She has dark hair and 
 she is very fair. Her eyes must be blue, but they are 
 dark." 
 
 "What was the color of her dress?" I asked. 
 
 He had not noticed that. 
 
 "Did she wear a large hat*?" 
 
 He was confused. He had not noticed what kind 
 of hat she wore. 
 
 "Young?"
 
 MY SON 263 
 
 She had the youth of innocence; that was all he 
 knew about her age. 
 
 I considered this matter. Peter was in love with 
 a girl whom he did not know, whose foot he had not 
 seen, which is the wildest risk a man can take in love. 
 I have heard him comment oftener on the feet 
 of women whom he knew than upon their faces, 
 characters or brains. I always thought Isobel 
 Sangster s feet, which were very small and 
 pretty, had something to do with his unfortunate 
 infatuation. 
 
 The next day as luck would have it if it was not 
 the girl herself behind it Mrs. Woodberry called 
 me on the phone. She said her niece, Reba Wood- 
 berry, was visiting her and she wanted us to come 
 over for tea. 
 
 Peter declared that he did not have the time, but 
 since I had accepted the invitation he would go if 
 only for a few minutes. 
 
 The first thing I saw when we entered the Wood- 
 berry parlor was a tall, pretty girl with a verse- 
 of-goodness face. The next thing I saw was my 
 son flushing as red as a schoolboy when Mrs. Wood- 
 berry presented her niece. 
 
 I do not know how they managed it, but when our 
 heads were turned for a moment Peter and Reba 
 disappeared. We could hear them talking in the 
 library across the hall. 
 
 "They are in love," Mrs. Woodberry said simply.
 
 264 MY SON 
 
 "In love!" I repeated, not as a question, but a 
 sentence which I pronounced against Peter s mother. 
 
 "Yes. She is very much interested in him. You 
 know how transparent girls are. She would have me 
 ask you this afternoon. She was determined to meet 
 him, to hear him talk to her, not a whole congrega 
 tion!" she laughed. 
 
 This was the beginning of Peter s courtship. And 
 it was a courtship practically without interruptions 
 to the end. What time he was not attending to his 
 pastoral duties he spent with Reba Woodberry, or 
 mooning about the house waiting for a seasonable 
 hour to call on her. Men are strangely adjustable. 
 Here was Peter, but recently come to a sense of him 
 self as a priest of God, engaged with all the fervor 
 of his spirit upon the apocrypha of himself, which is 
 what every lover is, an eloquent exaggeration that 
 bears only the faintest resemblance to the man he 
 is or to the husband he will become. He was exalted 
 as by a great sorrow, and he was humble beyond any 
 previous knowledge I had of him. It seemed that 
 he had only a despairing hope of winning Reba s 
 love. I have noticed this about men a bad one 
 or a cheap fellow is always presumptuously sure of 
 his success in a romantic affair, but a good one rarely 
 ever is. Love seems to knock the very tail feathers 
 out of his masculine conceit. He works up a pre 
 varicating sense of unworthiness with an eloquence
 
 MY SON 265 
 
 and sincerity that have tried the patience of many a 
 waiting woman. So it was that Peter went on villi- 
 fying himself to Reba Woodberry and suffering his 
 self-imposed fears when it was perfectly apparent 
 to me that she was only awaiting an opportunity to 
 accept him. 
 
 She may have been in love with Peter, I do not 
 know if she was or not, but she certainly was in love 
 with the preacher Peter. 
 
 It is conceded the world over that the most at 
 tractive man to women is a soldier, but the conces 
 sion is made by a world not so intimately associated 
 as I have been with preachers. I have never known 
 one, married or single, young, old or damnably ugly 
 who failed quite unconsciously to stir the prayer 
 signals of a sort of spiritual romanticism in more 
 feminine hearts than he was in a position to satisfy 
 without a breach of prudence or morals. I reckon it 
 is because they see him in the pulpit, while they only 
 see the soldier in his uniform. But every Sabbath 
 day they behold their pastor, clothed in the long 
 sadcoat tails of his order, uttering the noblest 
 thoughts and scaling the very walls of heaven with 
 his prayers and eloquence. 
 
 Now since Peter was by no means ignorant or en 
 tirely innocent in regard to the romantic inklings he 
 had excited in every church he had served, I nearly 
 lost my patience with his diffidence in this his first 
 really serious affair, before he came in one evening
 
 266 MY SON 
 
 smiling like a blessed lamb of God and informed me 
 that Reba Woodberry had promised to be his wife. 
 
 I said the right things. Reba was a nice girl. She 
 would make him a good wife. I entirely approved 
 of his choice, and I hoped they would be happy. But 
 I could not help feeling sad for myself, wondering 
 a little about what would become of me now, in spite 
 of the fact that he assured me tenderly that we 
 would all live happily together ever after. Two can 
 do it, but I doubt if three can. 
 
 I went to my room that night feeling like the last 
 withered leaf on a naked bough with a cold wind 
 rising. I noticed particularly how stiff my knees 
 were when I knelt to pray that the Lord would bless 
 my son and make him a good husband, and cause his 
 face to shine as this girl who had promised to be his 
 wife. But when I tried to think of a prayer for my 
 self, tears came instead. I could only think of Wil 
 liam and wish for the old days we had spent to 
 gether. 
 
 When there is nothing else you can do for yourself 
 it is a great relief to weep, and I must have let go a 
 bit because presently I heard Peter tap on the door. 
 
 "Mother!" he called. 
 
 "Yes, Peter," I answered, making haste to get in 
 bed. 
 
 "Are you all right *?" he wanted to know. 
 
 "Yes," I answered. 
 
 "I thought I heard you " he began.
 
 MY SON 267 
 
 "You did," I interrupted quickly; "you heard me 
 sneeze. I am catching cold." 
 
 "May I come in? 
 
 "No, Peter! Go to bed," I answered in my mater 
 nal voice, which was normally irritable. 
 
 There was a silence, then: "Mother!" he called 
 again in softer tones. 
 
 "Yes, my son." 
 
 "You are the best mother in the world," he an 
 nounced. 
 
 I was in the mood to feel that this was highly 
 probable, but I had the grace to remain silent. 
 
 "And no woman can take your place in my heart," 
 he added. 
 
 "I know it, Peter. Now go to bed. You will 
 catch your death in that cold hall." 
 
 "Good night, mother!" 
 
 "Good night, Peter!" I returned, wondering how 
 large a place that was reserved for me in his heart. 
 
 I did not rest that night and I did not feel very 
 well the next morning not ill, but I had a sort of 
 depressed superannuated feeling round the heart. 
 
 Jealousy is a queer thing. You may think you 
 are free from it, but you never are. It is the pos 
 sessive case of all human nature. We cannot escape 
 it, especially when we are about to lose something 
 which always belonged only to us. I was honestly 
 glad Peter had chosen a wife. I was willing that 
 he should love and cherish her. What hurt me like
 
 268 MY SON 
 
 the sharpest pain was the fact that I could no longer 
 do the things I had always done for him. I could 
 not put his clothes away or get them out again for 
 him, or mend his things or plan the dishes he par 
 ticularly liked, because his wife would do these 
 things. I was about to become a highly cherished 
 relic in my son s house ! I might as well be a portrait 
 of myself hanging on the wall ! 
 
 Nevertheless, I went to call on Reba Woodberry in 
 the afternoon, as was my duty. This was a sort of 
 ceremony. Mrs. Woodberry was also present and 
 we only got through the polite speeches of a pros 
 pective foreign relationship. Reba was glowingly 
 pretty and far too happy to notice my sadness which 
 I tried to conceal. 
 
 The next afternoon I was sitting in the corner 
 beside the fire in the parlor with my mending basket 
 and I was trying to thread a needle, which of late 
 years always reminds me of that camel mentioned in 
 the same connection somewhere in the Scriptures, it 
 is so hard to do. I was still intent upon this task 
 when the door opened. I did not look up because the 
 thread seemed to be feeling its way more intelligent 
 ly toward the eye, and I thought it was Peter com 
 ing in. 
 
 Then I heard the swish of a skirt. The thread 
 shot past but not into the needle, and I looked up, to 
 see Reba Woodberry standing a little wistfully just 
 inside the door, flushed, smiling, but with her hand
 
 MY SON 269 
 
 behind her still clasping the knob, not entirely sure 
 of the situation. 
 
 My hands flew apart, the thread between the fing 
 ers of one and the needle between those of the other. 
 
 Before I could move or speak a word of welcome 
 she flew across the room, kissed me and exclaimed, 
 "let me do that!" in a tone which implied that it 
 was a perfect outrage for a woman of my age to be 
 obliged to thread her own needles. 
 
 She dropped on the stool at my feet, cocked her 
 pretty head to one side and performed this service. 
 
 I am a hypocrite ! I suppose one must be in dealing 
 with another woman. It is a part of our mutual 
 gender. I felt my chin quiver and the tears spring 
 in my eyes. 
 
 "My dear, Peter would never have thought of 
 doing such a thing for me," I quavered. 
 
 "You really do need a daughter, you precious 
 darling!" she exclaimed, regarding me tenderly. 
 
 I was not able to control my feelings for a 
 moment. My mind went back through the years as 
 we go sometimes seeking a lost memory. When had 
 any one called me "precious," and who ever had had 
 the temerity to call me "darling" *? I had always been 
 plain "mother" to Peter or "Dear Mother," if it was 
 a letter he sent. I had been just "Mary" to Wil 
 liam, or "Dear Wife" if it was a letter. Clearly I 
 had missed something out of my whole life, the touch 
 of a hand like this soft white one resting upon my
 
 270 MY SON 
 
 knee, the look of eyes like these lifted to mine, blue 
 and sweet, and a girl s voice to call me gentle 
 names. 
 
 "Yes," I answered tremulously, "at my age a 
 daughter will be very comforting. I have often 
 thought if Peter had been a girl he would know when 
 I am not feeling well. As it is he never does unless 
 I tell him." 
 
 She was moved to bestow more caresses, which 
 weakened me to further larger tears, all the time 
 being conscious of my deep duplicity, knowing how 
 hard it was going to be to yield Peter to her care, 
 but at the same time experiencing a maudlin satis 
 faction in her ministrations. 
 
 We had some talk after this. I told her how 
 good it was of her to marry Peter. He needed a 
 wife. She said she was proud to be chosen, and that 
 she regarded my son as a great man. 
 
 "Peter does very well," I answered dryly. There 
 was no need to raise false hopes about his perfec 
 tions. Lovers have them, but husbands do not. 
 
 "He has promised to make me happy," she 
 answered, probably in rebuttal. 
 
 "Well, he won t," I returned. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because no man ever did or can make a woman 
 happy. They only make us patient and long-suffer 
 ing and, maybe, good," I answered. 
 
 The weather of her countenance changed. The
 
 MY SOX 271 
 
 bright skies of her eyes darkened at me, you under 
 stand, not Peter. 
 
 "He will do the best he knows," I went on ruth 
 lessly. "He will remember for a long time to help 
 you up and down the steps. He will pick up your 
 handkerchief if you drop it, because he has been 
 taught to do these things. And he will kiss you when 
 he goes out in the morning if you train him to do 
 it. But he won t if you don t. Men are children. 
 You can never let up on them." 
 
 She said she supposed so, but in a tone which im 
 plied that she did not believe a word I was saying. 
 
 "You realize, my dear, what a serious thing you 
 are doing when you marry a Methodist preacher?" I 
 began again. 
 
 She hoped she did. 
 
 "It is not like marrying an ordinary man," I told 
 her. 
 
 "Oh, no, of course not." 
 
 "You enter a difficult family, the church, not as a 
 member, but as the daughter-in-law of the congre 
 gation, so to speak. You surrender many pleasures 
 and companionships. Peter will be your only world 
 ly amusement, and he cannot be worldly at all," I 
 warned her. 
 
 She threw back her head and keened a laugh, shrill 
 and merry, at this definition of Peter. Then sud 
 denly she grew serious. There was the shadow of 
 a fear in her eyes.
 
 272 MY SON 
 
 "It will not be so terrible, all that, with Peter to 
 love me"?" she asked. 
 
 I regarded her for a moment in silence. I saw my 
 own youth sitting there untried by the griefs and 
 hardships of the years I had known. And suddenly 
 I remembered the yield of these years: A good con 
 science ; peace ; all the memories of William; my son. 
 What immeasurable rewards had been mine ! 
 
 "No, my dear," I answered, drawing her close to 
 my knees. "You will have your cares and your 
 burdens. Every woman does. But you will always 
 have honor and respect. You will move in the best 
 society. You have chosen a great career. I haven t 
 a doubt, Reba" laughing at my own thought 
 "that they who were the wives of preachers in this 
 world will be the leaders of the highest society in 
 heaven! They will know so much about the man 
 ners and customs of that place by faith !" 
 
 Just then Peter came in. Reba sprang to her feet, 
 and we all laughed together and love abounded. 
 
 Still I felt like the shadow of many years on this 
 bright horizon, and it occurred to me that I would 
 spend most of the following summer with Maggie 
 Fleming in the Redwine circuit. 
 
 In November the Annual Conference of our 
 church met as usual. I was very anxious about 
 Peter. He was beloved by his people and we heard 
 that they had sent a strong petition asking that he 
 should be returned to them. But I have known such
 
 MY SON 273 
 
 petitions to fall like seed in stony ground, meaning 
 no reflection on the heart of the bishop or his cab 
 inet. Reba was also anxious, chiefly, I think, be 
 cause she wanted a church wedding and to be mar 
 ried in Peter s church. She had no conception of the 
 significance that must be attached to Peter s appoint 
 ment this year nor that the fate of her husband s 
 whole future in the ministry would depend upon it. 
 
 At last the news came in a wire from Peter to 
 Reba. He had been returned to this church! I 
 reckon for the first time in my life I really forgave 
 the episcopacy and the elders for not appreciating 
 William according to his true worth. 
 
 Peter and Reba were married the following April. 
 They went away on their honeymoon and I went up 
 to spend a long time with Maggie Fleming. 
 
 The spring flowers were blooming on William s 
 grave, not those I had planted, but fair young 
 maiden blossoms from seed blown there by the sum 
 mer wind, very small and white, close to the sod, 
 as if it would never do to make too great a display 
 of themselves upon the grave of such a man as this. 
 
 How different the whole of life has been from the 
 hopes and plans I had. Sometimes, sitting here in 
 the late afternoon of my days, I wish for some great 
 worldly woman who had her way and her happiness 
 with whom to exchange experiences. I have a curios 
 ity to know how such a woman thinks and feels when
 
 274 MY SON 
 
 the shadows gather behind her and the pale stars of 
 immortal countries begin to shine in the sunset skies. 
 Is there such a thing as happiness? Would she 
 know *? Or is this the only real thing, faith in God ? 
 
 (THE END)
 
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