BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 ** 
 
 A Circuit Rider s Wife 
 
 Eve s Second Husband 
 
 The Recording Angel 
 
 In Search of a Husband 
 
 The Co-Citizens 
 
"l HAVE HELPED PULL MANY A PREACHER S BABY 
 THROUGH ITS SECOND SUMMER." 
 
A CIRCUIT RIDER S 
 WIDOW 
 
 By CORRA HARRIS 
 
 Illustrated by Walter H. Everett 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
ft*!* 
 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of 
 
 translation into foreign languages, 
 
 including the Scandinavian 
 
 OOFTKIGHT, 1918, BT THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
To 
 FAITH HARRIS LEECH 
 
 WITHOUT WHOSE HELP AND SYMPATHY THE 
 INCIDENTS AND MEMORIES RECORDED IN THIS 
 VOLUME COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN 
 
 M138394 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "I have helped pull many a preacher s baby 
 through its second summer" . Frontispiece 
 
 (See page 41) 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 "It is as if we had done him a favour 
 when the pastor asks him to go ten miles 
 to attend a sick woman" .... 68 
 
 "Lily may be the spirit of progress in this 
 town . . . but if she is, progress 
 looks most awfully like damnation to me" 152 
 
 " Take my advice, send this note, sit steady 
 
 in the boat, and wait for what happens 174 
 
 " Not married! I fairly screamed. Why, 
 we heard you had a wife and and a 
 houseful of children " 216 
 
 "The overcoat of a struggling Methodist 
 itinerant is likely to be faded by the 
 weather of long trips through the country" 346 
 
 vii 
 
A CIRCUIT RIDER S WIDOW 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 I WAS born in Berton. This is an old middle 
 Georgia town. When I was a child it was 
 a crossroads village at the bottom of a long 
 and very high hill. 
 
 My earliest recollections are not of this place, 
 nor of my father s house, nor even of myself, 
 but they are of the travellers who came and went 
 upon the road over this hill. When a man ap 
 peared on top of it he was a mysterious and glori 
 fied figure dividing the horizon, comfng out of the 
 unknown. When one disappeared over it, he 
 was lost to me; I grieved for him as if I should 
 never see him again. I believed secretly and after 
 the sublime manner of children that the next 
 world lay beyond it and the thunderhead clouds 
 which passed above it as often as men did. They 
 were all of the same company, these travellers and 
 these clouds, bound, for all I knew, upon the same 
 journey. I feared what might be on the other 
 side of that hill as young mortals fear immortality. 
 
 3 
 
4 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 There was a wide, white place in the town where 
 the roads crossed. A post with a board nailed 
 near the top stood there. A hand, rudely painted, 
 pointed to the printed sign on the board: 
 
 THIS Is THE WAY TO MILL, OR FERRY 
 Go IT, TRAVELLER, SAD OR MERRY 
 
 I believed in this signpost as if it had life, 
 for I cannot remember when it did not lean kindly 
 sidewise toward the mill and the ferry, as if it 
 had a personal and friendly interest, urging the 
 traveller literally in the right direction. 
 
 The only church in Berton then was called 
 Olive- Vine. It belonged to the Primitive Bap 
 tists, and stood upon the opposite side of the road 
 from the signpost, very old and brown, with a 
 little chicken-coop belfry on top. 
 
 I entertained a violent animosity toward this 
 edifice. Having heard some criticism of Primitive 
 Baptist doctrines, I associated the danger of infant 
 damnation with it, also a scourge of frightfully 
 cold water. Being still very young, I did not 
 know if I should escape the fate of the unfortu 
 nate infants born to be damned. As a small child 
 I remember standing close to the friendly sign 
 post and staring with horror and suspicion at 
 the cavernous doors of Olive- Vine Church, which 
 were always yawning wide open for me, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 5 
 
 The only other recollection I have of my early 
 childhood is that I was conscious of having a 
 terrible thing inside me a soul that I was dead 
 in my trespasses and sins which was very hard 
 upon my soul and that I must be born again. 
 If I was not born again I must burn forever in a 
 very hot place, the name of which I must never 
 pronounce. I feared the long hill, because beyond 
 it somewhere were all the dangers of this future 
 state. I watched and suspected the Primitive 
 Baptist Church because it seemed possible that 
 I might be caught in the baleful influence which 
 emanated from it and have to be baptized in the 
 mill pond, which was very cold water. I was a 
 poor little worm of the dust, wriggling in the tor 
 ments of my own imagination. It is the fate of 
 most children one way or another. 
 
 All this was long ago, directly after the Civil 
 War, when the losses and hardships of that ter 
 rible struggle drove the people of the South to 
 take the vow of involuntary poverty and look 
 more particularly to God for salvation. 
 
 Since those days Berton has climbed the long 
 hill, one house at the time, until now the whole 
 town is up here except Olive- Vine Church and the 
 few people who still belong to it. The member 
 ship is smaller than it was, but not less loyal. 
 I think the warm, debilitating climate of middle 
 
6 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Georgia is unfavourable to Primitive Baptists. 
 It is not because their doctrines are narrower 
 than those of other denominations, but I have 
 observed, in my long life among church people, 
 that the quality of the man often determines the 
 creed by which he chooses to live. The Primitive 
 Baptists all have honest, cold-weather spirits. 
 They take their religion as the earth takes a hard 
 frost. They freeze to Almighty God, and lift 
 their strong hearts like naked boughs to the 
 inclement climate of this present life. This is 
 why the great body of the membership of that 
 church is to be found in the mountains of north 
 Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. They have 
 the frontiersman s instinct and ask no softness of 
 salvation. 
 
 Meanwhile, here in Berton on the hill there 
 are fifteen hundred people, three churches, and 
 eight Episcopalians. When the Methodists have 
 a pastor who prays, "Forgive us our trespasses 
 as we forgive those who trespass against us," 
 the eight Episcopalians worship in this church. 
 But if we have one who says, "Forgive our debts 
 as we forgive our debtors," they attend to their 
 devotions privately and do not come to church 
 at all. 
 
 I do not remember whether the old signpost was 
 removed when the mill was washed away in 9 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 7 
 
 spring freshet and the ferry was abandoned for a 
 bridge across the little river, or whether it finally 
 fell to the earth and was no more, like a good man 
 whose days of usefulness are passed. And I do 
 not recall whether we were the first or among the 
 last to move in to new Berton. These are annals 
 of a former existence. I have set them down here 
 as an old woman may sometimes show the da 
 guerreotype of the child she was, wondering her 
 self at the face of that child, recalling dimly the 
 thoughts which the child had and which no one 
 else knew. 
 
 When I was seventeen years of age I was con 
 verted and joined the Methodist Church. I ex 
 perienced what was called in those days a "sky- 
 blue" conversion. That is to say, I was under 
 conviction for sin. I suffered remorse, and I 
 could not have felt more the pardoning power of 
 grace if I had committed every transgression. I 
 was, in fact, an innocent young girl brought up 
 in the strictest manner by Christian parents. 
 Yet the Old Adam seed of all wickedness was in 
 me. It was not until I was willing to renounce 
 these sins, which I had never committed, give up 
 everything, and consecrate my life absolutely to 
 the service of God, that I received the blessing 
 and literally was conscious of having passed from 
 death into eternal life. 
 
8 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Looking back through the many years which 
 have passed since then, I can still see the girl I 
 was, kneeling in deep contrition before the altar 
 with other penitents. I remember with com 
 passion grown old and gray the anguish of my 
 soul, the awful fears I had of leaving the life I 
 had lived for this new life, so shriven of all my 
 familiar thoughts and desires. 
 
 I can hear still the rumble of many prayers 
 about that altar, as the elder Christians put into 
 words the sorrows and terrors we could not name; 
 the shuffling of many feet as the congregation 
 arose from its knees. And then the words of 
 this hymn filling all the darkness of the night 
 with a softened sweetness: 
 
 Jesus, I my cross have taken, 
 
 All to leave, and follow Thee; 
 Destitute, despised, forsaken, 
 
 Thou, from hence, my all shalt be: 
 Perish every fond ambition, 
 
 All I ve sought, or hoped, or known; 
 Yet how rich is my condition ! 
 
 God and heaven are still my own. 
 
 I am unable to say how or why these words 
 opened for me the casements through which I 
 beheld the right vision of myself. I was neither 
 despised nor forsaken except in some deep spirit- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 9 
 
 ual sense. I had no "fond ambitions," yet sud 
 denly, as these words passed like invisible wings 
 above me, I was able to renounce the guilt of 
 ambition, of all worldly pleasures, all the doubtful 
 things I had not yet "sought or known." 
 
 I am no juggler in spiritual forces. I have 
 never studied psychic phenomena. All I know is 
 that when I arose from the altar as the last words 
 of the hymn died upon the air, I saw the faces of 
 men and women whom I had known all my life 
 and they were different. I was drawn to them 
 by a strange intelligence. I knew their secret 
 sorrows. I believed in them as I never had be 
 lieved, with a love and understanding far beyond 
 my years or wisdom in these matters. 
 
 No one who has had this experience can doubt 
 that there is such a thing as conversion, by what 
 ever name they may choose to call it. And only 
 those who have accepted this new life and en 
 deavoured to live accordingly know of the dan 
 gers, the deceits, the cunning hypocrisies which 
 beset it from within and without. We are not 
 delivered who cry "Saved! Saved!" We have 
 only enlisted in a longer, fiercer struggle to live 
 again immortally well. Salvation is not free. 
 It costs every man and every woman all that he 
 has and the whole of his life. 
 
 Shortly after my conversion I was married to 
 
10 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 William Thompson. He was a Methodist preacher, 
 in the active ministry. We had the poorest 
 mountain circuits for two years. During that 
 period we must have produced a dozen volumes 
 of unwritten but hard-earned scriptures, practis 
 ing the Beatitudes on saints and sinners and 
 trying to live on two hundred and forty dollars a 
 year. 
 
 Then William s health failed, or maybe it was 
 his spirit. I do not know which it was, but some 
 thing gave way in him that made it impossible 
 for him always to have the "witness of the spirit" 
 even when he was doing the best he could, and 
 that made it still more impossible for him to en 
 dure the hardships of the itineracy. 
 
 But he never gave up the ministry. He "lo 
 cated," as we say in the Methodist Church. We 
 went back to Berton, where he taught school and 
 preached wherever a sermon was needed, which 
 was nearly every Sunday to the day of his death. 
 A local preacher is the poor kin of the church. 
 He must do everything the other preachers or the 
 bishop or the people demand of him. But he is 
 never paid for his services. If any man deserves 
 more credit than another in heaven for his min 
 istry it must be the local preacher, because this 
 is the only reward he can hope to receive. 
 
 We lived together twenty-five years here in 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 11 
 
 Berton. For the last ten years I have been his 
 widow. And during all these thirty-five years 
 I have been what is known as a church worker. 
 I have done everything from urging sinners to 
 forsake the error of their ways to holding the 
 office of president of the Woman s Home and 
 Foreign Missionary Societies. I have conducted 
 vesper services for women, have led in prayer. I 
 have fed the hungry, visited the widow and 
 orphan in affliction, nursed the sick, prepared the 
 dead for burial. I have lived in love and charity 
 with my neighbours when it was not my Christian 
 duty to make war upon them. And I have for 
 given them as often as they have forgiven me. 
 If any one has kissed me on one cheek I have been 
 quick to turn the other quick being the most 
 descriptive term there is of me. I never had any 
 worldly amusements. But now that I have set 
 myself to tell the truth, I admit I often wished 
 for strictly worldly diversions. I have had a 
 gnawing curiosity all my life to see a play in a 
 theatre, to hear great and sinful music. I have 
 wanted to dine with wine on the table. I do not 
 care for intoxicants. The old Adamess in me 
 just wanted to look upon the wine when it worketh 
 itself aright in the cup. I have permitted myself 
 to wonder if it really would be wrong to play 
 cards if there were no stakes, the same as the 
 
12 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 best Christians play croquet. Above all and I 
 do not know how to account for this depravity 
 I have always wanted to see a horse race. I have 
 reasoned with myself in vain about this. Why 
 a horse race? Why did not my thoughts choose 
 some transgression more in keeping with my char 
 acter as a church member, like raffling off a quilt 
 for the benefit of the heathen, or speculating on 
 fifty cents for a month to see how much of the 
 deficit in the preacher s salary I could win. None 
 of these ever appealed to me. I can look my 
 Heavenly Father in the face and say that I never 
 gambled for any Christian cause. It was with 
 me a horse race or nothing. And I reckon I have 
 known all my life that soon or late I w^ould yield 
 to this temptation. 
 
 If the people in our church, who have known 
 me since I was young and fair through these 
 many years when I have been growing old and 
 wrinkled and kind and tired into everlasting pa 
 tience; if they could see me, the woman inside, 
 often looking through her strictly Christian life as a 
 prisoner looks through the bars at the green and 
 pleasant world, I do not know what they would 
 have thought. Sometimes I feared that William 
 suspected me, when we were sitting together in 
 the evening after the day s work was done. There 
 would be a bright beam in his eye, gently accusa- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 13 
 
 live, like a saint winking at his own human na 
 ture, when he d seen me lay aside the paper and 
 sigh. I always read the theatrical news. And I 
 reckon I know the speed of every horse that has 
 run a race in this country since the days of Maude 
 S. I cannot even yet resist the sporting page 
 of a newspaper. Maybe William knew this. I 
 doubt if there is much between husband and wife 
 which is not known to both. They are continu 
 ally glozing over each other s sins and denying 
 each other s virtues, though they keep an accurate 
 record of both. 
 
 But William had the advantage of me in the 
 gratifying of his Adam instinct for just life minus 
 morals. He was a teacher as well as being a 
 preacher. For his own pleasure he read Latin 
 and Greek literature. I doubt if there was 
 a single vice practised by the ancient Romans 
 which was unknown to him. I have heard him 
 deliver a sermon on "Blessed are the pure in 
 heart, for they shall see God," when he had been 
 studying the pagan civilization of Byzantine every 
 night during the previous week. I never doubted 
 his sincerity. I am not accusing him. I merely 
 say that he had the advantage of me when it 
 came to nourishing his human nature with the 
 ins and outs of former human nature. There is 
 a great body of literature of the same kind pub- 
 
14 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 lished for Christian people, especially women, 
 dealing with social work among the poor. The 
 scenes are generally laid in the slums of great 
 cities. And it contains the details of every crime 
 and vice practised by the lowest classes of society. 
 The most erotic novel sold from beneath the 
 counter of a bookstore does not contain any story 
 so informing of evil, so suggestive of perverted 
 passions, as these books, which are recommended 
 to Christian workers and which are avidly read 
 by women whose minds would shrink from a 
 limpid romance of love, if some one in the tale 
 who should not kissed some one who could not 
 help it. 
 
 I never did any of the things one of me was 
 always wanting to do not then, afterward; I will 
 tell of it at the proper place in this record. My 
 strength then consisted in the idea that though 
 it might not be wrong to go to the theatre, it was 
 a sin to break the vow I had taken when I joined 
 the church. And the Methodist vow, which ex 
 cludes all worldly amusements, is definite and 
 stringent. I have lived according to this creed. 
 I never questioned any of the doctrines of our 
 church, except that of apostasy. I have seen 
 many apostates, but I do not believe apostasy 
 is obligatory or that the Holy Spirit ever forsakes 
 a man. 
 
A Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 15 
 
 It has never been any effort for me to accept the 
 miracles recorded in the Bible. If I cannot swal 
 low them literally I turn them inside out and 
 swallow them spiritually. They who have seen 
 a man, capable of any crime, with perverted 
 appetite, with a long and dissolute life behind him, 
 forsake the error of his ways, his evil thoughts, 
 live and die like a saint, have seen the greatest 
 miracle of all. The fact that a lame man walked 
 or a blind man received his sight is tame in com 
 parison with that. I have seen this happen too 
 often to question any easier miracle like Jonah s 
 involuntary triumph over the whale. And it is 
 not that I believe in the doctrine which teaches 
 the divinity of Jesus because it is a doctrine; but 
 when men and women accept Him as the way, 
 the truth, and the light, I believe in His divinity 
 because such people do become divinely good. 
 
 I have never read a book on theology or social 
 or political economy. I am only a little old sun 
 down woman living inside one church in a little 
 old sundown town. I do not know why in all this 
 time I have not acquired a wider vision of the 
 world, the institutions and ideals which make the 
 world what it is. I do not know why this town, 
 situated as it is in a fertile section near the limit 
 less water power of a river, and blessed with a good 
 climate, has not become a large and wealthy city 
 
16 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 with many factories and other industries. But 
 it has not. Sometimes I think the explanation is 
 that the scenes of our souls are laid in another 
 world, not this one. So Berton with its fifteen 
 hundred people built four churches and supports 
 them out of its very limited means, instead of 
 building factories and growing rich from the 
 dividends. That looks bad, but after all it may 
 not be so bad as it looks it depends upon your 
 standard of values. If we really are citizens of 
 a far country, only sojourners here, what is the 
 wisdom of acquiring riches in this present world 
 and subjecting ourselves to the temptations of 
 wealth, which put us through the eye of a needle 
 into the kingdom of heaven very attenuated, if 
 we squeeze through at all? 
 
 As for me, I have studied just two things for 
 more than thirty years the will of God and the 
 heart of man with the Bible on my knees and a 
 pair of steel-rimmed spectacles on my nose. A 
 man who has lived in the world can tell me more 
 of what goes on there than I ever dreamed of. 
 But you cannot tell me much that I do not know 
 already about the inside nature of just the one 
 man and the one woman. It matters not whether 
 he is scholar, philosopher, saint or criminal, he 
 is bound to be a man. And when you reduce 
 him to that everlasting formula he is equal to 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 17 
 
 the same temptations, to the same capacities for 
 doing good or evil. He may show or conceal 
 more or less of what is in him, but the very heart 
 of him is the same as that of my neighbour across 
 the street. And if I could tell what I know about 
 him it wouldn t differ much from that of the 
 greatest man or the meanest man living. 
 
 The biggest, most important thing I have known 
 anything about is the Methodist Church. I can 
 remember when we had "class meetings," and 
 literally told each other what was the matter with 
 OUT souls, and when we prayed for each other by 
 name. That was long ago, when I was a young 
 woman. Somebody was always on the sick list 
 spiritually then, and strangely candid about his 
 suspicions of himself. I shall never forget Brother 
 Elrod s trouble, which he disclosed with morbid 
 anguish at one of these meetings. I remember it 
 because the point he made caused as much dis 
 turbance in this town as would to-day some new 
 theory of socialism. The men discussed it on 
 the streets, grew heated in their arguments and 
 fell out with one another. Women looked one 
 another in the face and silently put the same 
 question, though it was too delicate and nearly 
 kin to our secret convictions concerning our real 
 state for us openly to embarrass each other with 
 it. 
 
18 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Brother Elrod was a very tall, gable-headed 
 man, narrow through the shoulders and extremely 
 perpendicular up to his long neck, upon which he 
 literally hung his head. This head was fringed, 
 but not covered, with wisps of red hair. He 
 wore a goat-shaped beard upon his chin which 
 was also flaming red. He was astonishingly 
 homely, and always looked at you with a mild, 
 pleasing expression as if he knew something good 
 about you. The trouble with him was that he 
 had more brains than he knew how to use. This 
 is a very common affliction, and is incurable in 
 most people. He had an analytical, ingrowing 
 mind which often backed him into purely im 
 aginary difficulties. 
 
 Upon this particular occasion we assembled in 
 the church one night for class meeting, a dozen 
 men and women, sitting in the brown shadows 
 which the lamps in brackets on the wall defined 
 but could not dispel. We began by singing "His 
 Loving Kindness, Oh, How Great." Then some 
 one led in prayer. After that came the "experi 
 
 ences." 
 
 In those days the test of Christian character 
 and fortitude was this, that a man should be 
 willing to do anything for Christ s sake. One of 
 the elder members of the class had something to 
 say about that. He put the question to us 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 19 
 
 squarely and bade us search our hearts before we 
 answered. 
 
 There was a moment of silence while we sat 
 looking up at him, standing before us like an old 
 prophet in the gloom, with his long white beard 
 flowing down and his eyes fixed upon us. Sud 
 denly there was a shuffling of feet behind us. 
 Brother Elrod arose two seats back, as if he had 
 reasons for a spiritual quarantine against those 
 present. 
 
 "Brother Wimberly," he began dolorously, 
 "you ve hit the nail on the head so far as I m con 
 cerned. And I ask the prayers of all Christian 
 people that I may have the courage to get through 
 this trial of my faith." 
 
 We turned about and stared at him. He stood 
 with both hands resting upon the back of the 
 seat in front of him, head bowed and the bald 
 gable of it glistening at us. 
 
 "What is your trouble, Brother Elrod?" asked 
 Brother Wimberly. 
 
 "Just what you mentioned a while ago. There s 
 one thing I ain t willing to do or to be for the 
 Lord," he answered wofully. 
 
 We were astonished. Everybody in the church 
 recognized John Elrod as a thoroughly consecrated 
 man. Naturally we wondered what dark temp 
 tation had assailed the soul of this saint. 
 
20 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "Can you mention it, brother, the thing that s 
 in the way?" asked Wimberly solemnly after a 
 pause. 
 
 "I don t know if I can make you understand, 
 but it s mighty near driven me crazy since I first 
 thought of it a week ago," the stricken man 
 began. He hesitated, and then blurted out: "It s 
 this I ain t willing to be a fool for Christ s sake. 
 I m I m brain proud, Brother Wimberly, that s 
 what I am, and I never knowed a thing about it 
 until the thought struck me when I was searching 
 myself one day just to see if I was all right." 
 
 "But the Lord don t require of any man that 
 he should be a fool if he kin help it!" gasped 
 Wimberly. 
 
 "I know he don t, but that ain t the p int. If 
 he was to demand of me that I should appear a 
 fool before my neighbours well, I just couldn t 
 do it. So it comes to the same thing," he answered. 
 
 Brother Wimberly was so taken aback by the 
 shrewdness of this reasoning that he groaned. 
 But William, who was sitting beside me, let out a 
 laugh as he reached back over the benches for 
 Elrod s hand. 
 
 "Well, don t let that bother you any more, 
 Brother Elrod," he said, "for you have done it 
 anyhow, even if the Lord doesn t require it of 
 you. You ve made a fool of yourself before us 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widmv 21 
 
 all here to-night. Your conscience ought to be 
 satisfied." 
 
 Strange to relate, it was. We Jheard no more 
 of Elrod s "brain pride," although the hairsplitting 
 point he raised furnished the occasion for many 
 arguments. Morbid introspection like this fi 
 nally led to the abolishment of class meetings, but 
 in those days we had many men and women who 
 were literally consecrated to the Christian life. 
 I remember when a pastor was considered the 
 only fit man to conduct his revival services. And 
 we had revivals, even if it took him six weeks to 
 stir the people up and bring them to the annual 
 realization of their backslidden condition. 
 
 Then came a period when we imported a pro 
 fessional evangelist with his own singers and ex- 
 horters. I may be narrow and bigoted, but I 
 never prized these outside hired labourers in the 
 Lord s vineyard. They seem to dispense a sort 
 of patent-medicine salvation which fools you but 
 does not really cure you of your sins. If your own 
 pastor, who knows your downsittings and up 
 risings, your every-day-in-the-year weaknesses 
 and faults, cannot awaken you to a sense of your 
 lost and undone condition, it is a sign that he 
 lacks courage or faith, or that you just naturally 
 prefer your sins in which case the professional 
 evangelist may induce you to claim an easy re- 
 
22 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 demption. But we who live with you and deal 
 with you after the singing and shouting is over 
 know you are not really cleansed of your trans 
 gressions. 
 
 In these latter years there has been a reaction 
 against travelling evangelists. And I have seen 
 the Berton Methodist Church divided by the 
 bitterest feud between members who wanted Bob 
 Somebody to come and revive them, and those 
 who would rather die in their transgressions than 
 to be converted by an imported preacher. 
 
 It seems that we must be divided by something. 
 There was a time when people quit the church be 
 cause the stove was put in the left-hand side of the 
 church instead of in the middle where they wanted 
 it. I have known this town to be like two armed 
 camps after an unusually successful revival held 
 by the Methodists because most of the converts 
 joined the Baptist Church. I cannot tell how 
 many times I have seen that happen. After we d 
 struggled through maybe a six weeks revival, after 
 we d led them to the altar and wrestled for them 
 night after night in prayer, it did seem ungrateful 
 to call our bluff that way. For Methodists hold 
 that the chief thing is to repent and believe on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and that it makes no differ 
 ence what church you join. Still, I have known 
 half the Christian workers among the Methodists 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 23 
 
 here to backslide with righteous indignation when 
 we were put to this test. 
 
 When all is said and done, the most varied and 
 exciting life in this world is that of a Christian, 
 provided you keep up with the way your neigh 
 bours live it and the ingenuous ways they manage 
 to slip through and rest from living it. I have 
 never been backward in this kind of enterprise. 
 When your world is narrowed down to one town 
 and to one church in that town, you do not study 
 geography of nations; you study your neighbour, 
 and you know him, if you can, even better than 
 he knows you. I reckon I am about as well 
 acquainted with Berton and the people in it as the 
 Recording Angel is. 
 
 With the exception of those two years we had in 
 the itineracy, I have always lived there, never been 
 anywhere unless it was to attend a revival or a 
 missionary meeting. The only change of scenes 
 I had for thirty years was just a change of pastors 
 in our church. Every time a new preacher comes 
 he brings a new setting for the same old gospel. 
 One magnifies the glory of God, another His in 
 finite mercies. One cries, "Repent! Repent, for 
 the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Another 
 founds his ministry upon this: "Come unto me, all 
 ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest." Now and then we get an old cross- 
 
24 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 grained Isaiah who preaches with the red-hot coals 
 of fire from the bottomless pit and scares some of 
 the worst sinners into the fold literally smoking 
 from their narrow escape. It all comes to the 
 same thing. I never worry as some do about 
 whether they can or cannot agree with what the 
 pastor said in his morning sermon. I know by 
 long experience that all kind of preachers are 
 needed to win all the different kinds of sinners, and 
 even then the sinners seem to increase faster than 
 the saints. 
 
 The thing I am trying to say is this that the 
 preachers come and go. Some of them have been 
 with us a year, some four years, but they always 
 left me here. And the next one always found me 
 here, doing the same things, praying the same 
 prayers and looking for the same reward. From 
 being the youngest member in this church when I 
 joined I am now the oldest. I have seen these 
 people born, and then born again. I know them 
 better than the pastor does, because I have known 
 them from the beginning. And I reckon I know 
 every one of the preachers better than the bishop 
 does who sends them to us. For a bishop only 
 knows each one as he appears at Conference to 
 read his report which shows that all the collections 
 have been paid in full. But I know how much 
 work there is behind that report and how little of it 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 25 
 
 he did sometimes, because I know him. I have 
 seen him in so many different guises of the Metho 
 dist itinerant. If the average pastor on a circuit 
 was left to get up his collections without the help of 
 the stewards and more particularly of the women, 
 the Conference wouldn t have enough money to 
 pay the bishops or the other connectional officers, 
 or the various deficits which occur year after year 
 in the church s worldly business. Here in our 
 church the women and girls make a canvass at the 
 end of every year to get what the pastor cannot get, 
 enough to be able to make a good showing at Con 
 ference by paying all the assessments. I have 
 scrimped and pinched, and done enough of this 
 kind of mendicant service to entitle me to an iron 
 cross. But the pastor gets all the credit. And he 
 may be given a better charge the following year on 
 the strength of it. It is all right, and no more than 
 the duty we swore to perform when we joined the 
 church. But it does seem to me that some of us 
 are entitled at least to honourable mention in these 
 Conference reports. This church holds the lid on 
 its women good and tight, which doubtless makes 
 us humble and diligent in its service. I never 
 knew the Methodist women to get the best of the 
 situation but once. 
 
 Some years ago the General Conference abol 
 ished our mission board, which controlled the funds 
 
26 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 paid only by the women for missions. We felt 
 about that much as a farmer s wife feels when her 
 husband takes the money she made off her own 
 cotton patch to pay his taxes. And the church 
 pacified us much as the same man pacifies his out 
 raged wife by giving her a fifty-cent chromo for her 
 Christmas present. Several women were elected 
 to a certain board in the church, which in turn 
 elected the editor to a conglomerate church paper. 
 But three bishops and four connectional officers 
 were on the same board, so that the men out 
 numbered the women. Naturally they had chosen 
 the man they would elect as editor, and naturally 
 he was not the one the women wanted. 
 
 The board met. I never hope to see another 
 such spectacle. The bishops came in, strutting 
 like hyperboles of infallible authority. I m not 
 blaming them for that manner; it is thrust upon 
 them by the church. I am just saying how they 
 looked. And the connectional officers who ac 
 companied them were only politely less important. 
 They bowed to us much as you have seen a 
 preacher bow to the front end of his congregation 
 before he enters the pulpit. Then they took their 
 places round the table in the middle of the room. 
 
 The women occupied a row of chairs set back 
 against the wall. We were all widows and we wore 
 our weeds long black veils on our bonnets and 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 27 
 
 the meek, long-suffering expression of our sex and 
 condition. Every one of us had spent years in the 
 back-aching service of the church, and this was the 
 only reward we had ever received, the honour of 
 sitting behind the board to which we had been 
 elected. But you cannot trust the pale meekness 
 of a church widow. That mourning-dove counte 
 nance may conceal the wisdom of seven serpents. 
 
 We had laid our plans, and we waited patiently 
 during the preliminary business of the morning 
 session, only concerned to make it last entirely 
 through the morning by poking our noses in with 
 irrelevant questions which required time and pa 
 tience to answer. The editor then must be elected 
 during the afternoon session. Now it came to 
 pass that each of the bishops had received an in 
 vitation to lunch at the home of some woman prom 
 inent in church work, which invitation he guile 
 lessly accepted. But when a bishop yields his car 
 nal mind to the consideration of just food, he can 
 be as carnal as anybody, and he is literally in the 
 toils of his Delilah hostess. On this occasion every 
 Delilah served lunch late, and then she served as 
 many courses as her ingenuity could devise by way 
 of detaining her guest. 
 
 The bishops were in no hurry to return for the 
 afternoon session. They trusted those Phoebe 
 widows of the church and took for granted that the 
 
28 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 meeting would not be called until their return. 
 Promptly at two o clock we entered the room, and 
 found just enough of the other male members 
 waiting to make a quorum. I was the last woman 
 to cross the threshold, and I locked the door be 
 hind me. 
 
 We called the meeting to order, stood flat-footed 
 on our parliamentary rights, and nominated our 
 candidate for editor. The men protested in vain 
 for an hour s delay. They fought hard for the 
 bishops. They implored us to wait and be guided 
 by these great and good men. One of them rushed 
 frantically round the room looking for a telephone. 
 But by the grace of God there was no telephone; 
 therefore, no way to warn the absent members of 
 what was going forward. In spite of furious 
 wrangling and scandalous insubordination on the 
 part of the men, we had elected our candidate 
 before three o clock. When the bishops came 
 puffing in ten minutes past the hour all was over. 
 
 As a Christian woman whose duty is to protect 
 the reputation of saints under certain grievious 
 provocations, I refuse to describe the scene that 
 followed. But this incident is now a matter of 
 history in the Methodist Church, and with the ex 
 ception of unimportant details may be verified by 
 any one mean enough to try it. 
 
 That was the first and only time I ever officiated 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 29 
 
 in the broader affairs of our denomination. I 
 really belong to no larger sphere than this church 
 in Berton a little old, fat woman with a round 
 face written all over with a script of fine wrinkles, 
 with a noticeable chin, a slightly hooked nose, and 
 a mouth which the years have pressed inward and 
 downward at the corners. I wear a coronet- 
 shaped black bonnet far back on my head and tied 
 under my chin. I am always to be seen during 
 Sabbath services looking up at the pastor from my 
 seat behind the choir, as if I had heard him say that 
 before. Always getting entirely down upon my 
 knees when he says, "Let us pray." Always the 
 one to rise halfway out of my seat to jog his 
 memory, if he forgets to announce that the Wo 
 man s Missionary Society will meet the following 
 Thursday afternoon at three o clock. Always 
 singing every hymn whether the choir wants me to 
 sing or not. The last one to come out of the church 
 after services, taking the glass vase with me so that 
 I may remember to fill it with flowers for the next 
 service. Speaking to every one, slightly avoided 
 by certain members because they think I have said 
 something about them, which would have been the 
 truth if I had said it. Always holding my own in 
 spite of them, the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
 Asking Sally Peters why her mother is not at 
 church to-day. Keeping my eye upon Mrs. Peters, 
 
30 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 who is an emotional Christian. Reminding Mrs. 
 Parks that she must be sure to come to the mission 
 ary meeting on Thursday, and finally asking the 
 pastor and his wife to go home with me for dinner. 
 I ve done this, been this, so much that if I 
 should go to church some Sunday, sit on the back 
 bench, fail to kneel during prayers, ignore the col 
 lection basket, let the preacher forget his announce 
 ments, refuse to put the steeple on the choir singing 
 with my high treble, and leave at the end of the 
 service without speaking to a single soul I say, if 
 I, or any one of half a dozen faithful Dorcas women 
 in this church, acted in such a manner, it would 
 tear this town up by the roots ! Sometimes I have 
 been tempted to do it, as an old horse is tempted to 
 jump a fence which he knows he cannot jump. I 
 wish I could stay home on Sunday, and not try to 
 remember the things others forget, or perform the 
 services others neglect. It is a thankless job, and 
 the only reward you earn, sometimes even among 
 the church members, is the name of being a busy 
 body. But I could no more neglect my church 
 duties than my housekeeping. I have two homes: 
 this little gray cottage with its spider-legged ve 
 randa, opposite the Methodist parsonage, which 
 also has a spider-legged veranda, and this church 
 across the street. I don t know yet, but I believe 
 it will be easier for any mortal to become ac- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 31 
 
 customed to the yoke of duty than it ever will be in 
 Paradise to balance one s light and irresponsible in- 
 corruption upon a pair of wings. I accepted the 
 Christian life as a yoke, and it has become my 
 habit. 
 
 Some women were born to be church members, 
 but I was not. I doubt if I ought to admit such a 
 thing, but I believe religion is an acquired taste 
 with me. I still long, not for the things of the 
 world but for the world that wide and elastic 
 place where you change sometimes, where you say, 
 even if it is prayer-meeting night, "I am going to 
 the play this evening, or to the horse show, to see 
 something or hear something which has to do with 
 life and joy in this world, not the other one." It 
 is wrong to feel this way, to weary in well-doing. I 
 am not defending myself. I am just telling the 
 truth. And I ve seen the same truth in Mrs. 
 Parks eyes when she stared at me like a raw-boned 
 angel at a meeting of the Woman s Missionary 
 Society, where we were the only members present, 
 owing to the inclemency of the weather. 
 
 There is such a thing as a famine even in the 
 vineyard of the Lord! For cease to like, you 
 merely exist automatically according to your 
 creed and your duties. That is why we need and 
 must have revivals occasionally. They are the 
 only kind of diversions we get in the spiritual life, 
 
32 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 They stir up the community, excite interest and 
 curiosity, take the screw off our emotions, energize 
 our spiritual faculties, until we get down to the real 
 business of plucking the motes out of our neigh 
 bour s eyes while they point accusingly at the beam 
 in ours. 
 
 If there is one thing I believe in more strongly 
 than the Methodist doctrines of salvation, it is an 
 old-fashioned Methodist revival. The first service 
 is like a meeting of the grand jury, the pastor being 
 the twelve men on the jury, the sheriff, and the 
 deputies. If he really knows the spiritual laws 
 governing revivals his first sermon brings in 
 dictments against half the saints in the church. 
 He shows by the Gospel how slothful we have been 
 all the year, how we have failed in love and charity. 
 He singes our hypocrisies, which do accumulate 
 upon the Christian character like moss upon old 
 boards, he calls us stumbling-blocks to sinners. 
 And at the end maybe he lifts his arms like dole 
 ful wings, and cries: "How long, how long, O Lord, 
 wilt Thy mercies endure to this faithless and per 
 verse generation!" meaning more particularly 
 the stewards and the Dorcases in this church. We 
 know he is telling the truth about us. The sinners 
 watching with keen young eyes on the back bench 
 know it, too. And the judgment of a sinner is 
 dangerous for a saint. The only way you can out- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 33 
 
 wit that is to confess your transgressions, get up 
 then and there and go to the altar for prayer. I 
 cannot tell how often I have seen the altar in this 
 church black and blue with the kneeling figures of 
 the prominent Christians at the beginning of a re 
 vival. I have been among them a hundred times 
 myself. It always did me good to have the op 
 portunity now and then to be absolutely honest, 
 admit before the people that I m only a sinner, 
 whose chief claim upon their confidence is that 
 I m maneuvering in the right direction. 
 
 I have heard and read many criticisms about 
 revivals and penitents praying before altars for the 
 remission of sins and the strength to live right. 
 But I never have known a single man or woman 
 who was willing and knew how to be honest with 
 his own soul that did it. We move through this 
 world according to symbols, illusions, ideals, every 
 one of them designed to indicate something in 
 visible in reality upon which no man can put his 
 finger and say, "That is it." The most advanced 
 scientist who deals in nothing but facts must pred 
 icate an atom somewhere in space which he cannot 
 prove existed. The philosopher who founds his 
 system of thought upon materialism cannot tell 
 why a man has something in him which thinks and 
 believes and remembers, that is not in the beast 
 of the field. The Christian who believes in im- 
 
34 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 mortality and the power of God is not, to my way 
 of thinking, more credulous than the materialist. 
 
 The point is that, having this queer something 
 in us which looks backward into the unknown and 
 forward into the unknown, we must have faith in 
 something. You can squat upon the ground, feel 
 of your stomach, and believe in the dirt and 
 the elements of it which also make flesh. But 
 Christians pay themselves the politeness of a 
 better and equally reasonable faith. It is the sub 
 stance of things hoped for and literally the evidence 
 of things unseen. The materialist does the same 
 thing. He cannot prove what he believes either, 
 beyond a few primitive experiments he makes with 
 the elements about him which somebody dis 
 proves shortly afterward! 
 
 Therefore, I say, let me choose an Almighty God, 
 and let me believe that there is such a thing as sin 
 and such a thing as righteousness, and let me kneel 
 at an altar, which I admit is a symbolic idea, and 
 pray, not because the Lord would fail to do His 
 duty by me if I didn t pray, but because prayer is 
 an instinct of religious faith, the same as snuffling 
 in the dirt and squeezing germs is an instinct with a 
 blind rationalist. I do not deny that he is a bene 
 factor, but he is no more than the saint who knows 
 that religion is the science of the soul. Not as 
 much, if you ask me. For what shall it profit a 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 35 
 
 man to gain the whole world, all the knowledge of 
 the things in it, if he lose his own soul? I haven t 
 a doubt that there is a cemetery beyond the gates 
 of Paradise, filled with the everlasting spiritual 
 decomposition of men and women whom the Lord 
 himself cannot raise from the dead, because they 
 have destroyed the instinct of immortality. 
 
 For fifty years now it has been the same thing 
 in our church here at Berton. The North Georgia 
 Conference meets every year in November. We 
 usually get our old pastor back, or the new one 
 comes somewhere round Thanksgiving. If it is 
 the old one, he looks chastened and says he is glad 
 to be with us another year. If he is a new one, he 
 looks hopeful, and tries not to show his disappoint 
 ment at having been sent to one of the hardest, 
 poorest circuits in Georgia. And we put our best 
 foot foremost, with a fruit cake in one hand and a 
 baked turkey in the other, when we welcome him 
 and his family. Also, we endeavoured to produce 
 the proper deception by encouraging him to believe 
 we do not deserve our reputation in the Conference 
 for being a divided and difficult church, pursuing a 
 sort of evangelical feud with all the rancour of out 
 raged piety. 
 
 The week during which Conference is in session 
 is one of suspense and excitement for Methodists 
 in this town. Members who take little interest in 
 
36 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 the church all the year are wrought up the same as 
 the rest of us about whether our old preacher will 
 be returned or who the new one will be. We 
 speculate wildly, owing, I suppose, to a natural 
 gambling instinct which nothing seems to destroy, 
 and to the fact that we do not often have the op 
 portunity to speculate. 
 
 Meanwhile, the wife of our present pastor, wait 
 ing in the parsonage, is on pins and needles to hear 
 whether her husband is to be moved to another ap 
 pointment. She does not know whether to pack 
 or not to pack. But secretly, nine times out of 
 ten, she is gathering up her things on the sly and 
 putting them in her trunks, either because she has 
 a feeling that "John" will get a better appoint 
 ment another year, and she knows he deserves it, 
 or because the president of the Parsonage Aid 
 Society has told her that she should not allow the 
 children to climb up into the new parlour chairs 
 and stamp on the very frail bottoms of them; or 
 she is tired of walking a kind of tightrope stretched 
 for the pastor s wife by two factions either in the 
 church or in the Women s Missionary Societies. 
 She is exhausted with the struggles of keeping on 
 friendly terms with both sides, and she knows in 
 her heart that she has not succeeded. She knows 
 that she has been criticised for not taking more in 
 terest in the flowers in the front yard, and maybe 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 37 
 
 for not keeping the back yard clean where the 
 children play, and for not planting a fall garden, 
 and for letting the Aid Society know that she has 
 only one biscuit pan and no flour bin at all. 
 "What s become of all the biscuit pans we ve 
 bought for the parsonage stove anyhow, and why 
 don t she buy a flour bin if she wants one?" and 
 so forth, and so on. No one knows how the pas 
 tor s wife hears these comments, which are made 
 behind her dingy little back, but she always does. 
 And we always know it, because she is invariably 
 absent from the next meeting of the Aid Society. 
 I make it a rule to call on our preacher s wife 
 often during Conference week, partly because I 
 know she is anxious and lonesome; and partly, I 
 reckon, because I am just a woman, and crave to 
 know what this other woman is doing under the 
 circumstances. If the children meet me at the 
 door looking guilty ; if, when I go into the parlour, I 
 miss the few little things like photographs and 
 maybe a vase which belong to her, not the parson 
 age, I know what she is doing she is getting her 
 things together, so she will be able to slam them 
 into the boxes and trunks and be ready to move 
 almost by the time "John" gets back from the 
 Conference. For in the Methodist itineracy 
 changes must be made as speedily as when the 
 people cry, "The king is dead! Long live the 
 
38 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 king!" One preacher hardly gets out of the par 
 sonage door before the next preacher is on his way 
 from the depot with his family and baggage. 
 
 But when our pastor s wife comes in to greet me, 
 there is not on her face a trace of being ready to 
 meet this emergency. She looks pale, tired, a 
 trifle preoccupied. No, she was not doing any 
 thing much just straightening up things some 
 where in the house. No, she has not heard from 
 John since he left. Oh, no indeed, they do not ex 
 pect to be moved. She and John like Berton so 
 much and everybody has been so kind! All this 
 time I can see her eyes glancing this way and that 
 about the room to make sure she has not forgotten 
 anything that is just her own. And her hands are 
 trembling, maybe with nervousness from having 
 worked so hard at this surreptitious packing. 
 
 Saint Paul had nothing on a Methodist preach 
 er s wife when he said he had "no continuing city." 
 They are the reservists behind the fighting line of 
 the ministry, always ready to get up and march to 
 the next trench, or maybe to retreat into one out of 
 which they advanced years ago when John was 
 young and strong and a power in the church. 
 The winking, leering world may say what it pleases 
 about politics in the church, I ll not deny that. 
 But nothing except the grace of God and the love 
 of man can hold a preacher to the cheerful, patient 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 39 
 
 performance of his duties who was once the pre 
 siding elder of a big district, and who returns in his 
 tired old age to the little one-horse circuit where he 
 started, still valiant, still concerned for the souls of 
 the next generation. And only supernatural love 
 for her husband as well as for the church keeps the 
 worn-out wife of such a preacher from complain 
 ing, from telling how much better off they used to 
 be when he was pastor of such and such a rich 
 church in the city, and the congregation gave them 
 a trip to the Holy Land. But never yet have I 
 heard one of them do such a thing. She may look 
 at you sometimes dimly, as if you were not there, 
 as if for the moment she recalled a very bright 
 place in the past, some occasion when her husband 
 shone as he deserved to shine, but never herself. 
 No one ever heard of a Methodist preacher s wife 
 shining except in his reflected glory. 
 
 Much is said these days about what is the best 
 kind of woman, whether it is the old-fashioned 
 lady or the new-fashioned suffragist. If no can 
 didate for near-perfection has been elected yet, 
 some one should nominate the Methodist preacher s 
 wife, who has been all round and up and down 
 the world with him until they drift back in their 
 old age to the backwoods circuit where they 
 started still poor, still patient, still loving and 
 cheerful, full of faith, doddering along to their 
 
40 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 graves with their wings folded somewhere in 
 side. 
 
 This church at Berton has been the place where 
 more preachers started in the ministry, and from 
 which more were superannuated, than almost any 
 other in the Conference. We have done our best 
 to welcome both kinds, and I reckon we have done 
 a good deal toward trying their faith. Some of us 
 dread the fledgling preacher. We have had a lot 
 of adolescent theologues here to break into the 
 ministry of God. And we have done it, but it has 
 not been any too easy for them or for us. 
 
 A young preacher is almost violently sincere. 
 He is energetic, always vis ts his people, which an 
 older one often neglects. He usually studies hard, 
 has no old sermons, does the best he can, but he 
 just naturally doesn t know how. He knows his 
 heavenly Father and where He is to be found, but 
 I have yet to see one who knew his fellow men or 
 where to find him when he got ready to fit the 
 Gospel on him. His sermon, however orthodox 
 and thoughtful, is apt to be a sort of blank cartridge 
 fired with explosive eloquence over the heads of 
 the people. And he is nearly always the spiritual 
 tintype of some other great preacher in the church 
 under whose influence he has fallen. It takes him 
 about two years to get indignantly down to com 
 mon men and their common needs. And we usu- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 41 
 
 ally have him these two years. But when he 
 leaves us he is a wiser, chastened man, better 
 fitted for the ministry, although he may not be so 
 promising as a preacher. You must take some of 
 the promise out of a man before he can become just 
 a good pastor and a thoroughly consecrated min 
 ister who knows how to preach the Gospel without 
 wisdom of words. 
 
 I could write volumes about the young preachers 
 we have had and not tell half I know. Chris 
 tianity is a rarefied atmosphere in which the 
 sturdiest saint cannot always balance himself 
 properly. But if you want to see a zigzag course 
 in it, pay particular attention to a young Metho 
 dist itinerant on his first circuit, with his first wife 
 and his first baby, and not a single sermon prepared 
 with which to start his ministry. The wife always 
 overestimates her husband s ability, which is her 
 bounden duty. The baby is always taken vio 
 lently ill cutting his stomach and eye teeth during 
 the summer revival season, while the father is off 
 conducting a protracted meeting at a country 
 church. He cannot leave a congregation of half- 
 warmed souls just as they are beginning to repent 
 and believe, to return home and help nurse the 
 child. The only baby William and I ever had 
 died, but I have helped pull many a preacher s 
 baby through its second summer, while he was 
 
44 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 with him, that s what he can do. I ll never ask 
 him to my house again!" she said, getting up and 
 waddling out to her buggy. 
 
 Late that afternoon when I saw Brother Smal- 
 raven sitting on the parsonage porch, I beckoned 
 him to come over. And I had it out with him. 
 
 "I am right about this thing, Sister Thompson, 
 and I must hold to what I believe is right," he said. 
 
 "What are you here for?" I answered. "To 
 teach these women how to go against their feelings 
 and principles and pride, or to help and encourage 
 them where you can in the Christian life? If you 
 don t eat what they cook, they won t take your 
 Gospel." 
 
 "It hurts my conscience to eat hot food on 
 Sunday," he said, holding back. 
 
 "Well, if you are as self-sacrificing as you ought 
 to be, you d rather hurt your raw-boned con 
 science than the tender table feelings of good 
 Christian women!" I said, knowing well I had the 
 better of the argument. 
 
 And not being an incurable bigot, he knew it, 
 too. After that he took what was put before him 
 and asked no questions. Now he is a power in the 
 church and one of the heartiest eaters in the North 
 Georgia Conference which is a good deal to say, 
 for I have seen old preachers and presiding elders 
 so fond of chicken that I ve wondered if their 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 45 
 
 taste might not come out on them in the next 
 world with Rhode Island Red wings. 
 
 Sometimes a young preacher will go to the other 
 extreme and show the most artlessly immoral sense 
 of morals. He will live as nicely as a girl, pay his 
 debts, bear and forbear like a saint, and still lack 
 common honesty. 
 
 Years ago a young preacher named Beltem was 
 sent to us. He was a tall, handsome man, with a 
 joyous eye and what you might call a popular 
 presence. He was so well liked in the town that on 
 Sundays there were as many Baptists and Presby 
 terians as Methodists in the congregation They 
 boasted that his doctrines suited them. We were 
 pleased, of course, to have the church filled at every 
 service and to know we had a pastor who was so 
 much admired. But every time he preached it 
 made just the Methodists feel queer. I have had 
 cold chills run down my back as he took a flight off 
 the face of the earth, accompanied by the rumbling 
 thunder of thoughts that would have done credit to 
 any one of the prophets. There was something 
 awful and unnatural in the ability of a young man 
 to preach like that. 
 
 People talked a good deal. The Presbyterians 
 said openly that Beltem had too broad a concep 
 tion of the Gospel to stay in the Methodist Church. 
 The Baptists said he was a strictly doctrinal 
 
46 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 preacher, and they wondered how such a man ever 
 came to get himself called in any church but their 
 own. The Methodists had very little to say at 
 all. But we all had our noses to the ground and 
 our eyes on Beltem. 
 
 One day Sister Parks and I were sitting in the 
 church, waiting for the other members of the 
 Woman s Missionary Society. 
 
 "Brother Beltem is a fine preacher," she said, 
 apropos of nothing. 
 
 "He preaches the best sermons I ever heard," I 
 answered carefully. 
 
 She flirted her eye at me, and we sat there looking 
 at each other, measuring one another s indiscretion 
 in the matter of free speech. But we both had too 
 much experience to trust one another with the sus 
 picion we had in our minds. 
 
 William preached every third Sunday for the 
 pastor at Rosewell, who was ill, which was the 
 same Sunday Beltem s appointment fell in Berton. 
 So it was some time in March before William heard 
 one of these grand sermons. I will never forget 
 that Sabbath day. Beltem took a Beatitude for 
 his text, made crowns and wings out of it for the 
 whole congregation. His manner was quiet, al 
 most conversational, but he could not have im 
 proved his language if he had chosen his words out 
 of a Paradise lexicon. His thoughts were so 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 47 
 
 majestic you could see the cherubim marching 
 with flaming swords beside them. At first William 
 sat like one dumfounded, then he began to fidget. 
 At last, when Beltem got so het up he was fairly 
 chanting his discourse, William s face turned red. 
 I thought he was about to do something. Fortu 
 nately Beltem closed his sermon just in time. 
 
 The moment we were back home William went 
 to his bookcase and pulled out a volume of Phillips 
 Brooks sermons. There it was in plain print, 
 every word of Beltem s discourse. 
 
 "But, William," I said, "he never was an 
 Episcopalian until this morning. He s been a 
 Baptist and a Presbyterian, everything but a 
 Methodist! Where d he get the other sermons?" 
 
 W T e found them all, some in Moody s book of 
 sermons, two or three in Talmage s. Our people 
 were no great readers in those days. Even if they 
 had been, I doubt if they would have chosen pulpit 
 literature. So no one recognized the canned gospel 
 we had been getting. 
 
 William went to call on Brother Beltem that 
 evening. He did not return until near midnight. 
 
 "We ll have our own pastor for better or for 
 worse after this," he said as he put out the light. 
 
 And we did. The next third Sunday Parker 
 Beltem preached a poor little, runty sermon. But 
 it was his own. And William shouted "Amen!" 
 
48 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 every chance he got, which encouraged the boy. 
 As the year passed he improved until he did very 
 well. But he has never risen in the Conference, 
 still serving small churches according to his ability. 
 I have always had a great respect for hini. 
 
 These are only two of the twenty-nine pastors 
 we had during these last thirty-five years. I 
 served under them all until I became a sort of 
 setting hen in the church. The preachers whooped 
 and exhorted. The people sang "O Lord, revive 
 us!" But nothing happened. We had passed 
 into a kind of spiritual dotage. When the devil 
 forsook us, as if he were tired of tempting us into 
 the same old transgressions, we settled down in 
 our piety and feuds, and I never expected any 
 change in these conditions. The fact that they 
 were changed suddenly and completely inspired 
 me to tell the tale I am about to write. What I 
 have written is merely the background against 
 which the events show. If any reader takes offense 
 let him prefer charges against the pastor who 
 finally shook up the dry bones of the Methodist 
 saints in Berton. This narrative is not a book 
 of scriptures, but the biography of a preacher and 
 his people. 
 
 THE FAMILY HISTORY OF A CHURCH 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IF THE widow called Dorcas, and known as a 
 "disciple" in the Church at Joppa, could 
 have written one chapter of the Acts of the 
 Apostles we should know more about church work 
 among the laity of that period. If Phebe had 
 written her experiences in the Church at Cenchrea 
 we should know more than we do about Saint Paul. 
 She would have made it her business to find out 
 what that "thorn in the flesh" was which has 
 puzzled so many commentators; and she would 
 have told us. As the women in this church discuss 
 our presiding elder, she would have written about 
 Paul how he looked; his favourite psalms; what 
 the congregation thought of his sermon. But she 
 never could have remembered what he said. This 
 may explain why there is no Book of Dorcas, no 
 Gospel According to Phebe even in the Apocry 
 pha. Being women, they would have told too 
 much not essential to salvation but most aw 
 fully faithful to just the personal lives of the 
 Apostles. 
 
 And I reckon this is the reason even to this day 
 there are no church histories written by women. 
 
 49 
 
50 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 They know how too well. We should get the 
 truth; all the thumb marks of human imperfections 
 on the brethren s perfections. If Susannah Wesley 
 had written the early history of Methodism she 
 might have omitted John Wesley s rules, which are 
 now the vows we take when we join the church; and 
 she never would have thought of putting in his 
 sermons, which all young itinerants must memorize 
 before they are received into "full connections." 
 But she would have told the troubles her son John 
 had with his wife ; how difficult he found it to curb 
 the ardour of his field preachers; what an awful 
 time her son Charles had when composing his 
 hymns; how hard they both worked; what priva 
 tions they endured and so forth and so on. It 
 would not have been a history of Methodism at all, 
 but a tender biography of her sons. 
 
 I am not complaining, you understand. But I 
 say it is queer, when you consider how much more 
 active women are and always have been in the 
 service of the Christian religion, that they never 
 do get the chance to tell what they know about 
 the church and the brethren which is a sight 
 more than any one suspects except the Al 
 mighty. 
 
 If the women in this church at Berton could 
 compare notes with Dorcas of Joppa, and Martin 
 Luther s wife, and Susannah Wesley, we should 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 51 
 
 find a remarkable similarity in our experiences. 
 Conditions, customs, and creeds vary from age 
 to age; but there are two ever-conflicting forces 
 that do not change at all the nature of human 
 nature, and the spirit of Christianity. 
 
 We have served our time in this church with 
 passionate, headstrong preachers just as devoted 
 to the ministry of Christ, according to their ability, 
 as Paul was, and about as hard to get on with 
 as John and Barnabas found him to be when they 
 went off with him on a missionary journey. We 
 have had young ones like Timothy gentle, pa 
 tient, not so effective; delicate enough to take 
 a little blackberry cordial for their stomach s 
 sake during the summer season of bowel com 
 plaints. We have had just as good saints here 
 as anybody s saints. We get the same kind of 
 jades, too, occasionally, who inspired Paul to 
 order the women at Corinth to cover their heads 
 meaning really their scandalous faces, I believe 
 and keep silent in the church. But, with us, she 
 always gets in the choir, where her head covering 
 shows to a better advantage than the dingy 
 bonnets of good women, and where she makes the 
 music and the worst troubles we have. 
 
 Within the church we also have our humble 
 publican, seated far back, who wears on his 
 sorrowful face the Lord-be-merciful-to-me-a-sinner 
 
5 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 expression, which endears him to us more than the 
 virtues of some of our hardened saints. 
 
 I am about to write a little history of our church 
 at Berton. It will be a family history, because 
 I am a woman and can rarely remember more 
 than the text of last Sunday s sermon. 
 
 If any one wishes to know why I am doing this 
 let him look inside his own church; not as a 
 stranger, who sees rows of men and women seated 
 in a kind of Christian relaxation, taking a Sabbath 
 rest from secular life, but as every one of us knows 
 each other in the simplicity of faith and in the 
 hard struggle to do right according to our per 
 versities. 
 
 That is one reason. Here is another: Public 
 opinion is a Grand Jury that brings an indict 
 ment every hundred years or so against whatever 
 is wrong, whether it is our Government, social 
 institutions, or the Christian Church. All revolu 
 tions and reforms are preceded by these indict 
 ments. And they are brought as often against 
 the malpractice of religion as against any other 
 evil. 
 
 Loyola voiced such a verdict when he formed 
 the Society of Jesus, which was a pure and devoted 
 brotherhood. But it produced the Jesuits of the 
 Inquisition. Martin Luther did the same thing 
 in a different way. And the Protestants started 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 53 
 
 clean. When the Church of England returned 
 to the pomp and circumstances of a too formal 
 and worldly bred piety, John Wesley organized 
 the society called Methodists. This church has 
 prospered so much that it begins now to prosper 
 too much. Presently the Grand Jury will sit 
 again. There is something wrong; I do not know 
 what it is. Sometimes I think we deceive our 
 selves and practise for the benefit of the church 
 the same covetousness and greed that we con 
 demn in the people of the world. We gratify 
 the same instinct for wealth and cover the sin of 
 it with the name of the Christian Church. 
 
 Anyhow, a queer true bill was returned against 
 our Methodist Church here recently, with amaz 
 ing consequences. Therefore, as one writes an 
 epitaph to the memory of a good man, so do I 
 now set down the story of this little meeting house 
 and the people who made it and loved it, knowing 
 that presently the new order must begin and 
 former things must pass, put away as we fold the 
 garments of the dead. 
 
 The Methodist Church in Berton is a little old 
 gray house, with a long-necked belfry. The eaves 
 come very low. The doors on week days are 
 like sorrowful eyes closed in prayer for the mem 
 bers who may be doing what they ought not to 
 
54 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 do. On Sundays they are wide open; like the 
 heart of a good man. The bell in the belfry is 
 not too loud; one of those singing Sabbath bells 
 heard only in village churches. In summer 
 weather the shadows of many leaves fall upon 
 the roof from two great oaks, like phantom 
 wreaths of shade and sun. In winter winds 
 their naked boughs lock arms above it as if they 
 held it, like the love of God, in a firm embrace. 
 
 The inside is filled with a brown gloom from 
 the unpainted walls and pews, which have dark 
 ened to a deeper, richer tone, very soft and kind. 
 
 On the first Sabbath in every month the com 
 munion table stands within the altar, a white 
 cloth spread over the bread and the wine, and the 
 two goblets. We still take the sacrament here 
 from a common chalice, decently trusting the 
 Lord to save us from each other s contagion. If 
 there is anything else in this world so much like 
 the memory of "His loving kindness, oh, how 
 great," as an old church like this, with the people 
 kneeling, saint and sinner side by side, about this 
 altar on such a day, neither doubting nor judging 
 one another for the moment, I have never seen it. 
 
 But, however we may dignify an altar, Nature 
 or accident comes in and humanizes it. Directly 
 after the war nails were scarce and the pulpit was 
 made of boards pegged together. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 55 
 
 One of the pegs fell out, doubtless jarred from 
 its hole by Brother Myrick, who was a powerful 
 preacher, with a prophet s beard and a Sinai 
 countenance. He often pounded the Bible during 
 his discourse to make it go down better with his 
 congregation. 
 
 On a Sabbath late in October he was preaching 
 from the text: "Search the scriptures; for in them 
 ye think ye have eternal life." The brethren 
 listened drowsily; the elder women dozed, mulled 
 in the wine of the word. Brother Myrick lifted 
 his voice, endeavouring to hold their attention. 
 "S-e-a-r-c-h the Scriptures, my brethren!" he 
 shouted, waving his right arm in a fine gesture 
 and bringing his fist down with a bang upon the 
 open book. 
 
 Instantly everybody sat up; every neck craned; 
 every head turned sidewise, one ear toward the 
 pulpit; eyes rolled at the preacher, who had drawn 
 back and flattened himself in petrified amazement 
 against the wall behind him. A sound like 
 closeted thunder issued from beneath the Bible. 
 It filled the house a sibilant, angry sound, as 
 if the prophets had risen in wrath from First and 
 Second Kings. 
 
 We never admit it; but, whether civilized or 
 savage, we are always expecting the miraculous. 
 And nobody really likes it. The angels only 
 
56 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 know what fires of unwilling faith and terrified 
 superstitions were kindled in the minds of that 
 congregation as the noise increased. 
 
 Suddenly, while we expected the very heavens 
 to fall, Brother My rick clapped his hands to his 
 head, leaped into the air, and cleared the pulpit at 
 a bound. He was pursued by a swarm of bumble 
 bees, which encompassed him about like a cloud 
 of witnesses. They continued to boil in a furious, 
 smoking mass of wings and stings from that peg- 
 hole beneath the book board, where they had 
 made their winter quarters. 
 
 We did not wait for the benediction. 
 
 Those first years when we had the pegged-board 
 pulpit seem the best to me, in spite of the fact 
 that we made it harder for one another than we 
 do now. 
 
 I can remember when women did not wear their 
 gold breastpins to divine services. I was a little 
 saucer-faced girl, just beginning to study the 
 catechism and learn how to gossip like a little 
 squab Pharisee, when we had a scandal about 
 the preacher s wife s bonnet. She was a bride 
 and still wore her wedding clothes when she ap 
 peared in the church that first Sunday. Her 
 hat was a bewitching little cocked-up thing, put 
 on her head sidewise for the glory of love rather 
 than the glory of God. Sitting close to my mother, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 57 
 
 I divided my attention during the sermon be 
 tween the vision of this beautiful hat and Mrs. 
 Withers, who was also studying it with malevolent 
 intensity. 
 
 Immediately after the services Mrs. Withers 
 led the young wife aside. I followed at a little 
 girl s convenient eavesdropping distance. 
 
 "That must come off!" said the old lady sternly, 
 pointing at the flagrant bow raised like an iri 
 descent hallelujah on the side of the hat. "Such 
 vanities are strictly forbidden by the rules of our 
 church!" 
 
 There was a flash of resentment in the bride s 
 eye, a gesture of quick defiance. Then her coun 
 tenance fell. Along with so many preachers 
 wives, she passed under the yoke of "Sisteren" tyr 
 annies for her husband s sake. 
 
 "Very well," she answered faintly, her eyes 
 swimming in tears, her lips pressed tight to keep 
 back what she must not say. 
 
 My sympathies were all with her as she went 
 meekly out of the church. At the same time I 
 did not doubt that Mrs. Withers was right. It is 
 only within the last few years that the rules hi 
 our Discipline have been modified enough to 
 permit a woman to wear such a thing without 
 perjuring herself. 
 
 But even then the leaven of liberty was working 
 
58 A Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 
 
 in the vain and tender hearts of women. The 
 next day my mother and two other sisters called 
 upon the bride. They asked her for her bonnet. 
 She yielded it, still terrified. It looked like a 
 picked bird, for she had already removed the bow. 
 In the evening they returned it to her, covered 
 with the prettiest flowers in their bandboxes; 
 and mother kissed her and told her not to worry 
 about the dragon of righteousness in Sister With 
 ers, who was really a good woman in her hard- 
 fisted way. 
 
 This happened in the days when two or three 
 brethren, who were spiritually minded, occasion 
 ally waited upon another brother whom they had 
 managed to overtake in a fault and reproved him. 
 Free will was a doctrine that gave us the old ad 
 vantage over the Baptists, who believed in election, 
 and the Presbyterians, who believed in predes 
 tination. We dared not practise it on one another. 
 
 Nevertheless, we had more accessions to the 
 church "by profession of faith" than we do now. 
 More penitents came to the altar for prayers, re 
 pented, believed, and were saved from everything 
 but their other sins. 
 
 I say "other sins" because conversion only re 
 deems a man from the transgressions he has already 
 committed. It does not insure him against the 
 other kind, which he is certain to develop, en- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 59 
 
 couraged by his own righteousness. For every 
 virtue you acquire, there are two or three attendant 
 shortcomings. The effort to live as a citizen of 
 heaven here is like straddling the grave and trying 
 to exist in two worlds at once, without naturaliza 
 tion papers in either. It cannot be done not all 
 the time. So long as we are in the flesh, the scenes 
 of the soul are laid there, with enough to keep 
 everybody busy. 
 
 When we put both feet in the grave, and pass 
 through it, they are laid beyond. I have yet to see 
 the man or woman, lacking in this practical wis 
 dom, who does not become a Pharisee or something 
 not quite equal to a square deal in just the truth. 
 We are obliged to judge one another, even if we are 
 commanded to "Judge not. Dove-and-serpent 
 wisdom consists in remembering that "with what 
 judgment ye judge ... it shall be measured 
 to you again "; and go ahead with your judgments, 
 prepared to take and profit by the consequences. 
 And it s all very well to live in love and charity 
 with your neighbour; but if she permits her chick 
 ens to scratch up your garden and sicks her dog on 
 your cat, you cannot. The thing to do is to kill 
 her chickens and your cat, and clear the decks so 
 that you can. My idea is to do my best, no 
 matter how bad it is, and never to bear malice. 
 This is the spirit of the law. No one can live up 
 
60 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 to the letter of it without damaging his soul or the 
 other fellow s with too much meekness, which is 
 incipient hypocrisy. I am always in a position 
 to thank my Heavenly Father that I have good 
 reasons for knowing I am no better than my 
 neighbours. 
 
 What I am trying to say is that when you settle 
 down in the Christian life; when the years take 
 hold of your knees so that it is hard to rise from 
 your prayers; when you are old and sad, and wise 
 enough to know your own ever-besetting sins as 
 others have known them all along you cease to 
 expect perfection in yourself or in others. You 
 realize, with comfortable Christian fortitude, that, 
 after all, perfection in this changing world is bound 
 to be imperfection to-morrow. 
 
 This reminds me that some years ago the Holi 
 ness people got into our church and nearly ruined 
 it before we could live them down. I had my 
 share in that by convicting Mary Fisher. 
 
 She lived next door to me then. And her 
 chickens lived in my garden. I admit that I had 
 a wayward cat, which she claimed committed 
 depredation in her kitchen. We were both in an 
 unchristian frame of mind when the revival came 
 on. We had a travelling evangelist that year to 
 help with the meeting, not suspecting until he was 
 in full swing that he preached "sanctification." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 61 
 
 When things warmed up, half the church mem 
 bers began seeking this deeper work of grace. 
 It was like Mary to get it first. She was a nice 
 little woman, with a thin body and economical 
 features. And she had a soul like a sparrow, 
 which was always falling to the ground in order to 
 make sure that the Lord numbered the very hairs 
 of her head. She claimed the "second blessing" 
 with hallelujahs of rejoicing; said the very roots 
 of evil had been taken out of her. 
 
 I sat in my pew behind the choir and watched 
 her work over Taggy Lipton, who wanted sanctifi- 
 cation but was too honest to claim it. 
 
 After the meeting was over and we had settled 
 down in our strictly human natures once more, I 
 revolved a certain thing in my mind. I went to 
 see Sister Massengale, whose only w r orldly amuse 
 ment is to raise game chickens for her own table. 
 I loaned her my cat and borrowed the fiercest- 
 looking rooster she had. 
 
 The next morning I was awakened at daylight 
 by the most awful racket in the garden. I ran to 
 the window. There were four or five hens sitting 
 on the fence, with their wings down, cackling as if 
 they d die if something didn t stop. Mary was 
 there, too, not more than half dressed, with the 
 hairpins she rolls her bangs in every night sticking 
 up like porcupine quills. She was jumping up and 
 
62 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 down, smacking her hands and screeching loud 
 enough to bring the town marshal. 
 
 In the middle of the garden her old Plymouth 
 Rock rooster faced the game as a fat clown would 
 face a slim young knight-errant. They were not 
 saying anything, those roosters; but the Middle 
 Ages never saw a duel with swords conducted in a 
 manner more ceremonious or with deadlier instinct. 
 Their neck feathers were reached up like Eliza 
 bethan ruffs. Every time Mary s rooster dropped 
 his wing to kick it with his claw, the game would 
 flirt out his long leg and spur him somewhere. 
 Once or twice they clinched, did their worst to each 
 other s heads, drew off, took aim, and started 
 again. 
 
 It did not last long. Before I had time to realize 
 that I was promoting cockfighting across the street 
 from the parsonage and church, the Plymouth 
 Rock dropped beneath a well-aimed thrust. The 
 game made a low cock-a-doodle-doo remark to the 
 hens on the fence, stepped into the potato patch 
 and helped himself to a bug, as if killing an ad 
 versary was merely an early morning incident. 
 
 At the same moment Mary caught sight of me at 
 the window. 
 
 "I ll pay you for this, Mary Thompson; I will, 
 if it s the last thing I ever do!" she screamed, pink 
 with fury. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 63 
 
 "Remember you are sanctified, Mary Fisher; 
 and Vengeance is mine, . . . saith the Lord, " 
 I shouted back. 
 
 We stood measuring mortal minds for a moment; 
 then Mary went into the house. 
 
 The next Sunday we sat side by side in the 
 church. It was Communion Day. When those 
 who were "in love and charity with their neigh 
 bours" were invited to come forward and partake 
 of the sacrament, I made haste to accept the in 
 vitation, but Mary hung back. 
 
 These little incidents, so trivial, make up the 
 family life of a church, and they have more effect 
 upon it than the Conference assessments. How 
 many times have I seen church members watch 
 some brother on Communion Sunday to see 
 whether he d dare take the sacrament, having 
 private knowledge of a difficulty he d had with an 
 other brother; in fact, it requires courage to stay 
 away, for everybody wants to know why you do. 
 And they will find out. Fortunately the Lord is 
 hospitable. I doubt that He objects when a bitter- 
 hearted saint occasionally takes what s offered. 
 
 There is always somebody in the church who 
 makes religion a kind of cross-stitch between piety 
 and persecution. I have known a Christian 
 woman to aggravate her husband about his soul in 
 
64 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 a way that was little short of diabolical. Sally 
 Parks told me this story herself. 
 
 "When I married Sam," she said, "he was not a 
 Christian; but I never rested until he professed and 
 joined the church. I didn t worry him or plead 
 with him. I just set aside Friday of every week 
 to fast and pray for my husband. I kept it up 
 for ten years. During that time I had four babies 
 and did most of my own work, except on Fridays. 
 Then I went to my room and left him to manage 
 the best way he could. He knew what I was doing 
 and it used to make him mad at first; but after a time 
 he got used to it At last he gave in and joined 
 the church. But I tell you it was hard on me!" 
 
 It was harder on Sam. Everybody in town 
 knew his wife was praying for him. He was a good 
 man. You couldn t have told from his walk and 
 conversation that he was dead in his trespasses and 
 sins; but the consciousness of knowing that we 
 knew what his wife did to him on Friday took the 
 spirit out of him. He wore the expression of a 
 sheep-killing dog. Finally he went to the pastor 
 about it. 
 
 "Brother Wrenn," he said, "I wish you d stop 
 my wife from praying and fasting for me every 
 Friday." 
 
 "Why, what do you mean?" demanded Wrenn, 
 astonished. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 65 
 
 "Maybe you don t know how it feels to have 
 your wife desert you one day in the week and take 
 the whole of it to backbite you to the Lord. It s 
 unfaithful!" Sam whimpered. 
 
 "Well, why don t you repent and join the church 
 then?" the preacher asked. 
 
 " I ain t wicked," he answered indignantly. " I m 
 a decent, honest man And I just can t stultify 
 myself by standing up and admitting before all the 
 folks that what she s been telling on me to the Lord 
 for ten years is so. It s been going on for ten 
 years, I tell you!" he shouted "I can t stand it 
 much longer. I m thinking of getting drunk!" 
 
 Sally never admits that part of it; but the story 
 goes that Brother Wrenn called on her and ad 
 vised her to change her Christian tactics. 
 
 Shortly afterward Sam joined the church. 
 He s done very well in it ever since not what I 
 should call a fierce abourer in the vineyard, but a 
 useful man when it comes to squeezing out the 
 last quarter of the preacher s salary and raising 
 funds to paint the parsonage. 
 
 As a church, we have grown in the love and 
 knowledge of Christ by the grace of God; but we 
 grow in numbers the best way we can, not so 
 much by proselyting as by offering salvation on 
 easier terms than some other denominations. 
 
66 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 We get the second-blessing people because we 
 believe in an emotional religion as the world be 
 lieves in emotional music or poetry, or oratory or 
 politics. We get the backsliders from other 
 churches, because there is no satisfaction in be 
 longing to one which predestinates you to dam 
 nation after you have fallen from grace and feel 
 badly enough about it anyhow. We cherish 
 backsliders, which is a credit to our doctrines and 
 our patience, as it is proper to keep a sick man in a 
 hospital instead of turning him out because he 
 gets a backset now and then. 
 
 Doctor Edd is one of these infirmary souls, 
 subject to almost fatal lapses in his efforts to be a 
 Christian. He joined the Baptist Church when 
 he came here, years ago, to practise medicine. 
 He is a good doctor and soon had the best people 
 in town as his patients. But, though he is not a 
 drunkard, he drinks periodically. And when he 
 does he puts his whole mind, body, and soul into 
 his cups. 
 
 The Baptists turned him out during one of his 
 protracted sprees. Then he reformed and joined 
 the Presbyterians. They bore with him until he 
 reflected upon the dignity of the church. It was 
 his inebriate fancy when he went on a spree to 
 imagine some one was desperately ill, and he would 
 start at a gallop to save a life. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 67 
 
 One day he rushed into the study where Doctor 
 McAndrews, the Presbyterian minister, was pre 
 paring his next sermon and ordered him to bed. 
 The old Scotchman protested that he was well 
 and had no need of a physician. 
 
 "But you are not well, my dear sir. Don t I 
 hear you preach every Sunday? Don t I know a 
 sick preacher when I see him!" exclaimed Doctor 
 Edd, swaying on his legs, but firm in the conviction 
 that this was a matter of life and death. " Let me 
 see your tongue!" he demanded. 
 
 The indignant minister was forced to comply. 
 The doctor wrinkled his nose at it and said it 
 confirmed his worst suspicions. He refused to 
 leave the house until he saw the minister un 
 dressed and in bed, all of which was accomplished 
 with angry opposition on one hand and threats of 
 violence on the other. 
 
 For this unseemly conduct he was dismissed 
 from the Presbyterian Church. But he had a 
 horror of being a lost sheep. He wished to be 
 among good people, even if he was not good. He 
 was like a beseeching alien who has had the 
 kingdom of heaven quarantined against him. At 
 the beginning of our next revival he asked to join 
 our church. He was contrite and he was hopeful. 
 We received him. 
 
 He goes on an occasional spree, bringing us into 
 
68 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 disrepute as a lax church. Then he recovers him 
 self, with a cheerfulness and courage that are 
 sublime. He remembers his sins no more for 
 ever. We have lost hope of his reformation long 
 since, but he never does. He is the official pub 
 lican in our church. He sits on the back bench 
 looking tragically worn, like a good soul crucified 
 in his own flesh. When he is not there we miss 
 him. We are more sorrowful over his one trans 
 gression than the many committed by hardier 
 Christians, which do not detain them from being 
 present. 
 
 He has lost all his practice except among the 
 poor and unrespectable. We do not know how he 
 lives. But he is generous. He is so ready to 
 serve that it is as if we had done him a favour when 
 the pastor asks him to go ten miles to attend a 
 sick woman who cannot be cured but who wants 
 a doctor just to hearten her up. He is the one 
 man among us who knows, next to God, who the 
 poor are that keep their poverty concealed as if 
 it were a disgrace. And he never betrays them. 
 But he will come by very privately and take up 
 a collection of ham bones out of my smokehouse, 
 and wheedle me out of a dress I don t really want 
 to part with, for one of his secret mendicants. 
 
 Sometimes I have thought maybe Doctor Edd 
 will be one of those lasts here who shall be "first"" 
 
"IT IS AS IF WE HAD DONE HIM A FAVOUR WHEN THE 
 PASTOR ASKS HIM TO GO TEN MILES TO ATTEND A 
 
 SICK WOMAN 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 69 
 
 in the kingdom of heaven. But I cannot see him 
 so. I always think of him seated somewhere in 
 a darker place behind the shining hosts, troubled 
 about his wings, hiding his crown, waiting to serve. 
 
 Dregs in the bottom of the cup is a figure of 
 speech used to denote the unfit and the unlovely; 
 but sugar settles to the bottom, too. And it 
 matters not how much we stir this church with 
 disputes and scratching piety, there remains the 
 sweetness of two or three saints that is never 
 dissolved in our bitterness. This is a good deal 
 to say for them, because presently you will see 
 that there are many bitter-herb souls and stinging- 
 nettle Christians among us. 
 
 Sister Molly Brown is one of those sugar-cured 
 in the Scriptures of love and patience. 
 
 She is a tall woman, with a long, homely face, 
 high, red-knobbed cheek bones, small, faded brown 
 eyes, and a beautiful mouth which neither years 
 nor poverty seems to change. It is a very sweet 
 double line of benevolence in an otherwise for 
 bidding countenance. Her feet are wide femi 
 nine flapjacks, which she slaps down with violent 
 energy when she walks. She is a widow and she 
 keeps the only boarding-house in Berton. It is a 
 kind of adult orphans asylum for anybody who 
 comes along, from the man "without a job" to 
 Doctor Edd, who is the orphan Molly always has 
 
70 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 with her. She bears with these people, the dys 
 pepsia of the school teachers, the butter-eating 
 extravagance of those who didn t pay their last 
 month s bill. She slaves for them in a way that 
 tries my patience but never her own. She de 
 fends them to the last ditch and does their laundry 
 besides. 
 
 She never visits as other women do; never goes 
 anywhere except to church, where she is to be 
 seen every Sunday seated in one of the foremost 
 pews, fast asleep, nodding unconscious amens to 
 the preacher. Sometimes it is funny to watch 
 her the damaging-to-all-of-us parts of the sermon 
 to which she wags assent. I reckon this nap 
 she takes during Sabbath services, having dis 
 missed her boarders and her cares, is the soundest 
 sleep she gets. 
 
 She is always heels over head in debt at the 
 stores, but her credit is wonderful. It is based, 
 like faith, on "the substance of things hoped for, 
 the evidence of things not seen." Every merchant 
 in this town will tell you she is a "good moral 
 risk." 
 
 She keeps a bone barrel in her woodshed. On 
 the morning of the day the Woman s Missionary 
 Society meets she piles the bones on a wheel 
 barrow, takes them to the butcher and sells them 
 for ten cents, with which she pays her dues to the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 71 
 
 society. Sometimes I think Molly Brown s dimes 
 ought to count for more than they do when the 
 Mission Board of our church is making appro 
 priations for just the travelling expenses of its 
 officers. 
 
 If some one is ill or in trouble, or has fallen from 
 grace, her domestic nature undergoes a swift and 
 radical change. She leaves her laundry in the 
 tub. She casts her boarders from her, neglecting 
 them shamefully, and she goes out to comfort or 
 to seek and to save that which is lost. When we 
 see her kiting along on a winter morning, with a 
 shawl pinned over her head and her hands wrapped 
 in her apron for warmth, we know some one is in 
 affliction, and that presently that one will have 
 a cook, a housemaid, a nurse, and a spiritual 
 adviser by her side. 
 
 You never can tell where poetry will break out 
 in a community. One day Molly said this to 
 me in answer to a question I should not have 
 asked : 
 
 "I am not sure of my salvation, Sister Thomp 
 son. I ain t, to say, as faithful to the church as 
 I ought to be. Sometimes I want to get out of it 
 and do what I do just for the Lord." 
 
 I looked at her inquisitively. 
 
 "Seems as if I just divided with Him," she con 
 tinued. "It s confusing. My life s slipping away 
 
7 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 from me into a journey through things I don t 
 know and can t see. I feel as if I d walked a 
 long, long way with my eyes holden, just touching 
 folks as I passed, as the blind do. It seems 
 strange, when I know everybody here and never 
 go about much." She finished simply, never 
 suspecting that she has been across country many 
 a time to the strange kingdoms of God. 
 
 I do not question that Emily Peters is as good 
 as Molly, but she s different. She has what I 
 call a sheep-face sou . You can see it every time 
 you look at her a poor, dumb thing somewhere 
 in her, which stares at you from her large, blue, 
 beseeching eyes asking you, for the love of mercy, 
 to spare her. She is not good; she knows her 
 transgressions are many and her sins very grievous; 
 but, oh, she is trying so hard, so hard to do right! 
 And do I think the pastor can help her if she 
 tells him everything? I always advise against 
 that extreme course. 
 
 "You are a single woman, Emily, and you should 
 be modest about your faults. Don t admit em 
 to anybody," I say. 
 
 As a matter of fact, I doubt that she ever had 
 the courage to commit a real, upstanding sin in 
 her life; but she is forever doing something to 
 herself, keeping fasts, giving tithes of all she has 
 now and then. She reads a book of religious 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 73 
 
 meditations, one for every day in the year; and 
 she would never take the one intended for Tuesday, 
 February the eleventh, say, for Friday, February 
 the fourteenth. 
 
 She is the same way about her health. She 
 takes exercises with writhings most awful to ee, 
 developing secret muscles. If her head attracts 
 her attention with an ache she goes about all 
 winter with a black veil wrapped round it and with 
 her little withered face sticking out. But most 
 often it s her digestion. Then she will wear the 
 whole hot summer a bandage round her, just to see 
 if it won t help. But it never does. She can t eat 
 green corn without being "upset," no matter 
 what she does. This year she got an idea about 
 her feet. One day I met her coming down the 
 street, bent forward, elbows akimbo, walking with 
 her toes turned in. She looked like a sheep escaped 
 from the shambles with its legs tied. 
 
 "What on earth s the matter, Emily!" I ex 
 claimed, distressed to see her in such a fix. 
 
 "It s bunions," she said, stopping, but careful to 
 keep the ends of her shoes touching. "I ve two 
 awful corns on the bottoms of my feet and I ve 
 heard walking pigeon-toed will cure them." 
 
 That is Emily Peters, inside and out, Job s own 
 sister in the flesh and a neurasthenic invalid in the 
 spirit. But you cannot induce her to take a firm 
 
74 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 stand in the church for anything, she is so afraid of 
 making herself worse than she is. When we have a 
 row in our missionary society she s a neutral. 
 When the congregation is split, like the Red Sea, 
 over whether we shall have an evangelist to help 
 our preacher during a revival, or repent of our sins 
 the best way we can under his familiar preaching, 
 she is still a neutral. When I see her at such times, 
 sitting three benches in the rear of the argument, I 
 could spew her out of my mouth for being neither 
 hot nor cold. But you will find her in your church, 
 too. 
 
 Like all Gaul, every church is divided into three 
 parts the Christians, the hardened saints, and the 
 choir. The Christians are the least conspicuous. 
 The pastor never finds out who they are until he 
 has been with us long enough to look about him. 
 They never "lead in prayer," or testify of their 
 victorious struggles in an experience meeting. 
 They do what they are told to do and let it go at 
 that. But this church wouldn t last twelve 
 months if it were not for their dull peace among us. 
 You may see them every Sabbath day occupying 
 all the temperate zone behind the hardened saints 
 and the choir, like a windbreak between them and 
 Providence; middle-aged bald-headed men, mid 
 dle-aged double-chinned women, who listen to the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 75 
 
 sermon, try their best to remember the text, and 
 never fall out with the preacher. 
 
 My experience is that most of the rows and 
 schisms in this church start with the saints. I 
 have seen many an Old Adam steward, like Tom 
 Warren, sitting in the amen corner, with a horned 
 soul not satanic, but the ordinary spreading ant 
 lers of an aged steer, usually lowered to goad the 
 preacher in the flanks or some other steward in the 
 ribs. 
 
 For ten years three or four of our prominent 
 members have conducted a feud with the ferocity 
 of outlaws. Old man Warren fell out with Roger 
 Peters about the line fence between their two 
 farms. The Discipline of our church forbids a 
 brother to go to law with another brother; so they 
 occupied all their spare time in moving that fence 
 back and forth until they hated each other like 
 poison. Peters changed his seat from the right- 
 hand side of the pulpit to the left, so as not to be 
 near Warren. 
 
 This disturbance led to the investigation of line 
 fences throughout the entire community, and it 
 was found that more than half of them w^ere "in 
 dispute." Some of our members quit the church. 
 But the epidemic spread to the Baptists. They 
 had no church rules to hold them down; so the 
 court dockets for two years were filled with cases 
 
76 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 about line fences. When they were decided the 
 men who lost quit the Baptists and came to us, 
 with their bitterness sticking to them. 
 
 Preachers came and preachers went. They ex 
 horted, prayed, pleaded in vain. They could not 
 bring harmony between these brethren, contending 
 like unarmed savages over their dividing lines. The 
 women took up their husbands quarrels. Mrs. 
 Warren said she would not speak to Mrs. Peters 
 not if she "met her face to face." The young 
 people and sinners looked on. The church began to 
 lose its grip in the community. Sometimes for a 
 whole year, if we had a very tactful pastor, there 
 would be a lull, merely a truce. Tom Warren and 
 Roger Peters would not vote together, even to re 
 duce the pastor s salary. And it was a sight to see 
 Warren go up one aisle and Peters up the other to 
 take the morning "offering"; then stand so far 
 apart with it before the altar that the blessing 
 asked scarcely reached from one basket to the 
 other. 
 
 Meantime the reflex of these disturbances was 
 felt in the Woman s Home and Foreign Missionary 
 Societies. We could not agree upon any way to 
 raise funds as we had done before, with ice-cream 
 festivals in summer and oyster suppers in winter. 
 By way of adding to the general confusion some 
 members of the Aid Society decided to have a rag 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 77 
 
 carpet woven for the parsonage parlour. They 
 compounded their rags and old clothes for this pur 
 pose. When the weaving was done Mrs. Warren 
 told the pastor s wife to send for the carpet, sew 
 it together, and put it down. This was Mrs. 
 W T renn, who was expecting her second baby and 
 was frail. Therefore, she did not feel equal to the 
 labour of making the carpet. 
 
 Mrs. Warren said she had suspected Sister 
 Wrenn of being too proud; now she knew she was, 
 since she had her nose turned up at that carpet. 
 
 Sister Wrenn was rebellious. She had a little 
 money of her own and showed her independence by 
 refusing to call anybody brother or sister. I doubt 
 that she was altogether satisfied with the situation. 
 No preacher s wife is; but few of them dare say so. 
 
 "If I d known John Wrenn was to be a preacher 
 I d have got a divorce before I married him," she 
 said, laughing, one day. 
 
 And it was hard on her, accustomed to comforts 
 and freedom, still wearing her wedding clothes 
 after three years in the itineracy, and fighting to 
 keep her babies off a rag carpet with all the germs 
 in town woven into it. 
 
 Mrs. Warren was so angry she called a secret 
 caucus of the Aid Society. I heard about it 
 through Sally Parks and I sent word to Sister 
 Wrenn to be sure to go. 
 
78 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 We both went, but we were not expected. 
 Charlotte Warren was speaking to half a dozen 
 women when we went in. 
 
 "We ve worked and slaved to make our parson 
 age comfortable," she was saying. "We have 
 given and spent for it. We ran round this town for 
 days collecting rags for that carpet. And what 
 thanks do we get?" she fairly screamed. "Scorn, 
 not gratitude, my sisters; that s what we get! A 
 rag carpet is not good enough. That s the way we 
 have been treated; and I move we dissolve this Aid 
 Society!" she concluded, smacking the palm of one 
 hand with her fist. 
 
 I glanced round me. There was Sally Parks, 
 looking more than ever like a raw-boned angel with 
 a grievance. Emily Peters was squenched up close 
 in the corner next to the wall, as if she hoped no 
 body would see her or insist upon her voting. 
 Taggy Lip ton was crazy to help with the sensation; 
 "but" that doubting word was written in capital 
 letters upon her face. The other women waited to 
 see which way the cat would jump. Then I caught 
 sight of Sister Wrenn not quite conquered, tears in 
 her eyes, knowing she must not answer back for her 
 husband s sake. 
 
 I do not know why the wife of a preacher always 
 looks like a widow; but she does, careworn and for 
 lorn. And her husband s congregation usually 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 79 
 
 treats her as if she were a widow gives her things, 
 and not the things she wants; loans her the par 
 sonage, and makes her feel that it is a loan. 
 
 These thoughts passed through my mind quicker 
 than a flash, the whole scene and the meaning of it. 
 
 "Do I hear a second to my motion?" demanded 
 Mrs. Warren, as much as to say: "Somebody had 
 better second it!" 
 
 "I second it," cheeped Sally. 
 
 "You ll do nothing of the kind, Sally!" I cried, 
 getting up as fast as I could and going down the 
 aisle to face Mrs. Warren. 
 
 "As for you, Charlotte," I began, shaking my 
 finger in her face, "y u who have never had a child 
 and don t know what it is to sew carpets together in 
 such a condition you ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself ! You persecute every preacher s w4f e who 
 comes to us. You wouldn t let the last one beat 
 the rugs for fear she d wear them out. You com 
 plained because her little girl stood up in one of the 
 parlour chairs. You ve been the thorn in the side 
 of that parsonage. But you can t dissolve this Aid 
 Society if there is a single Christian woman in this 
 church. It s going on if I m the only member! 
 Now let us pray!" I said, in a sudden flank move 
 ment, wheeling and turning my back on Charlotte 
 Warren, who was too astonished to get her breath 
 before we were all on our knees. 
 
80 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "Oh, Lord," I began, determined to get my ver 
 sion of the affair before the throne of grace, "Thou 
 knowest that we are poor and unprofitable serv 
 ants in this church, seeking our own rather than 
 Thy glory. Thou knowest how the stewards have 
 become stumbling-blocks in the way of sinners 
 with their vain strivings to grab and keep each 
 other s land and line fences. And, O Lord, Thou 
 knowest in particular Charlotte Warren how 
 from her youth up she has been overbearing, proud, 
 contentious. Have mercy on her, our Father. 
 Send her sorrows and tribulations to soften her 
 hard heart. Bring her head low in the dust if need 
 be. O Lord, open her blind eyes and her deaf ears 
 and teach her the law of kindness in her tongue." 
 I could hear sniffings on all sides as I went on: 
 "And forgive the weakness and meanness of any 
 woman here who was ready to follow in her foot 
 steps. And, Lord, cause Thy tender mercies to 
 shine on our pastor s wife; fill her mouth with good 
 things. Be Thou her strength and portion. For 
 Jesus sake. Amen." 
 
 I rose from my knees; and I went out of the 
 church followed by every woman in it. 
 
 "Sister Thompson, this is the first time I ve ever 
 been proud to be a preacher s wife!" said Sister 
 Wrenn at the door. 
 
 "Well, it s a great honour, I can tell you, my 
 
A Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 81 
 
 dear. And, remember, it won t hurt you to claim 
 kin with the elect of your husband s congregation," 
 I added with a twinkle in my eye. "Even Char 
 lotte Warren, who is a proud tyrant, is a good 
 woman. We are all doing the best we can con 
 sidering that the devil is such an active part of 
 human nature." 
 
 I do not question that Christians are a greater 
 source of anger and trouble to our Heavenly 
 Father than His sinners, for He can forgive them 
 their transgressions of which they repent; but 
 it must be much more difficult to forgive the 
 saints their perverse, hard-headed virtues. They 
 become too confident. I doubt if any man or 
 woman can live acceptably guided by his own 
 mind, however moral or intelligent he may be. 
 "By my spirit, saith the Lord" means more 
 than mind. If this were not the case Charlotte 
 Warren would be a perfect Christian. 
 
 As it is, I suspect her of being a Pharisee 
 straddling the fence of spiritual things. She 
 lives up to the Ten Commandments like a menace 
 in this town. She does not commit murder; 
 she does not steal ; she never covets her neighbour s 
 maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, being too well 
 satisfied with her own things; and she pays her 
 tithes rigidly. But I have observed that tithers 
 are severe in their judgments of those less strict 
 
82 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 in their interpretations of the law. She has al 
 ways been a scourge to our pastor s wife keeping 
 her finger on her, so to speak. 
 
 Being a virtuous woman, she is hard on those 
 who must still achieve virtue. 
 
 Before I thought she had time to recover from 
 the shock of that prayer I prayed for her in the 
 Aid Society, we hitched horns again, because she 
 charged Lorena Day with kidnapping Lizzie Bart s 
 baby and had her arrested. 
 
 Lorena is a poor girl who went wrong here 
 years ago and has been maid-of -all-work in Molly 
 Brown s house ever since, trying to live down her 
 shame which no woman can do. 
 
 Lizzie was a poor, lost thing herself. She 
 died when this baby was born. Lorena and 
 Doctor Edd were with her, and she gave the 
 child to Lorena. 
 
 Charlotte said the place for it was the Orphans 
 Home. She didn t approve of allowing a girl 
 like Lorena to bring up a child; but Molly and I 
 thought the little thing would give her something 
 good to live for and be the only pleasure she d ever 
 get out of life. So we went before the judge and 
 explained how Lorena came to have the baby. 
 And he agreed to allow her to keep it, to Char 
 lotte s unbounded indignation. But I never saw 
 a happier woman than Lorena was as she walked 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 83 
 
 from that courtroom with a child that was to 
 be hers wrapped up in her shawl and hugged close 
 to her breast. 
 
 This is the difference between Charlotte Warren 
 and me. She never stands before any bar of 
 judgment. She s always on the other side, pass 
 ing verdicts herself. But if you get down to 
 the bottom I doubt that there is a penny s worth 
 of salvation difference between us. For, if she 
 is a Pharisee, I am an old militant woman in 
 the church, ready to fight if that s the only way to 
 keep the peace right. I never have been able to 
 keep it or allow anybody else to keep theirs if I 
 thought it was wrong. I ve been a flaming sword 
 in every row we have in this church, and we seem 
 to grow in grace through one quarrel to another. 
 
 I have told Tom Warren many a time what I 
 think of the fuss about the ten feet of disputed 
 ground between him and Roger Peters. I call 
 it their ten feet of damnation. I have let Roger 
 know more than once what I thought of his taking 
 the fence down and turning his cows in on War 
 ren s oats. I have pulled the ears of our stewards 
 in public places, when their backs were turned, 
 because they were behind with the preacher s 
 salary. I have stood up for the missionary col 
 lections in this church, and the educational funds, 
 when I knew both were really going into brick 
 
84 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 and mortar and pride and spite, instead of into 
 missions and education. I have stood by some 
 thing the preacher said that gave offense when I 
 knew he was wrong and ought not to have said it. 
 
 Sometimes I get terribly worked up over just 
 myself for fear I ll come in the class which in the 
 Last Day will say: "Lord! Lord!" and He will 
 say: "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity; 
 I never knew you." 
 
 What I want to know is how anybody can 
 work at all in this world without working more or 
 less iniquity. Molly Brown is the best Christian 
 in this town, and she systematically keeps able- 
 bodied men and women in idleness by feeding 
 them whether they pay or not, when if she didn t 
 they would go out and earn a living. If there 
 ever was a sin, that s one; and I have told her so. 
 Doctor Edd is the bad man of the town, and he 
 does more good than the rest of us put together; 
 and I ve told him that, too, which may have en 
 couraged him in his wickedness. It is all very 
 confusing to an old woman with a good heart and 
 a bad disposition. 
 
 You never hear of the same kind of disturbances 
 between Social workers as we have among Chris 
 tian workers. The reason is, they make a science 
 of the uplift business and we make a religion of it. 
 They treat the cause of the diseases of poverty 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widmv 85 
 
 and vice. And we do what we can to relieve 
 just the symptoms of those disorders by prayers 
 and charities. One way is no more successful 
 than the other. The Social workers get a few 
 jobs every year for the unemployed, which they 
 lose during the next strike. We win a few souls 
 every year for the kingdom of heaven, who are 
 bent and determined to backslide every chance 
 they get. They do not settle the industrial prob 
 lems and we do not win the world for Christ. I 
 have sometimes thought if they stressed spiritual 
 values more, and if we stressed material values 
 more, we might join forces in a common cause, 
 route the financiers and philanthropists, discipline 
 the bishops and the saints, and accomplish enough 
 to show we have lived and served in our day and 
 generation. 
 
 You are now familiar with the congregation 
 in this church. You can stand on this page, 
 look through the door on Sunday morning, and 
 see us all sitting inside, like good Christian souls 
 which we are in the main: Tom Warren in one 
 amen corner, Roger Peters in the other, each sur 
 rounded by his sympathizers; Taggy Lipton, 
 Charlotte Warren, Sally Parks, and the rest of 
 the prominent church workers, occupying upper- 
 pew seats; Molly Brown, dozing in front; Doctor 
 
86 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Edd on the publican bench, behind even the gay 
 young sinners and the preacher standing in 
 the pulpit like a target for all. But there is a 
 short bench occupied by two men and two women, 
 with the organist seated midway between them, 
 far down at the very front. It is not merely 
 that they hold the strategic position in the house; 
 they look like a foreign element in the congrega 
 tion. The men have a sleeked-up air. The 
 women are better dressed. Their hats cast asper 
 sions on all the other hats in the house. They 
 show even in the line of their backs, that, except 
 one sings alto and the other sings soprano, they 
 are farther apart than the east is from the west. 
 I do not know how they manage to say so much 
 without saying anything; but they do. 
 
 This is the choir. It is also the War Depart 
 ment of the church; the commissary that pro 
 visions scandals, and the arsenal of the musical 
 temperament. An armed camp in the midst of 
 a neutral country is not more dangerous to peace 
 than a church choir is to brotherly love. 
 
 In the first place, you cannot have a good choir 
 without getting somebody in it who sings tenor 
 correctly, but lives by no other virtue. Sacred 
 music never sanctifies the choir, though it may be 
 a great help in a revival. It seems to draw certain 
 people who seek publicity, or it may be that the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 87 
 
 gift of song naturally makes them prominent. 
 In any case the choir publishes them. If you 
 want to have a man s or a woman s character 
 thoroughly investigated to the last deed done in 
 or out of the body, do not appoint a committee 
 of investigation. Just ask them to join the choir. 
 The whole church searches them then. And the 
 way they search one another is appalling. Their 
 jealousies are incredible. 
 
 The first trouble we had was with our first 
 choir, when the preacher took the place of Evalina 
 Lipton, Taggy s sister-in-law, who had always 
 been next to the organist, and gave it to Miss 
 Buford, who was a music teacher here, and asked 
 her to train the choir. Evalina vowed she d never 
 sing again. But if you can sing you cannot bear 
 not to sing. So at the end of a month she re 
 turned like a martyr to her place. But she had 
 a way of closing her mouth in the middle of a 
 note and looking round at the congregation, as 
 much as to say: "Did you hear her flat that note! 
 Nobody can sing soprano with a screech ow T l!" 
 And she would keep her lips pressed together like 
 a pale pair of waffle irons during the rest of the 
 singing. 
 
 The next trouble we had was with Oscar 
 Fain. He sang tenor like an angel and kept his 
 marriage vows like a tomtit. \Yhen his escapades 
 
88 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 passed the bounds even of wifely endurance, which 
 is very great if your husband has the artistic 
 temperament, our pastor undertook to form a 
 new choir composed of exemplary Christians. 
 The effect was beyond belief. They carried the 
 tune as if it were a dead man by the head and 
 heels, with the middle sagging. Besides, many 
 persons in the congregation who felt that they 
 could sing better were indignant because they had 
 not been chosen. 
 
 At last it was decided that we should abolish 
 the choir and have congregational singing. But, 
 as the best singers had been offended, only the 
 elder people, with cracked voices, who could 
 sing nothing but long-metre hymns, would do 
 their duty. The whole church developed the 
 musical temperament, though we never fell to 
 the level of musical morals. Molly Brown and I 
 just went on with our high treble as if nothing 
 had happened. Sometimes ours were the only 
 voices to be heard except the preacher s. As 
 Molly sang like a wandering sheep the fuss we 
 made was far from harmonious. 
 
 Things were in this shape when Brother Worthen 
 came to us as pastor. The brethren were at 
 loggerheads over their line fences. The Woman s 
 Missionary Society was split as clean as if Satan 
 had walked through it over whether we should or 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 89 
 
 should not give to the special fund asked by the 
 Missionary Board. Charlotte Warren had made 
 her unsuccessful effort to dissolve the Aid Society, 
 and Molly Brown and I had torn the church 
 music to shreds in what I shall always claim was a 
 laudable effort to preserve it. When we took 
 up the hymn Brother W r orthen gave out before 
 his first sermon, and did the best we could with 
 it, he looked at us as if we had poisoned him. 
 
 It is written: "The Lord will provide." And if 
 He doesn t see fit to provide, the devil is certain 
 to do so. 
 
 About this time Lily Triggs came back to Ber- 
 ton. She was a Shanklin before she married 
 Triggs, who was a New York man and rich as 
 Croesus, according to the news we had. This 
 was all we knew about her until she came back 
 that winter to visit her folks. We thought more 
 of her for doing this, seeing she d risen in the world. 
 
 She came to our church looking like a partic 
 ularly innocent little girl, very small and slim, 
 very pretty in her velvet dress and her rich gold- 
 and-black fox furs. She had a red rose stuck 
 under the brim of her velvet hat and a lot of little 
 tails bunched on top of it. The rose matched 
 her curls like poppies in the wheat, and the tur 
 quoise pendant she wore was the colour of her 
 eyes. In this church, where nobody has a velvet 
 
90 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 frock and no one can afford furs except Charlotte 
 Warren, who sets them off like a lady buffalo, 
 Lily was as refreshing and charming as a bouquet 
 in a bare and dingy room. 
 
 Molly and I yielded her the hymn with thankful 
 hearts when we heard her soar away with it in a 
 clear-sky soprano voice. 
 
 Everybody was delighted; after services Brother 
 Worthen told Lily she was a real godsend. 
 
 "I love to sing especially hymns," she said 
 prettily. 
 
 Later in the week he called on her at the Shank- 
 lins and asked her to help him organize a choir. 
 She was so pleased; and she was glad of the op 
 portunity to serve. 
 
 Before another preaching day they had a reg 
 ular love feast organizing the choir. Oscar Fain, 
 Sam Parks, and Evalina Lipton, with Susie King 
 at the organ, were all practising sacred music like 
 cooing doves. Brother Worthen was thankful 
 to find somebody "with tact," like Mrs. Triggs, 
 to manage the thing. 
 
 We never had such a harmonious choir or such 
 good singing. The whole congregation united 
 for once on this, though afterward I recalled that 
 Sister Worthen hung back and looked dim, pre 
 occupied, as if she thought maybe she might have 
 to have a tooth pulled day after to-morrow. But, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 91 
 
 as the preacher s wife usually wears an expres 
 sion of subconscious pain or anxiety, I paid no 
 particular attention to her beyond saying as I 
 went out: 
 
 "We certainly are to be congratulated upon 
 getting Lily Triggs interested in the choir." 
 
 "She sings very well," she answered faintly. 
 
 I don t know how to tell what we went through 
 with during the next three months. It was so 
 subtly accomplished that it had every appearance 
 of sweetness and light which invariably rose to 
 psens of praise every Sunday in the choir. Lily 
 was the high priestess in this secret situation. 
 
 After services the men stood about at a re 
 spectful distance regarding her with curious half- 
 admiring, half-inquisitive attention. But if she 
 had said "Coo sheepy!" the last one of them 
 would have answered "Baa!" And by the same 
 token the women began to hurry out of church the 
 minute the benediction was pronounced, as if 
 they didn t care to witness what followed. But 
 Lily appeared to be sweetly unconscious of that. 
 
 At last people began to "talk." They didn t 
 have anything to talk about nothing definite. 
 They merely cast their remarks to the wind, ex 
 pecting to gather them before many days, like 
 dangerous bread cast upon the waters. 
 
 "Lily Triggs is making quite a visit to the 
 
92 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 ShanklinsY Taggy Lipton suggested one Sunday 
 as we came out of the church together. 
 
 "Yes; but she doesn t come often," I answered. 
 
 "Still, it seems queer for a wife to stay away 
 from her husband for three months. I ve never 
 been away from John three days since we were 
 married." 
 
 I didn t say anything merely pitied John in 
 my heart. Taggy is a good woman, but the kind 
 any man would need more than three days rest 
 from in the course of twenty -five years. 
 
 Meantime Lily s popularity increased. She 
 was very cordial in her manner. She loved her 
 neighbours even better than herself. Some of the 
 Baptist deacons asked her to sing in their church. 
 The vestrymen of the Presbyterian Church offered 
 her a salary to come to them. She declined 
 said she felt that the Methodists needed her more 
 and she was so fond of Brother Worthen. He was 
 "such a dear man!" 
 
 One day Sally Parks called. She stayed so 
 long I knew she had something to tell. I dropped 
 the conversation as one might spread the net of 
 silence for whatever might fall into it. 
 
 "Lily Triggs has left the Shanklins ," she an 
 nounced presently. 
 
 "Gone home?" I asked. 
 
 "No; she s boarding at Molly Brown s." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 93 
 
 "That s just like Molly!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "That s just what I said when I heard Lily 
 had gone there," Sally agreed. 
 
 "Well, you oughtn t to have said it, Sally!" 
 I put in quickly, pretending not to notice the look 
 of astonished injustice with which she regarded me. 
 
 It is easier to see that a thing is wrong when 
 you hear another person say it than when you ve 
 just said it yourself. 
 
 "They say she s not going back to her husband," 
 she began again. 
 
 "Not going back! What do you mean?" 
 
 "She s divorced, and gets three thousand dollars 
 a year alimony. That s what it means!" 
 
 "Merciful heavens! And she conducting our 
 choir!" I groaned, never having even spoken to 
 a divorced woman before in my life. 
 
 "It does seem strange," Sally agreed primly, 
 "especially since there was so much evidence put 
 in at the trial of corespondents on both sides. 
 What are corespondents in a divorce suit?" 
 
 "They are the vipers in the bosom of matri 
 mony. That s what they are!" I replied. 
 
 "You don t say!" she gasped, not quite under 
 standing what I meant. 
 
 " What will Brother Worthen do? " I said, sighing. 
 
 "Oh It s the duty of all Christian people to 
 stand by Sister Triggs in her troubles. That s 
 
94 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 what he said when Sam told him, as he felt bound 
 to do. It wouldn t look so bad if Sister Worthen 
 had ever called on Lily; but she hasn t, and she 
 doesn t speak to her at church," Sally added after 
 a pause. 
 
 "Listen, Sally," I said, seeing what was hissing 
 in her mind; "don t talk. Don t dot an T or 
 cross a *t in this unfortunate affair. We ve got 
 enough to contend with now in our church." 
 
 "Oh, I ll not meddle. I am glad I had the 
 sense not to be too free with her though. Eva- 
 lina Lipton says she will quit the choir. And 
 Mrs. Fain says she s stood enough. If Oscar 
 doesn t resign from it, she ll resign from Oscar. 
 As steward, Sam doesn t feel that he ought to be 
 mixed up in such a scandal," she concluded, rising 
 to go. 
 
 "Scandal, Sally! This isn t a scandal," I 
 insisted anxiously. 
 
 "If ever I saw the naked face of a scandal in 
 my life it s sitting in our choir every Sunday, Mary 
 Thompson; and you know it!" she shot back at 
 me from the door. 
 
 The next issue of the Berton Banner had this 
 item in the Locals: 
 
 "Mrs. Lily Triggs has purchased the Carroll 
 residence and will make her home here, to the 
 delight of her many friends." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 95 
 
 Well, she sent for her furniture and moved 
 into the Carroll house, which is three blocks 
 up the street from the Methodist Church and 
 parsonage. 
 
 The next thing we heard was that Charlotte 
 Warren said she d stand by Lily to the last ditch. 
 As a Christian woman she wouldn t see another 
 woman persecuted who had done nothing but 
 invoke the law to protect her against a brutal 
 and unfaithful husband. She said if some of the 
 wives in Berton followed Lily s example, and 
 threw off the yoke of masculine oppression, she d 
 have more respect for them. The day had come 
 when thinking women knew their rights and would 
 have them, thanks to the example of Lily Triggs 
 and other brave spirits. Charlotte was one of 
 those women whose narrow minds broaden the 
 wrong way. 
 
 Lily looked it all. She was just a sweet little 
 student in fortitude, diligent in the Lord s service. 
 When the choir didn t meet at her own house it 
 met at the Warrens every Friday night. No 
 body resigned. To have done so would have 
 meant giving up your standing in the best society. 
 Brother Worthen stood by it like a godfather and 
 the music in our church became sounding brass 
 and tinkling cymbals. 
 
 In the spring Lily organized the Woman s 
 
96 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Equal Rights and Suffrage League. And Char 
 lotte canvassed the town for members as she never 
 had done for our Missionary Society. The only 
 women who did not attend these meetings in Lily s 
 beautiful home were the Shanklin girls, Sister 
 Worthen, and me. Even Molly Brown went. She 
 said Lily was a saint. She told how Mrs. Triggs 
 had gone to the grocery store and paid a debt for 
 her that she had tried to pay for years. She said 
 "that child" would take the clothes off her back to 
 warm a beggar. And I don t doubt it. But in 
 those days I never went to call on Sister Worthen 
 that the telephone bell didn t ring. When she had 
 answered it she d come back into the parlour look 
 ing as white as a sheet and say: 
 
 "Mrs. Triggs wishes to speak to you about the 
 hymns for next Sunday, Charles." 
 
 That would be the last we saw of Brother 
 Worthen. You might have thought they composed 
 the church music over the phone, they talked so 
 much and so long about it. 
 
 Molly Brown didn t know enough about wo 
 man s rights or suffrage to believe in them, but she 
 joined the league because she believed in Lily 
 Triggs. You can fool a real saint every time. 
 That s why I have strong, conscientious scruples 
 about being one. I keep my worldly judgments 
 clear to save the simple, like Molly. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 97 
 
 We didn t have a revival that year not a single 
 convert during a series of meetings where the 
 preaching was good and the music very fine. The 
 women who usually pray and work for sinners and 
 confess their own backslidings were so taken up 
 with the league, and finding out about their rights 
 and wrongs, that they wouldn t and couldn t be 
 come interested enough in salvation to do any 
 good. 
 
 I am not opposed to suffrage for women. When 
 I think of the years I have been a good citizen 
 never drunk; never disorderly; never breaking a 
 single statute of Moses or the state, if I knew it; al 
 ways paying my taxes; always obeying laws that I 
 have had no share in making I say when I con 
 sider these inequalities and injustices I get so mad 
 I wish I had the chance to stuff a ballot box with 
 the right kind of votes. And maybe I would do it 
 if I did get the chance. No man or any woman can 
 be trusted morally farther than they have gone and 
 been tried out by experience and temptations. 
 
 I have heard much lately about the rights and 
 wrongs of w^omen. Lily sings on Sunday and 
 lectures on them every Tuesday. In my day there 
 was no such theme. A woman didn t cherish her 
 rights or her wrongs. She had just one husband 
 and a lot of children. Nobody looked in from the 
 outside on marriage and wondered how such and 
 
98 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 such a wife could bear to live with the kind of 
 husband she had. Now they do. Every mar 
 riage is under critical inspection not to say suspi 
 cion. 
 
 "I don t see how Maggy Fain can go on living 
 with Oscar, shaming her the way he does with his 
 unfaithfulness. If she had any respect for herself 
 she d leave him and get a divorce!" This from 
 Sally Parks, who two months before had asked me 
 what a corespondent in a divorce case was ! 
 
 "A good wife, Sally, lives with such a husband, 
 not because she is faithful to him but to herself; be 
 cause she respects herself not him," I answered 
 coldly. "And nobody would have had to tell you 
 that if you hadn t joined a feminist movement 
 conducted by a divorced woman." 
 
 We exchanged these shots at one another over 
 the gate late one afternoon. She went on about her 
 affairs, somewhere down the street; but I stood 
 there in the spring twilight, thinkmg of all the 
 women I have known whose marriages were like 
 this. I could see them in a long procession, mov 
 ing silently like shadows before me, never com 
 plaining never telling on him They do escape 
 every one. They live in the spirit. That which 
 he keeps is merely the withered garment she leaves 
 in his hands when she goes This is why they look 
 so dingy and bedraggled. They don t care how 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 99 
 
 their remains look. The world is full of these poor, 
 little, invisible, outlawed spirits of women. 
 
 I endured these goings on in Berton as long as I 
 could. At last one day Charlotte Warren and Lily 
 Triggs came in to call on me. 
 
 Charlotte sat down with something like patience 
 or condescension. The two moods are so similar 
 that sometimes nobody can tell the difference. 
 Lily posed herself like a spring bough in my best 
 rocking-chair. I took a wide place on the sofa and 
 looked at them over the top of my glasses. 
 
 "We have come to try to interest you in the 
 feminist movement, Mary," said Charlotte. 
 
 "Which way is the movement headed, Char 
 lotte?" I asked. 
 
 "Why, for the liberation of women; for the re 
 dressing of their wrongs; for better laws to protect 
 them," Lily cut in, as if she was quoting from her 
 own lecture. 
 
 "There are no people in the world for whom 
 such stringent laws of protection are made as for 
 women. They are so well protected that they ve 
 lost the sense of responsibility," I answered, shift- 
 ng my gaze to Lily. 
 
 "Yes, but " she began. 
 
 "A woman who never does anything," I in 
 terrupted; "who spends her husband s money; 
 who lives unfaithful to the commonest duties she 
 
100 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 owes him in the home; who does not even bear 
 children for him can get a divorce and alimony by 
 proving his unfaithfulness in just one thing!" 
 
 "You are not opposed to suffrage, Mary. I ve 
 heard you say so," Charlotte hurried to put in by 
 way of changing the end of the subject with which 
 I was poking into Lily s ribs. 
 
 "No; but I m opposed to corrupt suffrage. I m 
 chiefly for salvation and for the saving of sin 
 ners from the error of their ways, including 
 
 women." 
 
 "But, dear Mrs. Thompson, the feminists be 
 lieve as strongly as you do in the Christian re 
 ligion," Lily said, bending forward prettily. 
 
 " Ye shall know them by their fruits. I don t 
 like your fruits, Lily," I answered sternly. 
 
 "Really!" she gasped, drawing herself up and 
 flushing very red. 
 
 "You believe in divorce, don t you?" I went on. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "It s one of the doctrines of your movement, a? 
 you call it?" 
 
 "Yes; but " 
 
 "That s one of the fruits I m talking about. 
 It s bad for this town; for this country. If you be 
 lieve in divorce you can t believe in a Scriptural 
 marriage; and if you destroy that you ve destroyed 
 the very foundations of society. You " 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow J01 
 
 "Wait, Mary; we didn t come to discuss this 
 subject," interposed Charlotte. 
 
 "No; but, now that you are here, I m going to 
 deliver my soul, Charlotte. I ll deliver a lecture, 
 too, where I think it will do the most good," I said, 
 rising and settling my glasses more firmly on my 
 nose. 
 
 "You should remember, Lily," I went on, 
 "that the Lord didn t approve of that divorced 
 woman in the Bible who had so many husbands. 
 He forgave her. That s the difference between 
 righteous mercy and the boasted broad-mindedness 
 of women like you, who have simply slithered 
 through the virtues of your decent forebears. 
 Sometimes I wonder how He ll find the means of 
 forgiveness for such as you, who have put away one 
 husband and are not ashamed to angle for them 
 that belong to other women You who make a 
 virtue of your iniquity ! Oh, you can t fool me ! I 
 sit behind the choir. I know what I m talking 
 about!" seeing her cast up her eyes in outraged 
 innocence. 
 
 "Jacob did believe in God, though he was a 
 mean man. David was sorry for his sins. And 
 Job held to his integrity, though he had a bad dis 
 position. And that poor Magdalene did want to 
 go and sin no more They were all penitent, or 
 faithful, or something that knit them to His mercies 
 
.A. Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 
 
 as the weakness of a child binds it to a father s 
 care. But for such as you, Lily Triggs, I do not 
 know how He ll measure His judgments!" 
 
 I flopped back on the sofa and fanned myself, 
 while Lily cried in her little lace handkerchief. 
 
 "Oh, such intolerance! Such bigotry!" she 
 moaned. 
 
 "I don t see how you can call yourself a Chris 
 tian woman, Mary Thompson!" cried Charlotte, 
 rising in her wrath and making for the door. 
 
 "I am not this afternoon. I m just a decent 
 woman defending the statutes of virtue and hon 
 our, which are better protection for women than all 
 the votes in this country," I fired back. 
 
 "I ll never sing in that choir again!" whimpered 
 Lily. 
 
 "I hope you won t!" I called after her. 
 
 But she did. She said Brother Worthen had 
 persuaded her that it was her duty. 
 
 Mr. Worthen was a good man, but a moral fool 
 if I ever saw one. Before the end of the summer 
 the very men and women who were most friendly 
 with Lily Triggs were saying that the Conference 
 would not send him another year; that he was a 
 fine preacher but not the pastor we needed. 
 
 I was so worried over the feuds between the 
 brethren, and the choir, and my own fault-finding 
 spirit that I used to go round behind the church 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 103 
 
 sometimes and sit down among the graves to com 
 fort myself. 
 
 We have buried our people back there for sixty 
 years. Men who never could get on with each 
 other in the church are lying side by side, like 
 brothers in the same bed. I say it encourages me 
 to know that the time will come when we, too, will 
 finish our day s work and the strife with which we 
 test each other s spirits, and he down out there, 
 like the lion and the lamb together. But we shall 
 be dead, which in my opinion is the only safe way 
 for lions and lambs to lie down together. 
 
 I d sit there and watch the fallen autumn 
 leaves come whirling and tipping over the tombs 
 like little brown spirits of the dust blown in the 
 wind. I thought of what a good man old Amos 
 Tell was, though nobody could get on with him 
 in the church. But his contrariness didn t count 
 now in my thoughts. I only remembered how he 
 bore the burdens of the church; how cross but 
 generous he was with the poor; how he made 
 the coffin for Molly Brown s husband and didn t 
 charge her for it. Then I d bend down and pull 
 a few weeds from among the violets that grew 
 round his monument, as I d have dusted his coat 
 for him after a long journey. And I would walk 
 over and look at John Elrod s fine tomb John, 
 who didn t know whether he was willing to be a 
 
104 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 fool for Christ s sake and who surpassed the 
 wise in the simplicity of his faith. 
 
 I d look down at Abbie CarmichaPs grave as 
 I passed such a dingy little grave, with such a 
 meek little monument over it. We used to think 
 she was a great trial in the Missionary Society, 
 always wanting to turn it into a spiritual meeting 
 instead of attending to the business and collecting 
 dues. She was hungry for the bread of life from 
 morning till night. Now she was satisfied, with 
 her dust lying so close to the roots of the great 
 trees. People look better when you remember 
 them after they are gone, and you do not need to 
 contend with just their mortal frailties; and you 
 wonder why you ever put so much stress on them 
 anyhow. 
 
 I always feel as if I can bear with the living 
 more patiently after I ve spent an hour in this 
 churchyard and see how far removed the dead 
 are from their transgressions. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A I have been setting down the memories 
 and experiences of nearly half a century 
 in this little church our transgressions 
 seem to outweigh our good deeds. This is due 
 in part to errors in the accounts. Every man 
 and every woman is better than he can live, ex 
 asperated as we all are by the goodness and the 
 evil in our fellowmen. Still, it is safe to say that 
 this church does not survive through the piety 
 of its members. We may not commit the same 
 sins that sinners commit, but we do accomplish 
 much in the name of the Lord that helps the devil 
 with his business. Otherwise he would not be 
 so successful. For I have never seen a wicked 
 man yet who did not hide behind the church 
 and point the finger of scorn at its members as an 
 excuse for his meanness. Such criticisms do not 
 make us any more scrupulous in the practice of 
 our Christian virtues. We go on plucking out 
 one another s right eyes and cutting off one 
 another s spiritual right hands because they offend 
 us, without giving much attention to the beam in 
 our own eye. 
 
 105 
 
106 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 But this church does hold together. If it should 
 be razed to the ground by some disaster, we would 
 rebuild it at once, and kindle the fires of our 
 faith upon its altar with the same prayers and 
 feuds we have in it now. What is more to the 
 point, if there was not a single church, nor a 
 single professing Christian in this town, the very 
 sinners would get together and build a house of 
 worship. I have observed this, that the most 
 corrupt people, the coldest rationalists, the athe 
 ists and agnostics, always elect to live in Christian 
 communities. Our shortcomings and hypocrisies 
 do not produce these unfortunate and deformed 
 spirits, but they seek the light of our illusions, 
 the foolishness of our faith, as an antidote for 
 their own darkened wisdom. Nobody ever heard 
 of a community composed only of these elements 
 holding together, because such people cannot 
 bear one another, not for half the life length 
 of one little village church. 
 
 Any one sufficiently foolish and hidebound by 
 his own limited faculties may prove to his satis 
 faction that there is no God, no life after this 
 life, that man is himself only the diseased proud 
 flesh from the dust from which he springs and to 
 which he returns. But when he has thus squan 
 dered the illusions of faith there remains some 
 thing homeless in him which he cannot domes- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 107 
 
 ticate in rationalism or learning, or even in 
 his natural affections. He cannot satisfy it with 
 worldly fortunes, nor shelter it in his place of 
 business, nor keep it at home with him. He needs 
 a first-day-of-the-week refuge for this thing, what 
 ever it is, though it may be dormant the remain 
 ing six days under the pressure of strictly carnal 
 circumstances. 
 
 This is why bad men build churches that they 
 never attend. The thing which they will not 
 call the soul takes a mean, vicarious satisfaction 
 in knowing that it has a refuge. This is why 
 they give to the poor whom they despise. It 
 is a kind of sick charity which the thing demands of 
 them. It all comes from a sneaking way they have 
 of stealing from their worldliness to pay poor old 
 Peter, who is not deceived, and knows better than 
 they do that they have not given that lot for a 
 church, nor these alms for the poor, merely for the 
 sake of policy. Deep in the heart of every rational 
 ist and rascal who contributes to the support of 
 Christianity is the lying desire for his own personal 
 absolution. If perad venture it should turn out 
 that, after all, God is well, there s that church 
 he built, and all those widows and orphans he 
 fed and visited in their affliction. 
 
 We had a man here like that once. First he 
 was a saloonkeeper. He made a fortune selling 
 
108 A Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 
 
 whiskey directly after the war, when Berton was a 
 crossroads groggery. When the local-option law 
 closed his place he bought up all the land upon 
 which the town now stands, and made money 
 selling it off to the settlers. He donated to the 
 various denominations the lots upon which all 
 our churches were built. On the strength of 
 that he became a prominent citizen and was 
 elected the first mayor of Berton. But he always 
 claimed, with a kind of bull-charging heartiness, 
 that he did these things for the good of the town. 
 He was no coward looking to an impossible Provi 
 dence for what he could do for himself. He; was 
 a man no hypocrisy about religion for him, and 
 so forth, and so on. But when he lost the use 
 of both legs with creeping paralysis, he would 
 sit in his wheel-chair and tell off on his fingers 
 how much he d given to the churches and to 
 charity. He d whimper, and say he d done more 
 for the cause of righteousness than any Christian 
 in the place. Then he d look up like a dog asking 
 for the crumbs from his master s table, beseech 
 ingly at the preacher. Methodist pastors are 
 usually the ones who catch these old lame ducks 
 of the devil, and Brother Wrenn, who was stationed 
 here then, used to comfort him the best way he 
 could at the expense of the Scriptures. We ve 
 produced our share of these short-circuit souls, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 109 
 
 but I never knew one yet who didn t want to 
 make at the end a kind of financial settlement of 
 his righteousness with the Lord. 
 
 This same sense of homelessness and the desire 
 for what I call spiritual domesticity is also the 
 reason why two or three Presbyterians will get 
 together in a town and build a church which they 
 cannot afford. However able we may be to 
 escape damnation in the open, we are all doc- 
 trinally scorched sons of the Gospel in our secret 
 thoughts. So a Presbyterian does not find, say, 
 in the Methodist Church, comfortable quarters 
 for his predestination notions of Almighty God. 
 He cannot feel at home among us who slide up 
 and down through eternity upon the free-will 
 cable of our faith. Our ways are not his ways. 
 He must stand when he prays, while we kneel. 
 He wants to take holy communion sitting up in 
 stead of kneeling before an altar to get it. He 
 will and must rear back coldly unsympathetic 
 when some young shouting itinerant recommends 
 a too-easy, slithering means of grace. 
 
 Souls have family ties not less strong than the 
 ties of blood. Baptists will not believe as com 
 fortably as we do in their Heavenly Father. 
 They must have a church of their own, with a 
 baptistry under the pulpit to make sure of their 
 election to eternal Me. And while Methodists 
 
110 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 are cheerful guests, able to pick up a spiritual 
 living from the Gospel preached in any church, 
 they are really the most clannish of all denomina 
 tions. I reckon it is because our creed fits us 
 better than any other, just as our clothes fit us 
 better than those made for other people. 
 
 But the point I started out to make is this, that 
 our church here, and every church, holds together 
 because of the faith we have in God, rather than 
 in doctrines, or in each other, or even in the 
 preacher. We are different from other animals 
 in that we are self-conscious, which is always 
 a nervous, doubtful sensation. We cannot make 
 sure of ourselves, nor of our other selves, the men 
 and women about us. But we must be certain of 
 something, built as we all are upon the sands; so 
 we look to God. 
 
 The trouble is, we never can leave the Lord to 
 His own nature. We reduce Him to ours and pray 
 to Him in the terms of our own perversities and 
 short-sightedness. We believe in an eternal, al 
 mighty, omnipotent, and merciful Creator. But 
 what mortal man can define these attributes? We 
 believe in heaven as a blessed estate, but how 
 many times do we thank our Father that He still 
 permits us to live in this present world, only blessed 
 in the high places, filled with snares and tribula 
 tions? The best answer I ever heard to that was 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 111 
 
 given by old Doctor Branan, who died here many 
 years ago. 
 
 He was a local preacher, very tall and thin, very 
 old, with a straggling white beard and the eyes of a 
 child. For years he went about this town like an 
 elder angel with his wings folded inside, dragging 
 his hind legs, so to speak, because he was too feeble 
 to straighten his knees or lift his heels from the 
 ground when he walked. He had outgrown the 
 world in which he lived. He was so simply good 
 that I reckon the devil despised him and had long 
 since given up trying to tempt him. He had so 
 little darkness of the mortal mind left in him that 
 some people thought he was foolish. This is what 
 most of us would think about a man so pure in 
 heart he could neither see nor suspect us of our 
 meanness. The old doctor was such a thirty- 
 third degree saint as that. They say he was a 
 powerful and scarifying preacher in his day. He 
 was chiefly instrumental in closing the barrooms in 
 Berton. Then he had himself elected justice of the 
 peace, and he dispensed peace with an iron hand, 
 becoming a terror to all evildoers. He put the lid 
 on the town, then sat upon it with the code of 
 Georgia in one hand and the Bible in the other, 
 always opened somewhere in the Old Testa 
 ment. 
 
 It happened so gradually that he never knew 
 
A Circuit Eider s Widow 
 
 when the town slipped from under him and went on 
 about its sins and business. By this time his eyes 
 were holden to earthly things, and he began to 
 shine alike upon the just and the unjust. He 
 automatically closed the "blind tiger," which 
 Melton kept in the back of his livery stable, by 
 hanging out there because he liked Melton, who 
 was a very bad man in the opinion of everybody 
 else. He held strict views about keeping the Sab 
 bath. But toward the end he forget the names of 
 popular transgressions, and he might be seen any 
 Sunday afternoon seated beneath an old June- 
 apple tree, watching a crowd of boys play baseball 
 in his cow pasture. When some youngster started 
 upon a home run with the odds against him, the old 
 saint would fling his cane high in the air, and root 
 like a cracked violin to encourage the race. No 
 body in this town was mean enough to tell him that 
 he was encouraging baseball on Sunday. 
 
 Finally one spring he fell ill. He simply lay 
 down at the doors of death and stayed there. 
 Every morning we heard that the doctor could 
 not last through the day. But he lasted. The 
 physicians said he had a fine constitution, but that 
 it was only a question of time, there was no hope for 
 him. Brother Wrenn began quietly to gather 
 material for the funeral sermon. He found out 
 when the doctor was born, how long he served as 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 113 
 
 chaplain of the Confederate Army, picked up 
 stories here and there of his courage upon the 
 battlefields of Virginia, went through the records 
 of Berton to show what a brave citizen he had been 
 in the lawless days of the Reconstruction period, 
 collected anecdotes of his ministry and of his loving 
 kindness in his old age. I reckon everybody in the 
 town helped prepare Doctor Branan s funeral ser 
 mon. We were so taken up with it that we forgot 
 to keep hourly tab upon the doctor himself. Then 
 I met Doctor Edd one day coming from the doc 
 tor s house. 
 
 "Do you think the end is near?" I asked. 
 
 "Well, not so near as it was yesterday, and a 
 good deal farther off than it was last week," he an 
 swered, looking at me drolly. 
 
 "Is he really better?" I asked, astonished. 
 
 "He s quit taking nourishment through a quill, 
 wants it in a spoon, slept like a top last night, pulse 
 stronger, respiration much better," he said, almost 
 embarrassed. 
 
 "But I thought all the doctors agreed that he 
 couldn t live!" I exclaimed, feeling somehow that 
 we had been put in the wrong cribbing our mem 
 ories to help Brother Wrenn with the funeral ser 
 mon. 
 
 "By rights he should have died a week since, 
 Mrs. Thompson, but the old fellow got a hunch 
 
114 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 somehow, made up his mind, without any knowl 
 edge of his fatal symptoms, to live, and he s fixing 
 to pull through." 
 
 He did, too. He took his time about it, seeming 
 to get well one leg at a time. Finally he crawled 
 out of bed with a kind of pinched-up, glorified look 
 about his face, as if he d only taken advantage of 
 being confined in the house to brighten his expres 
 sion. 
 
 On the last Sunday in June he appeared at the 
 morning service, walking a trifle steadier than 
 usual, and took his accustomed seat in the amen 
 corner. Now, it has been the custom in this 
 church s nce the beginning for any person who 
 wished to repent of something, or who for any 
 reason desired the "prayers of all Christian 
 people," to go and kneel at the altar during the 
 singing of the last hymn. Very few of us ever 
 avail ourselves of this privilege, preferring rather to 
 seek forgiveness in our closet, so to speak, behind 
 the back of our own pew, and thus avoid specula 
 tion on the part of our brethren as to what is the 
 matter. But now and then some one does expose 
 himself to the spiritual searchlight of the church by 
 going forward in this manner. Whereupon the 
 pastor always mentions "our dear brother" in the 
 closing prayer, commending him to the tender 
 mercies of heaven but very carefully, in loose- 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 115 
 
 fitting terms, lest the petition should give some in 
 timation of the real trouble, which we always sus 
 pect according to what we know of the victim who 
 has risked the experiment. 
 
 What was our amazement on this Sabbath when 
 we saw Doctor Branan arise with infinite effort, 
 totter forward, and kneel at the altar! Brother 
 Wrenn prayed a very feeling and eloquent prayer 
 for him, in which many of us recognized material 
 designated for the funeral sermon. We were con 
 fused. We could think of no reason why Doctor 
 Branan should desire the prayers of all Christian 
 people. If there was one without sin among us, it 
 was this saintly man. 
 
 I was no less mystified than the others, but with 
 this difference I do not enjoy, as some do, merely 
 the sensation of not knowing what I want to know. 
 I can endure sickness, sorrow, affliction, and even 
 death with decent courage, I hope, but I cannot 
 endure my own curiosity. It consumes me like a 
 fire. I can t sleep, and I cannot even remain awake 
 with comfort; so I humour myself in this, as we 
 humour a good child now and then with candy. 
 
 The next day I went to call on Doctor Branan, 
 who lived with his widowed daughter. He was 
 glad to see me. Yes, he was glad to be well again, 
 he told me. And he was glad to be at church 
 yesterday. And he was glad so many other people 
 
116 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 were out, too. He was glad to have lived all his 
 life in a Christian community. Then he looked 
 through the window at the pleasant green and 
 blooming world, and said he thought this would be 
 a good crop year, of which he was very glad. 
 
 I agreed with him and endured as much of his 
 gladness as I could, doing my best all the time to 
 draw him in a certain direction. Finally I lost 
 patience, seeing that he was determined to rejoice 
 straight ahead as long as I would listen. 
 
 "Doctor," I began abruptly, "I want to ask you 
 a question." 
 
 "What is it?" he asked, looking round at me in 
 mild sweetness. 
 
 "You know people in our church who desire 
 prayers for their sins, or the sins of any one near 
 and dear to them, sometimes go to the altar at the 
 close of the service." 
 
 "Yes," he answered, smiling. 
 
 "But, yesterday, why did you go? What could 
 you have done to need so public a confession " 
 
 "I didn t go for that, my daughter," he answered 
 quickly. 
 
 "For what, then?" I insisted. 
 
 "You see I have been sick so near to death that 
 almost I saw the gates of one pearl. I was in great 
 danger of the angels, you understand." 
 
 I did not understand, but I nodded my head. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 117 
 
 "Well, when I felt, rather than saw, my family 
 gathered round the bed, I kept my eyes closed for 
 fear I should see you know beyond the things of 
 time and sense. And I made a vow to God that if 
 He would let me live I d make a public thanksgiv 
 ing at the altar for His mercies." 
 
 "But, Doctor, why did you want to live, you 
 who have lived so well and who must be so sure of 
 eternal life?" I exclaimed. 
 
 "That s it, my daughter!" he exclaimed, reach 
 ing out a tremulous hand in strange opposition. 
 "This life to which I am so long accustomed is 
 comfortably narrow. I am old and tired. I 
 shrink from the heights and depths of eternal life. 
 It appals me. I have always preached it and 
 prayed for it. But when I stood upon the thresh 
 old of it I couldn t bear it, leaving all the familiar 
 things the grass, the kind green leaves, the spar 
 rows in my hedge, that gate out there through 
 which I have come and gone for so many years, 
 this house so near and kin to me that I can find my 
 way through it on the darkest night, the children 
 on these streets, the men and women I have known 
 so long. At my time of life I could not yield the 
 companionship of so much that I know for the 
 great and terrible things unknown to me in their 
 awful splendour." 
 
 He was silent a moment, and then went on more 
 
118 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 to himself than to me : " Every man must believe in 
 immortality or perish. But every man who loves 
 life must fear it, if he thinks what it means. I 
 reckon I ll get used to it when I must, but not until 
 then." He looked at me, smiling whimsically. 
 
 He died before the end of that summer. And 
 I have no doubt he entered upon his duties of a 
 citizen of Eternity with the same sweetness and 
 courage that distinguished him here. 
 
 I never worry over what I ll do or how I shall 
 feel in the next world. It is written that the 
 Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. If He 
 is so mindful of a sheep He will surely know how 
 to take care of an old woman who has just lost 
 her body and her mortal bearings. However, we 
 never have a death in this town that the bereaved 
 ones do not begin to question the providence of 
 God to find out why He took this particular son 
 or husband or father. And they never do find 
 out. I do not admire Job. He must have been 
 the Thomas Carlyle of the Old Testament, with 
 remarkable literary gifts, but so cantankerous and 
 mean that I ve always wondered what his boasted 
 integrity could have been. But he did know how 
 to behave with dignity when his sons and daughters 
 perished. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath 
 taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." 
 That is as good a way as any of disposing of the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 119 
 
 whole matter, though it places more responsibility 
 upon Him than the facts warrant sometimes when 
 the deceased has outraged every law of health, 
 as the dead usually do before they die. 
 
 And after the bereaved family pass through 
 this first acute stage of grief, when all their neigh 
 bours and friends have persecuted them into a 
 state of resignation with arguments about why 
 it was really best for the departed one to go just 
 as he did go, they begin their spiritual convales 
 cence by raising the second question: "Shall we 
 know each other there? " " Will my mother recog 
 nize me in paradise?" 
 
 Maybe the mother in question was a high- 
 tempered old lady who had nagged her children 
 as long as she lived and never gave them a peaceful 
 moment in her presence. But that makes no 
 difference. They are worried for fear when they 
 come through the big gates at sundown they will 
 not hear her shrill voice complaining: "Johnny, 
 where have you been all this time, with the chores 
 not done, and me having to bring in the wood and 
 kindle the fire in the stove?" Or, "Come here 
 this minute, and let me feel of your head. I be 
 lieve you ve been in that swimming hole again, 
 catching your death of cold! If your hair s wet 
 I ll punish you as sure as I live!" And so on, 
 and so forth. 
 
120 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Our pastor may preach the most beautiful 
 funeral sermon over this departed mother. He 
 may draw the finest pictures of eternal life and 
 paint her with a crown upon her poor old head and 
 a harp in her poor old hands. But in his heart 
 of hearts her son John finds no comfort in these 
 glories, because nobody can promise him that 
 she will know him, or that he will know her in 
 the kingdom of heaven. I say these questions 
 do not trouble me any more than the question 
 whether the angels have their wings put on behind 
 or in front. But you cannot exercise your spiritual 
 imagination by discussing them, without risking 
 the charge of heresy by somebody who has a 
 penguin soul and no imagination at all. 
 
 One cold day in January I was out collecting 
 dues for our missionary society. We had not 
 been doing very well since I prayed for Charlotte 
 Warren at the meeting of the Parsonage -Aid 
 Society. Some of the women took up for her, 
 and went so far as to say that I called on the 
 Lord to deal harshly by her, which is the truth. 
 But if ever a woman needed a spiritual chastise 
 ment that woman was Charlotte. I knew I had 
 done right and had prayed for her properly, but 
 many a time I have found that performing the 
 harsher duties of my Christian life hurts my con 
 science quite as much as any sin I dare commit. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 This, I believe, is the reason so many church 
 members avoid their sterner obligations to each 
 other. It is much safer in this present world to 
 leave a brother to backslide than to tell him to 
 his face that he is becoming a liar, a thief, and 
 a drunkard. And it s five times more prudent to 
 be silent when your sister in the church is develop 
 ing the character of a termagant saint, than to 
 tell the truth and let the people as well as the Lord 
 know what she is doing. 
 
 So I was very low in my mind that day as I 
 went from house to house, collecting ten cents 
 here and a quarter there, trying to smoothe the 
 rumpled feathers of the opposition and to persuade 
 everybody to come to the next meeting of the 
 society. Maybe my depression was partly due to 
 a bad cold. 
 
 When I reached Sally Parks gate I saw her 
 bobbing up and down in her flower pit, which is 
 on the sunny side of the yard. I have seen many 
 a woman who looked indigenous among blooming 
 plants; but Sally is not one of them. She always 
 gives the impression of an outraged mother when 
 she is in that pit. She snatches off the dead leaves 
 of her geraniums as if they ought to know better 
 than to wear stockings with holes in them. She 
 thrusts her fingers in the soil as if she suspected 
 her snapdragons of going to bed the night before 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 with cold feet. She turns up the leaves of her 
 rose cuttings, narrows her eyes, primps her mouth, 
 and searches for mildew as if she was looking at 
 little Jimmy s ears to make sure they were clean. 
 Altogether, she is very busy and very fault-finding 
 with them, but she can stick the stem of any 
 flower in the ground with so much authority that 
 the thing will not dare to die, but grows and blooms 
 dutifully as a scholar learning to read. 
 
 On this particular morning she appeared to be 
 in a strangely placid mood when I greeted her 
 from the door of the pit. 
 
 "Good morning, Sally! Nothing hurt by the 
 frost, I hope. Last night was very cold," I 
 said. 
 
 "Oh, good morning, Sister Thompson," she 
 exclaimed cheerfully, facing about from something 
 she was doing. 
 
 "No, they are all right. I was just counting 
 the buds on this Cape jasmine bush. They ll 
 be in bloom by the time we need them. There 
 are nine enough to make a cross, I think." 
 
 "A cross! What for?" I exclaimed, coming 
 down into the pit to get a nearer view of the big 
 green bush which she keeps in a tub. 
 
 "Haven t you heard? Taggy Lipton s mother 
 is very low. They don t think she ll live but a 
 day or two longer. I always set my Cape jasmine 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 123 
 
 in here during the winter to make sure of having 
 proper flowers for funerals, you know." 
 
 I didn t say anything, merely sat down weakly 
 upon the bottom step with the cold chills running 
 up and down my back. Every year in March I 
 come down with a spell of grippe which always 
 threatens to go into pneumonia. I could see 
 Sally running in to find out how bad off I was, 
 then hurrying home to see if she had enough 
 gardenias to make a cross for my casket in case 
 the worst happened. How many times, I won 
 dered, had she done this! 
 
 "Do you remember the winter Lula Jackson 
 died?" she went on, not noticing the state I was 
 in. " There wasn t a single blossom in Berton. 
 The girls in her Sunday-school class got together 
 to do something about it. They took all the 
 artificial flowers off their summer hats, made 
 anchors and crosses of them with cedar founda 
 tions. I ll never forget how the casket looked. 
 We all recognized the wreath of wild roses on it 
 that Fedora Branan wore on her white leghorn 
 for two seasons. We knew the design of lilacs 
 came off of Emily Peters straw. We d seen the 
 forget-me-nots many times on the little Peters 
 girl s bonnet. Well, I made up my mind it should 
 never happen again, that I d grow natural flowers 
 for the dead if it took half my time to attend to 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 em. And I ve done it. I ve sent a wreath or 
 cross of these Cape jasmines to every funeral 
 we ve had here since, even if it was a cold-water 
 Baptist that was to be laid out." 
 
 It s wrong to judge people. Every time you do 
 it and hand in your verdict, they do something 
 that reverses your decision. Suddenly I thought 
 differently about Sally. Seeing her perched up 
 beside her funeral flower bush, I thought how 
 kind she d been to think of such a thing. I could 
 see her drifting into paradise very old and thin, 
 her hair skinned back the way she wears it, her 
 brow wrinkled above her popped eyes, her mouth 
 primped from the long struggle she s had working 
 and digging to make ends meet and flowers grow, 
 but wearing over her dingy mourning for she s 
 always in black for somebody all the garlands 
 and wreaths she s woven these many years for the 
 other dead, perfuming the whole place with her 
 gardenia deeds of charity. I could see the shining 
 hosts take a long breath of that sweetness. Then 
 they ll look round, see just Sally Parks, very much 
 confused about which way to go, where to take 
 off her things, and with her red elbows sticking 
 out through the blossoms! I do not say that 
 they will recognize her as Sally, she having been 
 raised a spiritual body, though I ve sometimes 
 wondered what manner of incorruption the Lord 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 prepares for a homely old turkey-legged woman 
 like her. But they will know what Sally will not 
 understand herself, that she s clothed in the kind 
 ness of her own deeds. 
 
 Now if I d stopped with that vision of her re 
 deemed in all her jasmine glory, if I d collected 
 her dues then and there for the missionary society 
 and gone on about my business, as I should have 
 done, that would have saved me much trouble 
 and this church a scandal connected with one 
 of its oldest members. But when my mind starts 
 outward and upward it s hard for me to get it 
 down without some kind of spiritual accident. 
 
 "Did you ever think of this, Sally," I said sud 
 denly, "that if we are immortal we always have 
 been immortal?" 
 
 "Don t tell me you believe in the transmigration 
 of souls, Mary Thompson!" she cried, staring at 
 me in horror. 
 
 "I don t, and don t you ever say I do!" I re 
 torted indignantly. 
 
 "Well, then, what do you think you were before 
 you became what you are? " she asked suspiciously. 
 
 I knew what was in her mind. Old Dan Mit 
 chell, who came from no one knew where, had 
 dropped into Berton and set up a shoe shop. Then 
 he organized what he called the Society for 
 Psychic Research, and the people who belonged 
 
126 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 to it didn t belong to any church. But they 
 held meetings and professed to receive communi 
 cations from departed spirits. 
 
 "I ve had my doubts about a good many things, 
 Sally," I answered, determined to avoid the snare 
 of spiritualism, "but my faith has never wavered 
 about this for a moment. I know that I ve always 
 been just myself. I know I ve never been a cat or 
 a bessie-bug or a protoplasm. I started out a 
 woman, with the earlier stars. I feel that since the 
 beginning I ve travelled as steady as any of them 
 toward this place, this church, and all the duties 
 that make up the rotary motions and diurnal ex 
 istence of a Christian woman." 
 
 She stared at me as if she thought I was talking 
 in my sleep. 
 
 "Sometimes," I went on, merely cavorting in 
 my spirit, "I almost remember playing with Eve s 
 little girls, I can see em so plain in their vegetable 
 pinafores and petticoats, kicking up the dust. 
 Maybe I was standing a long way off in the sand 
 with a veil over my face, watching for Isaac when 
 he went to meet Rebekah at the well. My folks 
 may have wandered off and married with for 
 eigners, and for all I know I may have been the 
 grandmother of the Sphinx or one of the Cleopatra 
 girls " 
 
 "A Christian woman," interrupted Sally fiercely, 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 127 
 
 " saying such things, thinking herself in and out of 
 heathen bodies and at your age, Mary!" 
 
 "It s my age that makes me do it," I insisted 
 whimsically. "Sometimes I feel as if I d been 
 every woman, good and bad. You ought to be 
 thankful I don t recall being one of those shameless 
 jades in the church choir at Corinth in Paul s day. 
 I ve lived a long time. I ve been so far." 
 
 "When did you go? I never heard of your 
 travels before!" she sniffed. 
 
 "How many times have you read your Bible 
 through, Sally?" 
 
 "Every three years since I joined the church. 
 Why?" * 
 
 " Didn t you ever see the tents of Abraham in the 
 land of Uz?" 
 
 "No, I never did! And I ll have you know I 
 don t feel kin to Cleopatra, nor " 
 
 "Can t you remember the day Job s sons and 
 daughters were drinking and feasting when the 
 house caught fire and burned them up, what a sight 
 that was the flames leaping between the earth 
 and sky, the flocks flying, the shepherds shouting, 
 the messengers running to tell Job what had hap 
 pened, and " 
 
 "Look here, Mary " 
 
 "And did you never feel that you were one of the 
 guests at the wedding in Galilee when Jesus came 
 
128 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 in unexpectedly and changed the water to wine, and 
 how amazed we all were?" 
 
 "I don t know what you are talking about. It 
 sounds flighty and dangerous Cleopatra and all 
 that! I hope I m a Christian woman. I believe 
 as much as you do in eternal life after death, but 
 nobody can accuse me to my face of being the 
 missing link in my own immortality without my 
 resenting it!" 
 
 I had to laugh at the idea of her being her own 
 missing link. But I paid dearly for that trip 
 through the holy land of my imagination, es 
 pecially the part which took me through Egypt. 
 
 Sally reported over Berton that Mary Thomp 
 son believed in the transmigration of souls, and 
 laid claims to being one of the Cleopatra girls, 
 without telling which one. I paid no attention, 
 being an old woman who had never acted in a 
 manner to suggest any strong trait of the Cleo 
 patra family. But when my own neighbours be 
 gan to stare at me in church, as if I were a doubt 
 ful stranger they d entertained unawares, some 
 thing in me began to rise which had no resemblance 
 to piety. 
 
 One day old Dan Mitchell passed me on the 
 street, and he bowed to me familiarly with a kind 
 of high sign in his eye, as if we held views in com 
 mon, though I despised him and all his works. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 129 
 
 But Sally, who was in and out of my house nearly 
 as often as the cat, discontinued her visits. No 
 matter where I caught sight of her, she was al 
 ways going in the opposite direction. 
 
 At the next meeting of the Woman s Missionary 
 Society I had a whole bench to myself, until Molly 
 Brown came in and sat beside me, which showed 
 how bad off I was, because Molly always cleaves 
 closest to those in affliction. Then Charlotte 
 Warren, who was president, called the meeting to 
 order. She said she would take this occasion to 
 do her duty, however painful it might be. She 
 explained that since we were to elect officers for the 
 coming year, she felt obliged to suggest some one 
 else be appointed treasurer, that it was injurious to 
 the cause for a person holding heathen views con 
 cerning immortality to have an office in the 
 society. 
 
 Sally Parks pressed her handkerchief to her 
 eyes and wept. Emily Peters tried to look as if 
 she had never heard of any views about im 
 mortality. Taggy Lipton stared imploringly at 
 me, as much as to say she was willing to defend me 
 to the last ditch if I d take back what I d said about 
 being one of the Cleopatra girls. The other women 
 glanced, first at me, then at Charlotte, frankly 
 curious. 
 
 I acted the part of a face-slapped Christian for 
 
130 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 once in my life. But when Charlotte called for the 
 treasurer s report I read it in full. After showing 
 how few had paid their dues, I mentioned by name 
 those who had not paid. I told how often in all 
 weathers I had made a house-to-house canvass, 
 trying to collect what they owed. I gave the ex 
 cuses they had given me. Sally Parks was behind 
 six months with the regular assessment. Char 
 lotte had paid nothing on the "special," which is 
 always about four times as much as the regular 
 dues. In all, the various members owed sixty- 
 eight dollars. 
 
 "These debts are allowed in law," I said, closing 
 the book and giving them a long look over the top 
 of my spectacles. "I must and will balance my 
 books as treasurer before the election of officers at 
 the next meeting of this society. I shall, therefore, 
 turn over these accounts to an attorney for collec 
 tion at once." 
 
 Then I sat down and patted my foot. It is a 
 question in my mind whether anybody can be 
 treasurer of a woman s missionary society and re 
 tain all her Christian virtues. If, however, you 
 lose some of them in the scrimmage, you may al 
 ways regain them by proper repentance. But once 
 you submit to the tyranny of an overbearing 
 woman like Charlotte Warren, even your virtues 
 profit you nothing in peace. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 131 
 
 The last one of them paid their dues the follow 
 ing day. Charlotte sent a naked check for what 
 she owed without a word of comment. But I 
 was not at the end of my troubles. By this 
 time the rumour of my heathen views had reached 
 the pastor s ears. This was Brother Hale, an old 
 man who preached against something all the time. 
 If it was not theatres and dancing, it was the Bap 
 tist doctrine of election, or the Presbyterian s 
 shorter catechism. 
 
 On this Sunday morning he read a good deal 
 from Ezekiel about familiar spirits and divination, 
 which showed how strongly Ezekiel felt about the 
 competition between jugglers and prophets in his 
 day. Then Brother Hale preached on this: "Be 
 ware of sorcerers." He was furious with sorcerers, 
 as if there was one present who was crowding him 
 and all Christian people out of their spiritual 
 rights. He quoted from the Acts of the Apostles, 
 to prove how the practice of sorcery leads to 
 strangely evil incantations of the soul and destroys 
 the moral sense. 
 
 "Bretheren, bretheren!" he shouted, "this is no 
 capsule doctrine I m giving you! It s the naked 
 quinine! If there be any among us given over to 
 this iniquity, we must purge this church of them or 
 bring down upon us the condemnation of a right 
 eous God." 
 
132 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 He might have been warning us against the 
 Society for Psychic Research, but my own mouth 
 tasted bitter and my feelings were outraged. If I 
 had stood up in an experience meeting and con 
 fessed to half a dozen sins, nothing would have been 
 said about that. Nobody would have thought less 
 of me. We all told things of ourselves at such 
 times that should have debarred us from society, 
 but that only knit us closer together in the bonds of 
 sympathy. But I was being held up to con 
 demnation before the church because I d made use 
 of a poetic figure of speech. 
 
 I was conscious of covert, accusing glances from 
 various sources in the congregation as Brother 
 Hale went on. Once Lily Triggs flirted round and 
 looked me squarely in the face, as much as to say, 
 "Thou art the woman!" Then she flirted back 
 and gave her attention with a pious air to the 
 preacher. If she had spoken aloud she could not 
 have made clearer what was in her mind namely, 
 that she might have her faults, she did not pretend 
 as some people whom she knew did, but no one 
 could accuse her of having a vagabond soul 
 mixed up in heathen scandals! 
 
 If any one thinks this account of my experience 
 is exaggerated, let them recall the things for which 
 men and women have been burned at the stake, not 
 because they were bad but because of a difference 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 133 
 
 of opinion about a doctrine or a creed. I have 
 known a preacher, a good man who believed 
 firmly in the cardinal doctrines of the Methodist 
 Church, to be tried for heresy because he made 
 frank use of the term evolution in his sermons. I 
 do not like that word myself. It looks low down in 
 front and high up behind, as if it had its nose in the 
 dirt and its heels in the air. Still, only bigotry 
 could have driven a Christian minister out of the 
 church who used it. A few years ago a presiding 
 elder in our Annual Conference brought charges 
 against a preacher and had him "located," because 
 the unfortunate man stubbed his spiritual toe 
 against the doctrine of infant baptism, and balked 
 at performing this rite for the babies born in his 
 circuit. I m a firm believer in infant baptism. 
 It never hurts the child, and it sometimes helps the 
 parents, who really take the vows, to do better 
 by their baby. But I said then, and I still be 
 lieve, it was a mean, unchristian act to turn that 
 preacher out of the itinerancy because he didn t 
 feel called to baptize babies. There are as many 
 martyrs now in the churches as there ever were. 
 The only difference is, we do not put them out of 
 their pain so quickly by burning them. 
 
 However, I lack the elements of martyrdom. 
 Such meekness as I have is of a militant char 
 acter. I was sitting before the fire that after- 
 
134 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 noon, too angry to read my Bible, which is a 
 thing I do every Sunday afternoon, when there 
 was a knock at the door and Brother Hale walked 
 in. 
 
 We were both on our guard. He said he 
 thought it was going to snow. I said I didn t 
 care if it did. What he meant was: "This is a 
 very sad day for us all, Sister Thompson." What 
 I meant was: "You can t put off the bad weather 
 of your spirit on me, Brother Hale. I ve enough 
 weather of my own!" 
 
 He sighed. He warmed first one foot, then 
 the other. He worked his mouth in his beard 
 and groaned. I just waited with my hands 
 folded and my eyes fixed coldly upon him. 
 
 "Sister Thompson," he began at last in a sep 
 ulchral voice, "I have always regarded you as a 
 Christian woman " 
 
 "I am, up to a certain point, Brother Hale," 
 I answered quickly; "after that I m just a natural 
 woman." 
 
 "Ah, yes. It s hard to overcome the Old 
 Adam " 
 
 "I can manage any Old Adam I know. It s 
 the evil of the Eves in this situation that troubles 
 me," I returned darkly. 
 
 "Then you know there s been a good deal of 
 talk?" 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 135 
 
 "Yes, and I know how it started, which you 
 should have found out before you preached that 
 sermon on sorcerers this morning," I returned 
 without beating about the bush. 
 
 "Well, how did such a report start if there was 
 no truth in it?" he demanded. 
 
 "I didn t say there was no truth in it," I began. 
 
 "Then you admit it!" 
 
 "No, I don t admit anything," casting about 
 for some way to explain what I meant. 
 
 I tried to tell him about my visit to Sally, and 
 the train of thought which had led me to speculate 
 so heavily in immortality. But it is not easy to 
 interpret a winged mood to a man who has literal- 
 minded damnation ideas. As I repeated what I 
 said to Sally about my ancient immortality and 
 the fancy I had of seeing myself like the shades 
 of all women coming and going through time, he 
 looked even more horrified than Sally did. Tears 
 of rage and mortification blinded me. I could 
 not go on. 
 
 "You didn t claim to have been one of the 
 Cleopatra girls?" he asked coolly. 
 
 "Don t you mention that to me again, Brother 
 Hale," I evaded, seeing I could not make him 
 understand. 
 
 "But this is a serious matter, Sister Thompson; 
 it involves the difference between an evil spiritu- 
 
136 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 ality and a pure spiritual life. I understood that 
 in your conversation with Sister Parks you claimed 
 to have been one of the Cleopatra girls, and " 
 
 "There was only one of them, so far as I know," 
 I interrupted. "Does anybody who knows me 
 think I ever lived or looked like her? It s a 
 shame upon you all that a woman who has been 
 a consistent member of this church through all 
 her inconsistencies can t exercise her spiritual 
 imagination without being suspected of dark 
 practices and relations to a misguided heathen 
 female who s been dead several thousand years! 
 
 "It was a most unfortunate occurrence, Sister 
 Thompson, and has led to a scandal in the church," 
 he said, as if he still blamed me. 
 
 But I was in no mood to be blamed. 
 
 "Yes, and do you know why? It s because of 
 the evil mind in some good people, the desire 
 they have for excitement. Instead of making 
 moonshine whiskey they distill scandals at the 
 expense of helpless people. And you, who would 
 scorn to drink the one, will feed upon the other! 
 On the other hand," I said, talking very fast 
 because I saw that he wished to interrupt me, 
 "I ve known you to listen to something said 
 about women for which the speaker should have 
 been punished, without resenting that at all!" 
 
 "I never did!" he exclaimed indignantly. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widoiv 137 
 
 "Brother Hale, you were present at the last 
 Annual Conference, were you not? " 
 
 "Certainly, but- 
 
 "Four hundred of your preachers and about 
 half as many women were sitting upon the floor 
 of the Conference when the bishop, enumerating 
 the things to be thankful for, wound up with this : 
 And I suppose there is not a man in this house 
 who does not thank God that he was not born a 
 woman! And he the son of a woman! And the 
 house filled with women who d spent their lives 
 working for him and the church, in spite of their 
 efforts to serve just the Almighty!" 
 
 "But, Sister Thompson " 
 
 "Why, I ask you, should anybody, man or 
 woman, thank God for his or her gender? Is 
 there any advantage before Him in being born a 
 male? If you ask me, Brother Hale, I believe 
 there s a plus mark put after every woman s 
 name in the Book of Life! We have not fought 
 the wars, or built the cities, or carried on the 
 Dives business of amassing wealth in this present 
 world; but we do keep the faith. WTiat would 
 happen if all the women in all the churches dropped 
 out and went into business with the brethren? 
 The pastors might still get their salaries, but 
 your missionary collections would drop two-thirds; 
 your Sunday-schools would dissolve into dancing 
 
138 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 classes; the young people would leave the church. 
 As for revivals, you wouldn t have any, and not 
 a single conversion." 
 
 "Sister Thompson," he put in while I paused 
 for breath, "what the bishop said is not the point 
 at issue " 
 
 "No," I interrupted; "y u could sit there and 
 hear something which humiliated every woman 
 in the house, without protesting against the 
 loutish pride he showed in just his sex, but you 
 can come over here to chasten an old woman who 
 has upheld the hands of preachers and served the 
 church faithfully for forty years, because I had a 
 fancy for gadding in the spirit through the land 
 of Uz with Job and the prophets," I sobbed, 
 whisking the tears angrily from my eyes. 
 
 "You went out of the land of Uz, Sister Thomp 
 son, and claimed to have been one of the Cleo " 
 
 "Don t mention that woman s name to me 
 again!" I exclaimed fiercely. 
 
 But he went on to explain that though he was 
 sure I was guiltless of practising divination, it 
 behooved a Christian woman to be careful what 
 she said which might cause another to stumble, 
 especially since we had that iniquitous organi 
 zation, the Society for Psychic Research, prey 
 ing upon the spiritual life of the community. 
 
 "Very well, Brother Hale, I ll bridle my tongue 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 139 
 
 in the future," I answered grimly as he took leave 
 of me. 
 
 Since I have been so conscientious in recording 
 the transgressions of others it is my duty to set 
 down here the truth about myself in the days that 
 followed. I backslid, and, like many another 
 backslider, I started upon the downward grade 
 with a deep sense of injury on my heart. But 
 the Lord makes no allowance for our mortal sense 
 of injustice. He holds us rigidly to the standard 
 of returning good for evil, over and above all the 
 other things we do to one another. 
 
 I had wished many times for the chance to 
 take a rest from being the handmaiden of all works 
 in our church. Now the opportunity had come, 
 through no fault of mine; and I resolved to take 
 a vacation from my Christian duties. Let some 
 other woman be the church busybody! I reckon 
 behind the door of my mind, my other mind was 
 thinking about what would happen when I dropped 
 out and left the other workers with the bag to 
 hold, the seeds to sow, and the harvest to reap. 
 But, I say, the Lord numbers such thoughts as 
 these along with the hairs of your head, and He 
 collects repentance for them along with your other 
 transgressions. 
 
 I went to church the next Sunday. But instead 
 of going up and taking my accustomed place be- 
 
140 t A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 hind the choir, I dropped into the first seat I came 
 to. This was in the extreme rear of the house. 
 Doctor Edd was the only other person on it. He 
 looked at me as much as to say: "What s the 
 trouble? Have the heavens fallen?" 
 
 I paid no attention to him. I set my chin for 
 ward, dropped the corners of my mouth, lifted my 
 eyes, and stared straight at the ceiling above the 
 pulpit. Jonah sitting in his guard at noonday, 
 with everybody staring at him, could not have felt 
 more self-righteous. 
 
 Charlotte was president of the missionary 
 society let her remind Brother Hale of the meet 
 ing on Thursday! I said to myself vindictively. 
 Naturally she did not do it, since I had always at 
 tended to that. I saw her look round and catch 
 sight of me after Brother Hale made the announce 
 ments, omitting this one. 
 
 During the service which followed I was con 
 scious that half the people in the house turned and 
 stared at me from time to time. But I never once 
 dropped my gaze from that knothole in the wall 
 about six feet above the preacher s head. I re 
 mained seated bolt upright during prayers, which 
 was the hardest thing of all to do. In spite of my 
 efforts to remain calmly offended I felt the tears on 
 my cheeks. 
 
 My custom is to go up after service and thank 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 141 
 
 the preacher for his sermon. I ve done this many 
 a time when he had made a flash in the pan or 
 bored me so I could not keep awake, just to en 
 courage him to do better if he could next time. 
 But upon this day I flounced out of the door and 
 across the street to my own house the minute the 
 benediction was pronounced. 
 
 I did not go to the meeting of the missionary 
 society. I sent the treasurer s books and my 
 resignation by Molly Brown. Late the same 
 afternoon she brought them back and said the 
 society refused to accept niy resignation. But I 
 told her to keep them, that I was tired of walking 
 the streets of Berton like a mendicant trying to 
 collect dues. Let Sally Parks have the office. 
 She was a good woman ! 
 
 "You shouldn t do this way, Mary," Molly said, 
 tenderly reproachful. 
 
 "I m not doing any way, Molly; I ve quit doing. 
 I m taking a rest," I answered serenely. 
 
 But the Lord alone knows how I suffered ! I have 
 never lived so blamelessly as a Christian as I now- 
 lived as a backslider. I remained at home, at 
 tended strictly to my own business, and talked 
 about nobody, which was a privilege I had always 
 enjoyed. Nothing went right. The church across 
 the street accused me. I was very low in my 
 spirit, and took rheumatism in my knees. But 
 
142 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 when I got painfully down to say my prayers, the 
 yeast had gone out of my petitions and they did 
 not rise above my head. I could not pray with the 
 same indignant fervour that sinners should return 
 from the error of their ways and that backsliders 
 should be reclaimed. The very heathen seemed to 
 stare at me reproachfully from the ends of the 
 earth, as if I d forsaken and left them to perish in 
 their idolatries. 
 
 Some people, with no holding-back straps to 
 their minds, may prove that faith in God is an il 
 lusion, but no one can prove that about the re 
 ligious life. It comes nearer fitting than any other 
 kind of existence. It is the very glove of im 
 mortality. If you cease suddenly to do the things 
 you ve always done in His name, it is like giving up 
 your citizenship in one country and becoming an 
 alien in another without crossing your own thresh 
 old. 
 
 I was far from understanding this at first. I 
 was like a poor old-lady Samson who went out and 
 shook herself, and wist not that her strength had 
 departed from her. 
 
 I was reduced to trying peptonoid Scriptures, 
 like Emily Peters when she reads her devotional 
 exercises. Some one had given me a little book 
 that contained one hundred quotations from the 
 Old and New Testament, designed like quick 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 143 
 
 remedies to meet any emergency of the soul with 
 out having to look for it. But none of those verses 
 were written for me. They were for the woman I 
 had been. 
 
 Still, something in me held out like the seven 
 devils of perversity. A backslider will hold fast to 
 his integrity and make less fuss about it than Job 
 did. 
 
 After two or three weeks had gone by Sally 
 Parks came in one day, looking very meek and 
 awkward, as if she d never been hi this house be 
 fore, and didn t feel free to come back to the kit 
 chen, where I was making pies. I showed her into 
 the parlour and took off my apron. 
 
 She told me all the news of the town, but I made 
 no comment. She said she noticed I d been keep 
 ing close at home lately, and she hoped it was not 
 la grippe. I told her no, I was very well, "Thank 
 you." She supposed I d heard that Brother Hale 
 was having trouble with the choir. I saw Lily 
 Triggs! in capital letters on her lips, but I would 
 not encourage her to say what the trouble was. 
 The choir was as far from my thought as the East 
 is from the West. 
 
 "I reckon you know Charlotte resigned as 
 president of our missionary society," she ventured. 
 
 I did not know that either. 
 
 "Have you planted your garden?" I asked, 
 
144 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 changing the subject so abruptly it was like casting 
 Charlotte out of the window. 
 
 "No, I don t get time to do anything at home 
 since we ve had so much trouble keeping the 
 society together. I m president now, you know," 
 she said with a sigh. 
 
 "My lettuce is coming up like little green curls 
 and the radishes are ready for use," I put in cheer 
 fully. 
 
 We went on talking at cross-purposes, she en 
 deavouring to draw me back to church affairs, 
 while I circled and evaded the subject, never im 
 plying by word or look that I d ever been a 
 Christian woman. When she arose to go she 
 paused at the door, regarding me with the forlorn 
 expression of a little old girl who wishes to be for 
 given something. 
 
 "Mary," she began, "I make mistakes some 
 times we all do. I meant no harm when I told 
 Charlotte about what you said to me that day, 
 but " 
 
 "If you see the Peters children as you go home, 
 tell them their old cat has kittens in my wood 
 shed," I said, interrupting as if I had not heard 
 what she was trying to tell me. 
 
 "Very well, I will," she answered sadly, and 
 went out. 
 
 I have always attended services in my own 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 145 
 
 church, even when the Baptists or Presbyterians 
 had a celebrity to preach for them. But I planned 
 now to make a Sabbath-day s journey abroad in 
 the Gospel and worship with other denominations. 
 I was excited over this adventure. It was like 
 preparing for a visit to foreign parts. 
 
 The next Sunday I went to the Presbyterian 
 Church. I felt very queer, with everybody staring 
 at me during the singing of the first hymn. Doctor 
 Me Andrews read his sermon. I reckoned he al 
 ways did, for the congregation sat as comfortably 
 under it as if he were pasting it to them, one leaf at 
 a time. But for me it was like having cold bread 
 and ice water for breakfast when I d been accus 
 tomed to hot biscuits and coffee. I went home 
 chilled to the marrow of niy spirit. 
 
 The following Sunday I went to the Baptist 
 Church, which I should not have done if I had re 
 membered this was Communion Day Doctor 
 Fulton was already under way with his discourse 
 when I came in. Whatever his text may have 
 been, he preached long and earnestly upon the, 
 word "Baptidso." The sense of what he said was 
 that no one need hope for the remission of their 
 sins who slurred the meaning of that word. "You 
 must be baptized!" he shouted with emphasis. 
 
 He was a good man. But how a good man could 
 preach just a doctrine which excluded so many 
 
146 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 other people from the Lord s mercies was a mystery 
 to me. 
 
 When I was a child we had a Sunday-school song 
 which ran something like this: 
 
 Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore! 
 Heed not the breaking waves but bend to the oar. 
 Safe in the lifeboat, sailor, cling to self no more, 
 Leave the poor old stranded wreck, and pull for the 
 shore. 
 
 But I was too young to read the words. What 
 I thought they sang was : 
 
 Leave that poor old strangled wretch behind and pull 
 for the shore. 
 
 This seemed to me a most barbarous and un 
 christian thing to do. I reckon it is the same way 
 with me now about the Baptist doctrines I miss 
 the proper meaning. 
 
 The worst was yet to come. Doctor Fulton 
 closed his sermon by emphasizing the rite of "close 
 communion." The elect should not take the 
 sacrament with sinners and outsiders. 
 
 I would not confess myself a sinner or an out 
 sider by leaving. The deacons passed the bread 
 and wine. When they came to the pew where I 
 was sitting they skipped me as if I were a dropped 
 stitch. I turned deathly homesick in a moment 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 147 
 
 for my own church, and for the people who were 
 also taking this sacrament there before the altar. 
 
 I hope I should have done right in any case and 
 gone back to my own church after this experience, 
 but that night I came down with influenza which 
 developed into pneumonia. The first person I saw 
 when the red pain in my breast let go enough for 
 me to get a good breath was Sally Parks bending 
 over my bed. 
 
 "Sally," I whispered, "how many blooms are 
 there on your Cape jasmine bush?" 
 
 "Hush, Mary dear. You are better, thank 
 heaven! But Charlotte and I were frightened 
 about you last night," she said tenderly. 
 
 "Did you say Charlotte was here, too?" I asked 
 feebly. 
 
 "Every night while you were so bad off she was 
 here. So many have called Baptists and Presby 
 terians, too. And our pastor offered a special 
 prayer for your recovery last Sunday." 
 
 I closed my eyes, deeply comforted, as if sud 
 denly my transgressions melted away. This may 
 be the reason why penitents weep. I felt the tears 
 start. 
 
 "Sally," I began, whimpering weakly, "I feel 
 like the prodigal son. And your kindness feels 
 like the fine robe his folks ran out and put on 
 him when he came home!" 
 
148 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 The picture I had of myself a fat old woman 
 running off to strange churches and now bundled 
 up so warm and easy in my own bed made me 
 laugh a little. 
 
 "Don t talk any more, dear!" she continued, 
 smiling, too. 
 
 I was able to get out by Easter; but for a long 
 time I felt as the wicked do after they turn from 
 the error of their ways. I had a past to live down. 
 But nobody in this church can say I didn t do it 
 with proper energy and assurance. I just took 
 hold where I left off, and went on holding my 
 own in the spirit and out of it. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE Scriptures prove that the Lord thinks 
 well of widows. In the old Moab days 
 a little grain was left after the harvest for 
 them to pick up. Even the "unjust judge" had 
 to grant the plea of the importunate widow, not 
 because she was importunate for this is the 
 singsong characteristic of most women but be 
 cause she was a widow and had a hard time. It 
 is the widow s mite that counts for more than 
 the rich man s gift with Him. If you notice, 
 widows are the ones who go about with their 
 mites tied up in the end of their pocket hand 
 kerchiefs. I ve seen Molly Brown keep the col 
 lection basket bobbing in Sam Parks hand many 
 a time while she untied the knot and squeezed 
 out her penny. And you are commanded to 
 visit them in their affliction, because He numbers 
 them with the sparrows that fall. 
 
 The women best known for their good works 
 and faithfulness among the early Christians were 
 nearly all widows, like Phebe and Dorcas and 
 Lydia. Maybe they could follow the will of their 
 own spirits better, having no husbands to hinder 
 
 149 
 
150 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 them. For husbands do have a powerful effect 
 upon the morals of their wives. Many a good 
 woman cannot serve God according to her con 
 science because she must serve her husband 
 according to his will and feelings. If I could 
 preach, I d take Sapphira as my text, and I d 
 prove by the lives of the women I know that 
 she never would have cheated the Lord, nor told 
 that lie about the "possession" they sold, if 
 Ananias had not made her do it. Women are 
 generous to the church. But I can name half a 
 dozen in this Methodist Church at Berton, mar 
 ried to prosperous men, who never give more than 
 a widow s mite because they have no more to 
 spare. And they are always telling Sapphira 
 lies about that, for the same reason to obey and 
 shield an Ananias husband. 
 
 But I say the real widows make a good showing 
 in the Scriptures. They are used in the best 
 parables to teach the most comforting things. 
 The kingdom of heaven is likened unto the leaven 
 that a widow hid in three measures of meal until 
 the whole was leavened. I have never seen a 
 church yet where this yeast of the spirit was not 
 furnished by widows and old maids, who are 
 really virgin widows, and by some little pinched- 
 pocket Sapphira wife who might as well be a 
 widow. 
 
A Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 151 
 
 But when it comes to the leaven of the scribes 
 and Pharisees, you will find that chiefly among 
 the brethren. And when Paul said, "A little 
 leaven leaveneth the whole lump," he was warn 
 ing the Corinthian Christians against keeping a 
 certain prominent man in the church whose morals 
 had fermented. 
 
 Nearly every church has this evil leaven in it 
 some woman with damaged skylights in her rep 
 utation, or some man with the same kind of 
 character who keeps a tight roof over his reputa 
 tion. If it is a man, the apostle or the preacher 
 discovers him and flings enough Scriptures in his 
 direction to warn the innocent and to keep him in 
 modest retirement; but if it is a little gilt-edged 
 woman with the yeast of seven devils in her, he 
 maneuvers the Gospel round her, never attacks 
 her, never crosses the dead line of her influence. 
 I do not know why this is, unless it is because a 
 woman with seven devils is dangerously sacred. 
 
 Some people think Lily Triggs is this leaven in 
 our church. I do not know. After observing 
 her for four years I am still in doubt about her. 
 But my doubts grow darker and my antipathy 
 increases. That may be due to the evil mind in 
 me, for I know, by experience as well as by ob 
 servation, that the power of imputing sin to others 
 is often very strong in Christian workers. 
 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Lily may be the spirit of progress in this town, 
 for all I know, patiently labouring to overcome our 
 prejudices against the current of modern ideas. 
 But if she is, progress looks most awfully like 
 damnation to me. We have never produced any 
 thing like her in Berton. She has a nefarious 
 use of her faculties, which could only have been 
 acquired where sin is not sin, but the unfortunate 
 result of environment; where virtue is custom, 
 and righteousness is not righteousness but an 
 old-fashioned bigotry which limits the consti 
 tutional rights of human nature to vaunt itself 
 and have a good time. She is an individualist 
 when it comes to this question of personal liberty, 
 and will have her rights at the expense of what 
 ever injury to society as a whole. But she is 
 something of an anarchist and a socialist after 
 she gets what she wants for herself, ready to 
 destroy the order of things and lead a movement 
 over the ruins of the way. In short, she is a 
 very able woman, and there is nothing like her 
 in the moral world except another woman of the 
 same kind. 
 
 She has kept her place in the choir of this 
 church with a fortitude under strictly feminine 
 persecution which no good woman should have 
 felt called upon to endure. She has lived down 
 one scandal after another like a saint who is not 
 
"LILY MAY BE THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESS IN THIS 
 TOWN .... BUT IF SHE IS, PROGRESS LOOKS 
 
 MOST AWFULLY LIKE DAMNATION TO ME" 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 153 
 
 a saint. She is eager to serve. If there is an 
 entertainment to be given for the benefit of the 
 church or parsonage, she is in the thick of it, 
 with more and better plans for raising money 
 than any one else can think of. If the district 
 meeting is held in Berton she takes more dele 
 gates than anybody gets, including the presiding 
 elder. The only time we have had a bishop to 
 preach for us in four years he was entertained by 
 Mrs. Lily Triggs and her aunt, Mrs. Browder 
 this "aunt" being an old rag-doll lady Lily has 
 picked up to give an air of propriety and sanctity 
 to her elegant establishment. If some one is in 
 distress and needs help, her purse flies open while 
 the rest of us are hesitating about how much we 
 can afford to give. If it is the funeral of some 
 woman who did not speak to her, Lily is there to 
 sing with touching sweetness, "Shall We Gather 
 at the River!" 
 
 From time to time there is a violent secret 
 agitation in the church, stirred by the efforts we 
 make to get her out of the choir. She remains 
 artlessly ignorant of this opposition, though the 
 town may be seething like a caldron with it. We 
 invariably fall back defeated, and relieve our 
 indignation by talking about her to the injury 
 of our Christian attributes. But she never talks 
 about any one, except to speak well of them. 
 
154 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 She will not criticise her worst enemy. If she is 
 a good woman she is the best woman in the church. 
 And we have never been able to prove that she 
 is not good. Every time we think we have caught 
 her red-handed, she faces about with one of our 
 own most cherished virtues clasped to her breast 
 as a shield and buckler. When Maggie Fain was 
 on the point of suing for divorce from Oscar and 
 naming Lily as corespondent, what was our as 
 tonishment to learn that she had given up the 
 idea, gone back to Oscar, and joined the Suffrage 
 League. We heard later that Lily was developing 
 the oldest Fain girl s voice, which she said was 
 wonderful, and she hoped to see the child on the 
 grand-opera stage some day. Maggie told this 
 story with tears of gratitude in her eyes. 
 
 Lily had Molly Brown s unqualified support, 
 because she paid Molly s grocery bill and "talked 
 like an angel." Charlotte Warren was her de 
 voted friend and running mate, because she said 
 Lily was a brilliant woman with advanced ideas, 
 wasting her talents in a little old one-horse town 
 where she was not appreciated. They were like 
 a police force corrupted with a compliment here, 
 a good deed there, all contributed by Lily like 
 the cleanest Christian charity. 
 
 We often had the same pastor returned to us 
 for four years. But after Lily joined the choir 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 155 
 
 every preacher sent to this church was moved at 
 the end of his first year. And the pathetic part 
 of it was that they always expected to be returned 
 and never knew why they were moved. 
 
 The negotiation of pastors is carried on privily 
 between the presiding elder and influential mem 
 bers of the church. A pastor may leave for Con 
 ference with his assessments paid in full, and with 
 every reason for believing that he has been accept 
 able to the people in his charge. But when the 
 appointments are read he may find that he has 
 been sent to another charge two hundred miles 
 distant. He never knows why. Maybe he has 
 offended a steward. Maybe he had a great re 
 vival, and many souls reclaimed, but only col 
 lected 30 per cent, of his assessments. So the pre 
 siding elders get together in the bishop s cabinet 
 and trade preachers. Sometimes there is a little 
 runt of an itinerant whom no elder wants in his 
 district. He is given a mission in the mountains, 
 or is sent as a "supply" to fill up a chink in the 
 general work. If a young preacher shows marked 
 evangelistic tendencies and grows faster in popu 
 larity with the people he serves than the elders 
 think is good for the church which may happen, 
 owing to a reaction against emotional religion 
 they switch him off entirely by making him the 
 "agent" for an educational institution or for some 
 
156 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 general fund. I am not criticising these methods, 
 you understand; I m only telling how a church 
 governed by a military system is conducted, with 
 the bishops and thirteen elders as ranking officers. 
 
 Brother Worthen was Lily Triggs first victim. 
 He was an honest man and a good one, which made 
 it all the easier for her to throw her bright dust in his 
 eyes. He was our pastor, the husband of his wife, 
 and Lily s Knight of the Garter, ready to defend 
 her at the risk of his own reputation. Nothing 
 was farther from his thoughts than that he would 
 not be returned here when he left for Conference. 
 But a preacher s wife is clairvoyant in these mat 
 ters, and Brother Worthen was hardly out of town 
 before Sister Worthen began to pack her things 
 after the timid, surreptitious manner of her 
 kind. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the stewards and trustees of 
 our church some of them members of the choir 
 had already notified the presiding elder of this 
 district that they wanted Brother Worthen moved. 
 They had no complaint to make, they wrote; he 
 was a fine, genial gentleman, but not the man for 
 Berton. They wanted a pastor with " some back 
 bone." 
 
 We got him. Brother Hale had two backbones, 
 so to speak. Instead of finding the harvest ripe 
 and the labourers few on the outside of the church, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 157 
 
 he sailed into the membership of the church itself, 
 and undertook to weed the tares from the wheat, 
 which is a thing no preacher can do without tearing 
 up the church by the roots of its natural transgres 
 sions. He had trouble with the stewards and the 
 Sunday-school superintendent, not to mention the 
 trouble he stirred up with an old Dorcas like me. 
 However, there is always an element in the church 
 that supports such a preacher, and I reckon he 
 would have been sent back the next year if he had 
 not finally caught sight of Lily Triggs sitting like 
 a limned twig in the choir. He put his whole 
 mind upon Lily, but not in the terms of Christian 
 charity. Still he was prudent, never openly 
 preaching against more than the powder on her 
 nose, which he did under the terms of "female 
 vanity" and in a manner so general it applied to 
 every woman who had flowers on her hat. Pri 
 vately, however, he announced to the brethren 
 that if he should be returned to Berton another 
 year, he would have the Triggs woman out of the 
 choir or abolish sacred music in the church. 
 
 Tom Warren went to Conference as lay delegate 
 that year. He is the richest man in our church, 
 and he can practically behead any preacher he does 
 not like by cutting off his subscription to the pas 
 tor s salary. He demanded the removal of Brother 
 Hale, really because Charlotte took this way of de- 
 
158 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 fending Lily. What he charged against him was a 
 "contentious spirit injurious to the harmony of 
 the church," which was funny, considering that his 
 line-fence feud with Roger Peters had split the very 
 amen corners of it for ten years. Thus if we had a 
 pastor who approved of Lily, he was removed for 
 that. If we had one who disapproved of her, he 
 was sure to be removed for that. 
 
 By this time she was firmly intrenched in the 
 social life of the town. She was a pretty little tare 
 who had fallen in good ground, the soil of a com 
 munity overfed upon doctrines and foreign-mission 
 literature and church festivals, unconsciously crav 
 ing a change of diet, famished for the normal 
 pleasures of life still in the flesh. 
 
 This is the turning-point in the family history of 
 every church. And it just will turn, though you 
 give your body to be burned and all your goods to 
 feed the poor. You may call in the most eloquent 
 evangelists and set all the Gospel forces of the 
 church against it, but the thing happens, a revolu 
 tion in the very spirit of that place which often 
 leaves the Christian people tagging along behind, 
 vainly swinging to the coat tails of a wicked and 
 perverse generation which was born in the church 
 and bred upon its faith. One explanation and an 
 other is given for this phenomenon. Far be it 
 from me to name the trouble, if it is a trouble or 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 159 
 
 merely a natural earth reaction from too much sky 
 culture. 
 
 But I will venture this that in the case of the 
 herd of swine, mentioned in Matthew, which had 
 the devils cast into it, went crazy, ran and jumped 
 into the sea, and perished because of the evil spirits 
 which possessed it, one of them was progress and 
 the other was art. For the records of history all 
 prove that this is what happens every time the 
 spirit of progress and the spirit of art get control of 
 a civilization. It tumbles down a "steep place" 
 in the next century, perishes, and has to be built up 
 again, always by the Christian religion. 
 
 As I have said before, Lily Triggs may have been 
 the spirit of progress leavening the town. Berton 
 certainly did take on a strange new life. Women 
 who formerly invited you to dinner in the middle of 
 the day gave receptions in the tail of the afternoon 
 and served punch at the front door. Or there was 
 a lecture on suffrage, with refreshments afterward. 
 Or a strange woman came to town and gave a par 
 lour interpretation of Parsifal at the residence of 
 Mrs. Lily Triggs, for Lily said Berton was wofully 
 lacking in the knowledge and appreciation of the 
 great operas. 
 
 You may always know where a community is in 
 the scale of things, without reading a history of 
 European morals or even current literature, by 
 
160 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 simply observing the popular topics of conversa 
 tion. They register exactly how near those people 
 are to the "steep place." 
 
 If the men are still discussing apostasy and fore- 
 ordination around the stove in the back of the 
 grocery store you may take it for granted that 
 there is not much enterprise in the community; 
 and that the women and preachers are striving for 
 foreign missions and for a deeper work of grace; 
 and that at least once a year there is a gracious 
 revival during which sinners repent, backsliders are 
 reclaimed ; and that many of these live wholly con 
 secrated lives without causing two blades of grass 
 to grow where only one grew before, commercially 
 speaking. 
 
 But if the men are talking politics and of the 
 possibility of a new railroad to open up that sec 
 tion, this is a sign of the awakening of the com 
 munity to certain natural advantages and of the 
 rise in the price of real estate. The women are the 
 posters who advertise the whole thing with their 
 little competitions in the simpler transgressions of 
 fashions and what may be called first steps in 
 worldly ambitions. But they are still loyal to the 
 church. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the men organize a club 
 in the top room of the village hotel, where they 
 spend a good deal of time mysteriously; if they dis- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 161 
 
 cuss the Karl Marx theory of government, cotton 
 futures and industrial conditions, you will find the 
 women studying art, defending the Motif of Hor 
 ror in decadent dramas, and very busy starting the 
 Feminist Movement. This is a sign that the pas 
 tor receives a large salary, that the president of the 
 Woman s Missionary Society is an old frump who 
 does not know how to move in social circles nor 
 how to catch step in the annual suffrage parade, 
 and that the church is dead. 
 
 Berton was not so far gone as this. But the 
 leaven was working. The City Improvement 
 Company was organized. There was some talk of 
 putting up a moving-picture theatre. The report 
 of an expert accountant, employed by a dis 
 gruntled element in the town council to go over the 
 county tax books, had been suppressed. The 
 Ladies Art Committee planned an exhibition of 
 original paintings in the fall. And at a meeting of 
 the Woman s Missionary Society, Charlotte War- 
 ran referred to the Acts of the Apostles as "one of 
 the most beautiful epics to be found in all litera 
 ture." But about this time some of Lily Triggs 
 chickens came home to roost, and the progressive 
 spirit in social circles had a backset. 
 
 Judson W 7 inter was a young attorney here. He 
 was also one of Lily s musical discoveries. During 
 the previous year he spent much of his time culti- 
 
162 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 vating his voice in the evenings at Lily s house. 
 Later, when Sam Parks resigned from the choir, 
 Judson took his place. Then, quite unexpectedly, 
 he married Dorothy Allen. Dorothy was a mem 
 ber of our church and chairman of the executive 
 committee in the Suffrage League. 
 
 But when the young couple returned from their 
 honeymoon Judson resigned from the choir, and 
 Dorothy did not even go through the ceremony of 
 resigning from the Suffrage League. She simply 
 met Lily face to face one day on the street and re 
 fused to speak to her. This was all we knew, but 
 it was enough to furnish fuel for smouldering fires. 
 
 Lily dismissed the whole situation in her char 
 acteristic manner. She said she was sorry to lose 
 Judson. He had a splendid voice, but of course 
 one could not expect a bridegroom to attend choir 
 practice, and he had done quite right to resign. It 
 was all right, for she had persuaded Brother Lipton 
 to sing bass. 
 
 Even the bravest may be too bold. This is what 
 I thought when I saw John Henry Lipton sitting 
 beside Lily in the choir the next Sunday singing 
 bass out of the same hymn book with her. For 
 Taggy is John Henry s wife. She is one of those 
 nervous women who keeps her feelings wound up 
 as tight as a watch spring. Her marital motto is : 
 "I can stand just so much and no more!" When 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 163 
 
 she reaches her limit something happens. If 
 nothing did happen Taggy would explode. She is 
 combustible. She has managed John Henry for 
 twenty years with her nervous spells. 
 
 He is a big, fine-looking man with a florid com 
 plexion and a cheerful disposition. He swaggers 
 a little when he walks, stands up on his hind legs 
 when he sings, and always backs the church like a 
 good citizen instead of a sad saint. He is the best 
 Sunday-school superintendent we ever had. 
 
 When he joined the choir and made himself so 
 useful to Lily, helping her put on her wraps after 
 services and bringing her a glass of water between 
 services, and slipping notes to her during services 
 about which hymns to sing, I said it made me 
 nervous. 
 
 One afternoon I went to call on Sister Battle, our 
 pastor s wife. She was a large, placid woman with 
 a round, middle-aged figure and a middle-aged 
 mind, with that kind of resignation one sometimes 
 sees upon the face of a preacher s wife who knows 
 all her tribulations by heart and fears them not at 
 all. 
 
 "I was just wishing some one would come in," 
 she said, shaking the cat off the cushion in the 
 rocking-chair and drawing it closer to the fire for 
 me. 
 
 "How are you?" she asked comfortably. 
 
164 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "I have a bad cold," I said, hurrying to get out 
 my handkerchief. 
 
 "Mr. Battle has one, too," she confided. 
 
 "Everybody seems to have one," I agreed. 
 
 "I can always tell when I m taking one," she 
 explained. "The back of my neck gets cold." 
 
 We went on for some time, telling each other 
 about how this ailment and that affected us, the 
 way women do sometimes, until presently we both 
 fell silent and exchanged glances the way women 
 do when they have been talking about one thing 
 and thinking about another. 
 
 "Have you seen Sister Lip ton lately?" she asked 
 presently. 
 
 "No. Why?" 
 
 "She was not at church Sunday. I thought 
 maybe she might have a bad cold." 
 
 "She hasn t been to church in a month," I 
 answered reflectively. 
 
 "You are good friends, aren t you?" she asked, 
 gently leading me to talk about Taggy. 
 
 "I ve known her since she was a girl, and I ve 
 known John Henry since she married him. Nat 
 urally I m fond of them both," I answered, won 
 dering what she had in her mind. 
 
 "They have been happy together, I suppose." 
 
 "Happy is a young adjective, Sister Battle. I 
 should never apply it to the relation of two people 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 165 
 
 who ve been married twenty years. Taggy knows 
 how to manage her husband, if that is what you 
 mean." 
 
 "Sometimes when a woman is married to a 
 fine-looking man she is inclined to be jealous 
 without cause " she remarked. 
 
 "Every wife has one cause to be jealous of her 
 husband," I answered coolly. 
 
 "And what is that?" she asked in mild sur 
 prise. 
 
 "She is not the only woman in the world!" I 
 laughed. 
 
 "Dear me, Sister Thompson, you surely don t 
 think that is a just cause for jealousy!" she ex 
 claimed. 
 
 "No, only a natural cause, which she may never 
 consider at all. But she keeps putting it behind 
 her like Satan so long as she lives. Now tell me 
 about Taggy. What is the trouble?" I asked, 
 coming straight to the point 
 
 "Perhaps I ought not to say anything about it 
 such a distressing affair." 
 
 " Well, if it has anything to do with Lily Triggs 
 and John Henry, you may as well tell w r hat you 
 know. The whole town is talking already." 
 
 "The truth is, Sister Lipton sent for Mr. Battle 
 this morning. She was in a great state. Mr. 
 Battle thinks she was hysterical," she began. 
 
166 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "Oh, she would be. Taggy is always hysteri 
 cal," I put in. 
 
 "She said she had found a note from Mrs. 
 Triggs in Brother Lipton s pocket " 
 
 "Naturally. It was about the Easter music, 
 I ll warrant. Lily s at her worst when she writes 
 about anthems!" I interrupted again. 
 
 "I think it was, in fact, but she told Mr. Battle 
 that no good woman would write to a married 
 man that way about Jerusalem the Golden. She 
 said our choir was the sinkhole of iniquity, and 
 that Mrs. Triggs feet well, I will not tell what 
 she said about her feet. She said the note indi 
 cated that the relations between her and Brother 
 Lip ton were sentimental, to say the least of it " 
 
 "On Lily s part, of course," I sniffed, "but that 
 ought not to prove John Henry guilty." 
 
 "So Mr. Battle tried to make her believe, but 
 she was so wrought up she told him if he didn t 
 put Mrs. Triggs out of the choir she would pub 
 lish her to the world, and leave the church her 
 self." 
 
 "Publishing Lily will do no good. Everybody 
 knows her and nobody knows her," I commented. 
 
 "And that is not the worst of it," Sister Battle 
 went on. 
 
 "Don t tell me she sent for Lily!" I exclaimed, 
 
 "No, but this afternoon, just before you came, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 167 
 
 Brother Lipton called. You wouldn t have known 
 him!" she exclaimed, deeply sympathetic. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I should They all look the same 
 way when Lily passes them up innocent and 
 wilted!" 
 
 "He explained everything, said he had done 
 nothing wrong. Brother Battle, he said, my 
 wife s an angel and I m as innocent as she is. 
 I m as true to her as she is to me ! But he handed 
 in his resignation as Sunday-school superintendent 
 and would you believe it, that poor man left 
 this house with the tears streaming from his eyes. 
 Now what are we to do?" she concluded. 
 
 "If the Lord in His wisdom saw fit to call Lily 
 for solo service in the celestial choir, it would 
 help this church and soothe the heart of every 
 woman in it. But He won t," I sighed. 
 
 "Something must be done. How will the church 
 take his resignation as Sunday-school superin 
 tendent?" she insisted. 
 
 "Oh, the church need never hear of that. 
 Brother Battle must not accept it. Meanwhile, 
 I ll go round and see what I can do with Taggy," I 
 said, rising and putting on my things. 
 
 I found her lying crosswise upon the bed. The 
 shades were down and the room was so dark I 
 could barely see her. She had a piece of brown 
 paper soaked in vinegar on her head, which is 
 
168 A Circuil Rider s Widow 
 
 the remedy she uses for sick headaches. Both 
 feet dangled over the side of the bed as if she d 
 lost the use of her legs. Her arms were spread 
 wide, at right angles to her body, which made 
 her look like an abbreviated cross in a gingham 
 dress. I never saw anything look so flat unless 
 it was a dead battercake on a cold griddle. I 
 doubt if there is a married woman in the world 
 who does not know that supine anguish as a 
 familiar experience. No matter how good a man 
 is to his wife, she will fling this kind of fit occa 
 sionally and give up her ghost. Maybe it is 
 because he scorned a favourite dish or forgot to 
 kiss her when he left the house. Any little thing 
 will bring it on if she s in the fit-flinging mood. 
 Oh, she can remember the time when he never 
 forgot to kiss her, and when what she cooked for 
 him "tasted like manna from heaven!" 
 
 "Sick headache, Taggy?" I asked, bending 
 over the footboard of the bed. 
 
 She rolled her head from side to side in a feeble 
 negative. 
 
 "Summer complaint? " I asked. 
 
 "No," she moaned. 
 
 "Then it s Lily Triggs!" I announced calmly. 
 
 Her mouth went up in the middle and down at 
 the corners. Her face worked until it looked the 
 little old worn-out mask of a great tragedy. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 169 
 
 "I suppose it s all over town by this time," she 
 whispered, rending herself with a sob. 
 
 "No, it is not, but it will be if you don t get up 
 from here and take a hand in the game," I said 
 coolly. 
 
 "Game!" she wailed. "I m a good woman, 
 Sister Thompson; I can t plan such a game." 
 
 "That s what s the matter with half the good 
 women they leave the other kind to play it 
 and win it!" I sniffed, feeling round in the dark 
 for a chair to sit on. 
 
 "What can I do?" she asked. 
 
 "You can get up from here, powder your face, 
 curl your hair, put on your best frock, and meet 
 your poor John Henry with a smile when he 
 comes home," I advised. 
 
 "Oh!" she moaned, as if I d asked the dead to 
 smile. 
 
 "You can tell him you are sorry you ve made 
 such a goose of yourself and you know he is not 
 to blame," I said severely; and then added: "He 
 is not to blame. You are the one at fault." 
 
 "I!" she cried, as if I had pierced her with hot 
 irons. "What have I done but endure and endure 
 for months in silence?" 
 
 "Yes, you are and I am all the decent women 
 in this town are to blame who have stood by like 
 pale worms of the dust and allowed a pink-faced 
 
170 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 grass widow with a blond wig and divorce-court 
 morals to run this town and even our church like 
 a Punch-and-Judy show for her own amusement," 
 I repeated indignantly. 
 
 "Haven t we tried to get rid of her?" she 
 sobbed. 
 
 "No, you only wanted to do that. What you 
 really did was to countenance her by joining her 
 Suffrage League," I answered accusingly. 
 
 "But I ve always been in favour of suffrage for 
 women, Sister Thompson!" 
 
 "So have I, Taggy. But I wouldn t join the 
 angel band if I saw the devil leading it. I should 
 know there was a nigger in the woodpile some 
 where. And that s what s the matter with the 
 suffrage in this country now. Too many women 
 flirting round in the movement who should be 
 in institutions of correction. It gives the men a 
 conscientious but dishonest excuse for opposing 
 the ballot for the rest of us." I said all this 
 speaking very fast, for my heart burned within 
 me. 
 
 Taggy sat up and looked at me. She was a 
 drolly pathetic figure with that brown-paper 
 plaster still sticking to her forehead. Her eyes 
 were red, her lids swollen with dark circles be 
 neath, and her neck appeared wofully long, like 
 the withered stem of a withered rose. Women 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 171 
 
 do demand much of their husbands when they 
 expect to be loved for just their virtues. Some 
 where in the town at that moment, I reflected, 
 Lily Triggs was prancing about, perfumed with 
 that carnation talcum powder she uses, with a 
 Madonna fichu spread like snow over her shoulders 
 and the toes of her slim slippers peeping in and out 
 like dusty lily petals from beneath her pretty skirts. 
 
 "What can I do, I feel so helpless?" Taggy said 
 presently. 
 
 " Stop blaming John Henry. A woman only con 
 fesses defeat when she accuses her husband about 
 another woman," I began, for I saw it comforted 
 her to have me take sides with him. 
 
 "You don t know how far this thing has gone. 
 We can never be the same to one another again. 
 Oh ! " she wailed, flinging herself back in another fit. 
 
 "Now, Taggy, you just stop that and listen to 
 me," I chided. "You have the situation in your 
 hands. All you have to do is to act, and act right 
 now!" 
 
 "Well, if I can, I will," she answered, recovering 
 herself with a kind of dying sigh. 
 
 "When she wrote that note to John Henry " 
 
 " What ! How did you know she had written to 
 him?" she exclaimed, horrified. 
 
 "I was sitting behind the choir during Easter 
 services and saw her pass it to him," I explained, 
 
172 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 determined not to give the preacher and his wife 
 away. "Now you must answer it," I began again. 
 
 "But you don t know what was in it, and I d die 
 before I d show it to a living soul!" she cried. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do. She said she hoped some day 
 they d be singing this beautiful anthem, "Jerusalem 
 the Golden," in Paradise, where there was nothing 
 sordid or earthly to keep souls from sweet and per 
 fect communion something like that," I con 
 cluded. 
 
 "How did you know what she said to him?" 
 Taggy gasped in amazement. 
 
 "I know Lily, my dear, and her kind. They all 
 deal in the terms of celestial purity and innocent 
 love when they fish for singing trout in the church 
 choir. It s a kind of phosphorescent bait they 
 angle with, and that is the worst they do. You 
 never will catch one of them," I explained, and 
 went on about the letter she should write. 
 
 "Begin it this way: Dearest Lily: My husband 
 has shown me the note you have written to him " 
 
 "But he didn t," she interrupted. "If only 
 he had! He concealed it from me. I found it 
 tucked away in in his watch pocket, wadded up as 
 small as that!" 
 
 "Naturally he didn t want you to see it. A man 
 saves his wife the offense of such things," I ex 
 plained, secretly irritated at John Henry, but de- 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 173 
 
 termined to clear him of his sneaking flirtation for 
 his wife s sake. 
 
 However, it is very hard to inspire the right cun 
 ning in a good woman whose veracity lacks the 
 elasticity which is necessary when you are saving 
 your husband from a lady serpent after he has 
 ceased to struggle. We finally composed a letter to 
 Lily between us, I furnishing Taggy s lisping, stam 
 mering pen with the words of wisdom. It read thus : 
 
 DEAREST LILY: 
 
 I appreciate the beautiful note you wrote my 
 husband yesterday. It indicates the quality of 
 your character and the sweet instincts you have for 
 celestial companionship in Paradise, where we are 
 told that there is neither marrying nor giving in 
 marriage and where everybody is divorced. 
 
 The Suffrage League is familiar with your social 
 and economical ideals in this present world, but 
 few of the women have been able to understand 
 this side of your character though we have won 
 dered about it a great deal. So I am taking the 
 liberty of including this letter you sent to John 
 Henry as a part of the program of our next Thurs 
 day s meeting at Mrs. Warren s. I shall read it 
 under the head of current events, which you know 
 is my share of the report. Be sure and come for 
 we shall need you to explain one or two of the more 
 spiritual passages. 
 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 TABITHA LIPTON. 
 
174 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "But," cried Taggy in despair when we finished, 
 "I can t read that scandalous note of hers to fifty 
 women. It would ruin John Henry!" 
 
 "You had better ruin him than leave her to do 
 it," I snapped. "But, you goose, don t you know 
 she will never risk it? She d stick her head in the 
 fire first. Take my advice, send this note, sit 
 steady in the boat and wait for what happens." 
 
 She agreed, as a relative sometimes agrees to a 
 dangerous operation with the forlorn hope of sav 
 ing a dear one s life. By way of making sure that 
 her nerve did not fail her, I took the letter to the 
 post-office on my way home and mailed it. 
 
 Sally Parks dropped in to see me on her way 
 home from the league Thursday. 
 
 "Have you heard the news?" she asked. 
 
 "No. Nothing bad, I hope," I answered, feel 
 ing strangely elated and guilty at the same 
 time. 
 
 "Lily Triggs has gone to a sanitarium!" 
 
 "Health failed?" I inquired innocently. 
 
 "She s a nervous wreck!" Sally answered with a 
 sigh. "You know how hard she works, takes no 
 care of herself. Charlotte thinks the choir prac 
 tice for that Easter anthem was the last straw." 
 
 "I expect it was," I said dryly. 
 
 "We can t carry on the work of the league 
 without her and we must give up the art exhibit. 
 
" TAKE MY ADVICE, SEND THIS NOTE, SIT STEADY IN 
 THE BOAT AND WAIT FOR WHAT HAPPENS. " 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 175 
 
 Everybody was so distressed this afternoon when 
 Charlotte broke the news to us," she went on. 
 
 "Then she will return?" I asked coldly. 
 
 "Oh, yes, she s just going to take a long rest. 
 She hopes to be able to carry on the work more 
 vigorously next winter. Meanwhile, she sug 
 gested that we drop the league altogether. She 
 thought it would be better to do nothing than to 
 make mistakes, as we should without her guiding 
 hand. So we disbanded this afternoon. We only 
 had a social meeting," she explained innocently. 
 
 "Didn t even have the current events with your 
 tea?" 
 
 "No. Charlotte said she d promised Lily not to 
 move hand or foot in the work until her return. We 
 all thought that was best." 
 
 Then she looked at me reproachfully, for I was 
 laughing. 
 
 "I can t understand you, Mary Thompson," she 
 cried indignantly. "You don t seem to realize 
 what a good thing the league is, and how helpful 
 Lily has been in so many ways. She is so capable. 
 But you don t appreciate her!" 
 
 "Yes, I do, Sally. I recognize her gifts and I 
 appreciate her more than you do. She s just too 
 smart for a little place like Berton," I answered, 
 still laughing at the vision I had of Taggy trem 
 bling with fear at the narrow escape she had had. 
 
176 A Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 
 
 When I recall the men and women who have 
 done the most good in Berton, they are not those 
 with the greatest gifts and the broadest culture. 
 
 But they are the simpler kind, who believe in in 
 fant baptism because they are told to believe in it 
 or in infant damnation, for that matter, if they are 
 told to believe in that; who have no minds of their 
 own with which to think out the esoteric problems 
 of life and death, but accept these as the shadows 
 of mysteries through which they must pass by 
 faith. They inflict wounds and bind up wounds, 
 never keeping a very straight account of who is to 
 blame. They forgive much, and are ever ready to 
 do something else, sure that this also will be for 
 given. Not reasonable just children, you under 
 stand, who must go a long way to school, but who 
 return in the evening of their days to their Father s 
 house, every one spent, very tired. Dull scholars, 
 having missed half the lessons taught in the hard 
 curriculum of life, but all finished at last. I say 
 these are the best people the world over, though 
 they lead no great reforms and start no revolu 
 tions. It is not until you get as bad and as wise 
 as Solomon that you throw down your pen and 
 cry, "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." There 
 is a good deal of vexation mixed with the foolish 
 ness of faith, but one thing I have learned never 
 to look to a bad man like Solomon for the right 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 177 
 
 wisdom, and never to follow a woman whose mind 
 is so broad her morals are split, no matter if every 
 thing she says is the truth. What she does is 
 bound to be a lie. 
 
 The period following Lily Triggs departure from 
 Berton was the last term we had in our church of 
 the old-fashioned Christian life. We were shortly 
 to be tried by standards so old that they were new. 
 We were to experience anguish and uncertainties 
 which rent the membership as it had never been 
 rent by our feuds and transgressions, and from 
 which the church has never recovered. But I say, 
 for a season we returned to the old order. The 
 life of the community centred once more about 
 the church and Sunday-school and the Woman s 
 Foreign Missionary Society. The Feminist Move 
 ment appeared to have lost consciousness. I 
 could spend the afternoon visiting, and never 
 hear a word about how the suffragists lost the 
 election in New Jersey or how they won the ballot 
 in some Western state. The choir in our church 
 expanded and contracted from time to time ac 
 cording to the Sabbath-singing mood of the mem 
 bers. No one attended choir practice; any one 
 who chose flatted his or her notes on Sunday. 
 Still, it gave me a restful feeling to hear Evalina 
 Lipton and Sam Parks and Susie King merely 
 dragging the words of the hymns by the hind legs 
 
178 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 of the tune which is a repose I never had when 
 Lily put the fancy trills into 
 
 How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
 Is laid for your faith in His excellent word ! 
 
 I may have been wickedly prejudiced against 
 Lily. I have set down in these pages all the 
 evidence we ever had against her which was cir 
 cumstantial. But many a man has been convicted 
 of murder upon less damaging evidence. 
 
 Quarterly meetings are a great occasion among 
 Methodists, especially in village and country 
 churches. For three months the pastor takes his 
 texts from the meeker Scriptures like the Gospel ac 
 cording to John, but when the presiding elder 
 comes we expect a change, and we get it. Every 
 body brisks up. The woman who is to have the 
 honour of entertaining him is in a swivet for days 
 beforehand. She cleans her house from attic to 
 cellar, as if he might be the higher critic of her 
 domestic life. She tears the guest chamber to 
 pieces, puts it together again, covers the puffed-up 
 bed with her fringed counterpane and lays her 
 sacred shams, embroidered with "Holy Night, 
 Peaceful Night," upon the pillows. She bakes 
 cakes, sets yeast to rise for his favourite bread, 
 and offers up her finest chickens. One might 
 think she prepared for a regiment instead of for one 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 179 
 
 man. But he is the presiding elder, next to the 
 bishop in the Annual Conference, and equal as a 
 rule to several men when it comes to nourishing 
 his inner man. All of which we know and even the 
 fowls know, for they are shy of their own roosting 
 places for a week afterward. 
 
 We know what to expect on Sunday, a "great 
 sermon." He may preach the same one four times 
 in succession at the different churches. But you 
 can depend upon one thing he will take his text 
 from one of Paul s Epistles. Bishops and presid 
 ing elders always do. The character of Paul seems 
 to appeal to them more than the other apostles. 
 The pastor will have been giving us sermons on 
 "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest," or "Take my yoke 
 upon you, and learn of me . . . for my yoke 
 is easy, and my burden is light," and has been at 
 great pains to prove the truth of this in spite of the 
 grave mortal suspicions we have to the contrary. 
 But on this day he reads the opening service and 
 then comes down and sits in the congregation, with 
 the air of a famished and thirsty man who is about 
 to have a feast of good things. Then the elder 
 takes his text from Paul. And he begins with an 
 interpretation of this great presiding elder of the 
 early church. If he is himself a small, nervous, 
 bald-headed man he is sure to tell us that Paul was 
 
180 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 a nervous bald-headed man. If he is a large man 
 with a majestic manner, he pictures Paul as a 
 giant, with the power of presence which belongs 
 only to great souls. In any, case the congregation 
 often realizes that there is a striking resemblance 
 between this famous itinerant, who had "no con 
 tinuing city," and the presiding elder of our dis 
 trict. 
 
 I am not in a position to know, being strictly a 
 Methodist in my church experiences, but I have 
 wondered if the Baptists and Presbyterians mag 
 nify the character of Paul as we do. And I am not 
 suggesting the least criticism of the bishops and 
 elders in our church who choose him instead of 
 Peter or John or James more particularly as their 
 pattern, for I suppose if a man is able to exalt him 
 self into the Pauline consciousness he is more apt 
 to live like Paul. Certainly many of them sustain 
 a relation to the itinerant pastors very similar to 
 that he had for Timothy. They are very helpful, 
 tender, and fatherly to them. But my experience 
 is that you cannot live through the weekdays of 
 your life sustained by a presiding elder s sermon, 
 with the same intimate sense of personal security 
 which comes from remembering what your own 
 two-by-four pastor tells you. 
 
 The point is this: When the presiding elder 
 preaches upon the "great fundamentals of the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 181 
 
 Christian life," until the reverberations ring back 
 from your eternal hills, when the church is filled 
 with half the town, and everybody goes away to 
 a big dinner and to tell what a great sermon it 
 was I say all this clothes a quarterly meeting 
 in a glamour which conceals the real purpose of 
 it. 
 
 This comes out in the Quarterly Conference, 
 which is a strictly business affair even if it is held 
 on Sunday afternoon. The pastor, stewards, and 
 Sunday-school superintendent meet at the church, 
 with the presiding elder in the chair. The preacher 
 in charge is called on for his report. He mentions 
 how many new members have been received, how 
 much has been paid on salary, how much on church 
 extension, foreign missions, and so on. The Sun 
 day-school superintendent does the same thing, 
 tells how much the children paid on Children s 
 Day, so much for missions, so much for literature, 
 incidentals, and so on. The stewards do the same 
 things. They add up the totals. The elder takes 
 his per cent, of the preacher s salary, puts on his 
 hat, and catches the next train out of town. 
 
 It is all for the best, of course. I am not writ 
 ing this history to criticise the government of 
 our church. But my belief is that this is where 
 the likeness between a presiding elder and the 
 Apostle Paul grows so faint as to be hardly dis- 
 
182 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 tinguishable. If Timothy had a wife and two 
 children when he was pastor of the church at 
 Ephesus, and received only nineteen dollars during 
 the first three months, I doubt if Paul would 
 have come along as presiding elder and taken 
 two or three dollars of it as his share. I have 
 known that to happen here. And every time I 
 see an elder vaulting through the empyrean of 
 eloquence, with the Pauline Epistles in one hand 
 and the Fundamentals of the Christian life in the 
 other, I cannot help thinking of the way Brother 
 Battle looked when he paid the elder his per 
 cent, of that nineteen dollars. 
 
 With a membership of two hundred and fifteen 
 this church paid that year twenty-one hundred 
 dollars all told. The pastor s salary was seven 
 hundred and eighty dollars. The presiding elder 
 received one hundred and sixteen of that, leaving 
 him with only six hundred and sixty-four dollars. 
 And there was not a man in our church with an 
 income equal to this presiding elder s salary! 
 
 Brother Battle had a wife and two children. 
 And he was obliged to keep a horse. He was also, 
 by the laws of the Methodist Discipline, obliged 
 to keep out of debt. 
 
 I feel about the financial demand of our church 
 as I do about the whale s swallowing Jonah I 
 do not understand it and I do not understand 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 183 
 
 them. I lack the world breadth of vision required 
 to make and sustain a great Christian organization. 
 So I just accept the miracle of Jonah, and go on 
 collecting dues for our missionary society, leaving 
 the Lord to deal with the appropriation boards as 
 He sees fit later on. Most of the members of 
 this church feel the same way. Sometimes, how 
 ever, I have been discouraged enough about con 
 verts in heathen nations to wonder if it would 
 not be less expensive if we sent for the heathens 
 and educated them here as foreign missionaries 
 to their own people, instead of sending our own 
 missionaries to them. A Christian heathen can 
 live on much less than one of our missionaries. 
 And he ought to do as much good. 
 
 But this is no affair of mine, and I always feel 
 guilty when I have such thoughts, especially 
 when I consider the raven-fed faith of Methodist 
 itinerants. They are never poor in spirit. They 
 are rich in the knowledge they have of long years 
 before them in the work. They keep up the 
 simplest and most childlike defenses against pov 
 erty, being always desperately poor. They have 
 widows and orphans funds which do not pay 
 enough to bury the widows and orphans. 
 
 But you cannot starve a Methodist preacher, 
 nor get him in debt, nor tempt him to steal from 
 his own church collections, and you will never 
 
184 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 see his children begging bread. I have known 
 one with a wife and baby to live on two hundred 
 and forty dollars a year, and save enough to pay 
 their railway fare across the state to his next ap 
 pointment. No man can doubt the miracle of 
 the loaves and fishes who knows anything about 
 the miracle in domestic economy wrought every 
 year by Methodist itinerants. They are artlessly 
 generous, like children, and strangely confiding 
 in their dealings with the grasping world. Faith 
 is a habit of mind with them which reaches cheer 
 fully to the mercies of God when there are no 
 mercies in sight, and back again to any man mean 
 enough to deceive them. I have never known one 
 to show any cunning in his own carnal affairs ex 
 cept when it came to a horse trade. 
 
 The Lord himself seems to inspire a Methodist 
 preacher with supernatural shrewdness when he 
 goes out to buy a horse. He invariably returns 
 with a sound beast and something to boot in his 
 pocket, even when he has traded a hammer- 
 headed, goat-hammed nag to the other fellow. 
 This, in fact, is the initial step in the transaction. 
 He picks up a horse which appears to have been 
 assembled from different zoological periods the 
 lumbering shanks of a mastodon, the hunched-up 
 back of a dromedary, and the ribs of any old skele 
 ton; a sort of equine hyperbole of sorrowful nega- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 185 
 
 tion. But, given time, he will always swap this 
 thing for a good horse. 
 
 We had an example of this shrewdness and the 
 itinerant s curious guilelessness in our own pastor. 
 Brother Battle acquired in some manner known 
 only to the Providence which assists in these 
 matters a very fine gray mare. She was a slender- 
 legged, thin-flanked young thing, that held her 
 head like a proud maiden, carried her tail airily 
 over the dashboard, and spurned the earth with 
 her feet. If she had a fault in the world, which 
 her master stoutly denied, it was pulling the peg 
 out of the fastening on the barn door and helping 
 herself to what she found inside. 
 
 One morning I heard groans accompanied by 
 loud screams of anguish from the barnyard of the 
 parsonage. I ran to the window and stood in 
 amazement at the scene across the street. A score 
 of men hung over the fence before the barn. They 
 were shouting directions to a dozen more who were 
 inside. Sister Battle stood in her kitchen door 
 looking as if the worst had happened at last. The 
 two children were wailing disconsolately, with 
 their faces pressed to the pickets of the back fence. 
 Brother Battle, wearing his long-tail coat, occupied 
 the centre of the stage. He held the gray mare 
 by the bridle and was walking her up and down 
 with great difficulty, for the horse seemed deter- 
 
186 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 mined to sit down at every step. She was at 
 least twice her normal size round the middle. 
 Her head drooped, her back arched, and her tail 
 was clasped between her legs in a kind of anguished 
 horse prayer. 
 
 "Don t let her lie down!" shouted a voice. 
 
 "If she does she s gone!" cried another. 
 
 "She s as good as dead anyhow," growled an 
 other. At which the children keened their noses 
 to the wind with ear-piercing shrieks. 
 
 "What on earth is the matter?" I panted, hav 
 ing run across the street and joined Sister Battle. 
 
 "Poor Daisy pulled the peg out of the door 
 again last night and ate all the peas we had for the 
 cow!" she moaned. 
 
 "How many peas did you have?" I asked. 
 
 "About half a bushel," she admitted reluctantly, 
 as if she shrank from telling how drunk Daisy had 
 made herself on cowpeas. 
 
 At this moment the horse went down. She 
 lay with her legs sticking up like the standard of 
 a canvas wagon top. 
 
 The crowd dispersed, having given up hope. 
 Sister Battle and I hurried into the house bearing 
 the bereaved children. 
 
 Half an hour later Brother Battle came in, 
 wearing the redeemed look a preacher always puts 
 on when he has had an answer to prayer. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 187 
 
 "Well, we are going to save her!" he answered. 
 "I have secured the services of a veterinary." 
 
 "A veterinary!" I exclaimed. "There is not 
 one in this town." 
 
 "He has just moved in lives some distance out 
 on a farm, he told me. He will take the horse 
 home with him presently. Says she will be as 
 good as new in a couple of weeks. But I had to 
 pay him eleven dollars!" he added ruefully. 
 
 "Eleven dollars, Joseph!" gasped Sister Battle. 
 
 "Yes. He wanted more, but I told him that 
 was all I had." 
 
 Ten days later they received a note from the 
 veterinary saying that the mare had died. 
 
 Brother Battle made application at once to 
 the Asburg Remounting Association. This is an 
 organization of circuit riders in this Conference 
 which furnishes one hundred dollars toward the 
 purchase of another horse when a member of it 
 loses one. 
 
 A private collection among the sympathetic 
 church members added to this sum fifty dollars. 
 And Brother Battle started in high feather to the 
 neighbouring town where a young mare was ad 
 vertised for sale. 
 
 The horse proved to be his own mare, Daisy! 
 The owner of the stables bought her from a band 
 of strolling gypsies ten days after the "veterinary" 
 
188 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 took her and eleven dollars to boot from our 
 pastor. 
 
 The reports of the Asbury Remounting Asso 
 ciation show that more than one circuit rider has 
 been obliged to return the hundred dollars sent 
 him, owing to the miraculous reappearance of a 
 horse which he mourned as dead. 
 
 All told, the year was passing peacefully, as if 
 time had gone back and joined the church. Our 
 lives were measured once more to us by our 
 prayers and aspirations toward the life to come. 
 There was no competition of other interests against 
 those of the church, no Suffrage League meeting 
 to interfere with the attendance of the members 
 of the Woman s Foreign Missionary Society, no 
 lectures on art, no committees devoted to the 
 solving of social and economical problems. Every 
 thing was so peaceful that we might have thought 
 Satan had restored the stolen goods of the spirit 
 in this place. The people drifted back into their 
 old ways of attending divine services. Our prayer 
 meetings were midweek events. Sometimes at 
 the close of an unusually impressive sermon 
 Brother Battle would say: "All those who desire 
 to flee from the wrath to come, or long for a deeper 
 work of grace, will please signify the same by 
 coming forward and giving their hand to the pastor 
 during the singing of the last hymn." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 189 
 
 Then Susie King would bring her fingers down 
 upon the organ keys in dolorous chord. The 
 choir would clear its throat, everybody would 
 rise, and we would all begin to search ourselves. 
 
 Am I a soldier of the cross, 
 
 A follower of the Lamb ? 
 And shall I fear to own His cause, 
 
 Or blush to speak His name ? 
 
 Then Susie would get the best of it with the 
 organ again, and we would look about and wonder 
 why this one or that one did not accept the in 
 vitation. 
 
 "Last stanza!" Brother Battle would say, look 
 ing very mournful because nobody accepted the 
 invitation. And we d begin again: 
 
 Sure I must fight if I would reign; 
 
 Increase my courage, Lord ! 
 Til bear the toil, endure the pain, 
 
 Supported by Thy word. 
 
 Then Molly Brown would slip by the other 
 people in her pew and step timidly forward to 
 give her hand. Molly is our bellwether ewe in 
 spiritual adventures. Once she moves out the 
 rest of us follow. The congregation winds itself 
 in and out, a long line. Everybody goes up and 
 
190 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 gives some kind of a hand, and the pastor is kept 
 very busy saying to each one, "God bless you!" 
 while only the choir is left to sing the chorus: 
 
 We will stand the storm, 
 We will anchor by and by ! 
 
 I do not say that great music has less effect, 
 but I doubt if any grand opera ever sung has so 
 good an effect upon just simple, honest folk as a 
 service like this. We go home and commit our 
 peculiar besetting sins as usual. But these are 
 only the hobnail shoes of our carnal nature by 
 which we keep our feet amid the affairs of this 
 present world. We know that somehow, by and 
 by, we ll set sail, stand the storm, and anchor 
 somewhere, in spite of a few little deeds done 
 strictly in the body. This is faith. And we are 
 all the children of faith, the offsprings of immortal 
 hopes, more than we are the sons and daughters of 
 the flesh. 
 
 No great poet ever had a lively sense of humour, 
 because wit is the blasphemy of high emotions. 
 And no great saint ever had a sense of humour, 
 either, because the scenery of the soul is incredibly 
 majestic in its lights and shadows. Still, the 
 annals of every church are filled with stories ab 
 surdly out of drawing with this dignity of eternal 
 life. It is because we are still in the childhood of 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 191 
 
 time, subject to the comic accidents of our own 
 human natures. 
 
 We had the usual humorous accidents during 
 this peaceful year. First, Emily Peters went off 
 somewhere and joined the Christian Scientists. 
 This was not funny. It was the first wise thing 
 I ever knew Emily to do. But if she had eloped 
 with a Christian Scientist some of our members 
 would not have been more scandalized than they 
 were when the news came. Then Emily came 
 home well and strong. But that which set us all 
 to grinning was the way she talked, in the lan 
 guage of a kind of dissolved mysticism. She 
 who had been the dullest and simplest of women 
 now confounded the wise with her new evangelism. 
 Sin was not sin, but an "error." Neuralgia, from 
 which she had suffered tortures, was also an 
 
 "error." 
 
 "If I d only known, Sister Thompson," she 
 exclaimed one day, "that there is no such thing as 
 sickness, disease, sorrow, and death, that they are 
 all errors!" 
 
 "But, my dear," I objected, "surely you know 
 we must all die some time!" 
 
 It was as if I had blown a strong wind against 
 her fragile wings. 
 
 "We must not admit death," she returned in 
 tones of awe; "that is the greatest error of all." 
 
192 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "You ll admit that many people are subject 
 to this error," I insisted. 
 
 "We must not think of death," she answered, 
 growing very nervous. "Thinking it commits 
 us to it." 
 
 I was ashamed of myself, as if I d cast a stone 
 at a bluebird perched too glaringly in the snow. 
 
 She was blessed with a kind of premature im 
 mortality of the mind, so I went no farther, even 
 consenting when she offered to give me absent 
 treatments for rheumatism. Both my knees have 
 grown sadly, stiffly erroneous, and I expected no 
 benefit; but my thought was that if she occupied 
 her mind with my ailments, she was not so likely 
 to backslide into her own neuralgia. 
 
 And there was the incident of Sam Parks 
 raincoat being up for prayers, which I reckon 
 was one of the most horrifyingly funny things that 
 ever happened in this church. When penitents 
 come to the altar for prayers in our church, some- 
 *imes one remains still kneeling after the others 
 are gone and the service concluded. In this case 
 the preacher and other spirit-comforting saints 
 remain and pray with him until he receives the 
 blessing, which is sure to come if he has the true 
 wrestling-Jacob courage. 
 
 We were in the midst of our revival late in 
 August of that year. The altar was filled with 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 193 
 
 penitents at the close of each service. One even 
 ing the weather was threatening and Sarn Parks 
 brought his raincoat. He came hi early and hung 
 it over the knob of the low post which supported 
 the end of the altar. 
 
 When the penitents returned to their seats as 
 usual after the concluding prayer Brother Battle 
 looked about him. He was nearsighted, but he 
 saw dimly what he supposed to be a particularly 
 meek penitent kneeling hi the shadows at the 
 extreme end of the chancel. 
 
 "Brethren!" he exclaimed, raising his hand, 
 "we still have one earnest soul kneeling here seek 
 ing forgiveness. Let us unite in prayer once more 
 for him!" 
 
 There was a moment of ghastly silence. No one 
 knelt, no one even bowed his head. Our attention 
 was riveted upon Brother Battle, who advanced 
 toward the wofully shrunken form. The next 
 moment he stretched out his hand benignly and 
 laid it upon the newel post draped with Sam s coat. 
 He started back as if he d been stung. 
 
 "We will receive the benediction!" he announced 
 sternly. And we did, but the Lord must have 
 wondered at the tartness with which this blessing 
 was asked. 
 
 Sam sneaked out and went home in the rain, not 
 daring to claim his coat after what had happened. 
 
194 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 I heard a man say, who sometimes stumbled 
 over his wife s footstool in the dark, that the devil 
 entered mere things as often as he did men. 
 Maybe he does, for I have known more than one 
 revival to freeze after some such incident as this. 
 We appear to be hung on a hair trigger spiritually, 
 between the sublime and the ridiculous. 
 
 Early in October Lily Triggs returned to Berton. 
 The good may be remembered by their virtues, but 
 so long as we live we are tagged every one by our 
 chief transgression. If a man drinks, he is known 
 as a drunkard no matter if he is a banker, or a 
 congressman, or a loving father and a good pro 
 vider. If a woman talks, she is known as a gossip 
 though she may be the leading spirit in all good 
 works. The fact that we forget or forgive our own 
 faults makes no difference, the label naming them 
 is tacked onto our reputations like an April Fool 
 placard on a man s back. 
 
 Lily had taken such a long rest from being the 
 lady serpent of Berton that she doubtless supposed 
 we were equally refreshed and absentminded. 
 But the very sight of her set the whole church 
 to seething and hissing speculations. Would she go 
 back to the choir? Would she assemble the league? 
 Some hoped so; some prayed fervently that she 
 would show decent discretion and keep out of things. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 195 
 
 She did not keep us long in suspense. She made 
 for the choir on the next Sabbath day, as if it was 
 like singing with John Henry in Paradise just to be 
 back, though Lipton was sitting meekly with his 
 wife four seats in the rear. 
 
 She was so glad to see everybody, and didn t we 
 think she was looking better? In fact, she was 
 fatally fresh and fair. And how she had longed for 
 dear old Berton! One might have supposed she 
 was the idol of our eyes, to hear her. 
 
 The first thing she did was to call a meeting of 
 the league to elect a delegate to the National 
 Suffrage Convention in Washington. Every one 
 thought she was the one to be sent. But she d 
 been away so long she wished to stay quietly at 
 home. Mrs. Warren, then! Charlotte was splen 
 did, of course, she explained, but she wished to 
 propose Mrs. John Henry Lipton. And Taggy, 
 who was not there to defend herself, was elected. 
 
 "The impudent thing!" she cried when she 
 heard of the honour. "I wouldn t leave this town 
 while she s in it and John Henry keeps his singing 
 voice, not even for Paradise, much less a Suffrage 
 Convention!" 
 
 Meanwhile, we knew before Conference that 
 Brother Battle would be moved. At the last 
 quarterly meeting he frankly informed the board 
 of stewards and the presiding elder that he was 
 
196 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 not the man for the place, because of "peculiar con 
 ditions" which he found beyond his control as a 
 pastor, and he asked for another appointment. 
 Every man present knew the "peculiar conditions" 
 to which he referred, and not one of them dared 
 lift his voice against them. 
 
 Thus we had got down to where even a Metho 
 dist itinerant, who is the most long-suffering and 
 patient of men, was anxious at any cost to get 
 away from this church. There are other churches 
 in the Conference, similarly afflicted, from which 
 preachers pray: "Good Lord, deliver us!" 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ON MONDAY, November 23, 1914, the list 
 of appointments for the Methodist preach 
 ers in the North Georgia Conference ap 
 peared in the morning paper. The first thing I 
 saw as I ran my eye down the column was that 
 Brother Battle, our pastor, had been sent to Cam- 
 den. Then I found this at the bottom of the 
 column, as if the Conference had barely remem 
 bered us at all: "Felix Wade, Berton Circuit." 
 
 I know the preachers of this Conference as a 
 tired old Sister of Mercy knows her beads; but this 
 was a new one. I had never heard of him, and I 
 was troubled, fearing that we had got another 
 theologue, just out of college. My anxieties were 
 not relieved when Brother Battle returned to Ber 
 ton the next day. 
 
 I went over to the parsonage at once to find out 
 what I could about the new preacher. Brother 
 Battle was very busy getting ready to leave on the 
 evening train, Sister Battle having packed as usual 
 on the sly. 
 
 He said he did not know Brother Wade, who had 
 been transferred from another Conference. Yes; 
 he was young. No; he did not look like a theo- 
 
 W 
 
198 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 logue. Well, how did he look, then? He couldn t 
 say; he was not good at describing people. No, 
 Brother Wade did not ask him about the Berton 
 Circuit, he answered, laughing when I pushed him 
 for a few particulars. He knew nothing about 
 him not even whether he was married. 
 
 The next day after the Battles left, the Aid 
 Society met at the parsonage. 
 
 Naturally we talked a good deal about the new 
 preacher and his family. Mrs. Lip ton said she 
 hoped his wife would take some interest in the 
 church, which was more than Mrs. Battle had 
 done. Mrs. Parks said she knew they would have 
 a baby that they always did, even if it was a 
 grandbaby; and she had sent her little Jimmy s 
 high chair, which he had outgrown, to the parson 
 age that day. She said it made her feel bad to see 
 the preacher s baby sitting on two volumes of 
 Kitto s "Commentaries" in a chair at the table, and 
 even then only showing his head and spoon over 
 the top of it. She waved her hand at the high 
 chair, which was in the hall. The arms were 
 battered where little Jimmy had registered his 
 spoon vows for two years. The paint had been 
 kicked off the foot rest, and the top of the back was 
 scarred where he had tried his early teeth on it. 
 
 We took a list of everything in the house, which 
 is an investigation of character the preacher s wife 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 199 
 
 always faces after her back is turned. Mrs. Lipton 
 discovered that a sheet was missing. The parson 
 age had four new sheets and one old sheet. Where 
 was that old sheet? She d like to know. We 
 found it wrapped and sewed round the ironing 
 board. This cleared Sister Battle from the sus 
 picion of theft, but not from the charge of ex 
 travagance. 
 
 I do not know anything more pathetic than a 
 parsonage after one preacher s family has moved 
 out and before the next one comes in. It is so for 
 lornly dingy inside, like an old nest used year after 
 year. A sort of secondhand home; never quite 
 fresh the rugs faded; the shades hanging to 
 springs that refuse to roll up or down; the china 
 chipped; a little dab of scraps mixed with the dust 
 in the garbage can, showing how frugal they were 
 of the very crumbs from the table, and the last 
 frantic effort of the pastor s wife not to leave any 
 dust behind to accuse her. 
 
 We looked into all these things, as was our right 
 and privilege. Then we planned what we could 
 afford to do for the new preacher s family. We 
 bought a doormat, a dishpan, and put in a new 
 stovepipe. These purchases left only forty cents 
 in the treasury of the Aid Society. We made a 
 list of things we could spare for the pantry from our 
 own stores. Mrs. Peters said she would give six 
 
200 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 glasses of jelly, though she thought Sister Wade 
 ought to return the glasses. She had contributed 
 jelly last year and the moulds were not returned. 
 Mrs. Sims would send two dozen eggs. Mrs. Lip- 
 ton thought she could spare a pound of butter. 
 Mrs. Warren would "see" that the stewards con 
 tributed the "staples," meaning flour, lard, sugar, 
 and coffee. I ve noticed that no one ever asso 
 ciates the thought of meat with a preacher s diet 
 when we are stocking the pantry. I always make 
 a cake and take it to the parsonage the day they 
 come. 
 
 We decided not to wash the windows, because 
 the weather was cold and because Mrs. Warren 
 said she thought the preacher ought to wash his 
 own windows. We went home, having done the 
 best we could and believing we had three more days 
 before the Wades came to get things ready for them. 
 
 I was in the kitchen Saturday morning mixing 
 the cake when the telephone bell rang. I knew it 
 must be Sally Parks, for I never faced a crucial 
 moment in my domestic life, when the soup was 
 about to boil over or when I had both hands in the 
 biscuit dough, that she didn t call and keep me 
 at the phone until the worst had happened. 
 
 "Is this you, Sister Thompson?" she began in 
 quavering tones. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 201 
 
 " Yes. How are you this morning ? " I answered. 
 
 " I m not very well. I feel strange and excited." 
 
 She always felt abnormal or subnormal; so I 
 waited without spending my sympathy. 
 
 "Have you seen him?" she began again. 
 
 "Seen who?" 
 
 "The new preacher. He s come!" 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 "I say Brother Wade s here; came in a car, with 
 a servant and a bulldog." 
 
 "A servant and a bulldog! Where s his wife?" 
 
 "I reckon she ll be in later. They say he s got 
 a houseful of children. Sister Lip ton s just called 
 to say that Sister Warren saw him pass her house. 
 Said it looked to her as if he had a piano in the 
 back of the car. She knew it was the preacher 
 because Sister Peters called up directly and said 
 they stopped at the parsonage." 
 
 I hung up the receiver without ceremony and 
 hurried to the window. I always keep the cur 
 tains drawn so as to see in secret what is going on 
 in public. 
 
 A high-powered gray car stood in front of the 
 parsonage on the opposite side of the street. 
 What I should call an extremely high-powered 
 bulldog sat on the seat behind the windshield. 
 And not another living creature was in sight. 
 He was a white dog, laced up in brass-studded 
 
202 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 harness. And he looked as if Nature had mashed 
 him in the face. His nose pointed straight up. 
 His lower lip sagged and showed his teeth. He 
 had no ear at all on one side, and the other was 
 only the remnant of an ear. His whole appear 
 ance was that of evil majesty. If ever I saw rank 
 heresy in my life, it was that dog sitting in that 
 car, which rumbled and snored like a rich man in 
 his sleep, in front of our Methodist parsonage ! 
 
 Before I could recover from my amazement a 
 heathen came down the steps from the house, 
 hurried to the car, and loaded himself with luggage, 
 which he carried in. 
 
 Presently smoke shot up from one of the chim 
 neys in long, snarled masses. I could hear doors 
 banging, the thumps and thunders of a terrific 
 adjustment going on, as if a strange and powerful 
 presence was making room for himself in that 
 small place. All this time that dog sat with 
 his nose keened to the wind, his ragged ear laid 
 flat, and his lower teeth showing, as if he wore a 
 false plate that didn t fit. 
 
 I do not know how long I stood there, waiting 
 for a glimpse of the preacher and craving to know 
 what was going on in that parsonage, where I 
 had known for nearly forty years everything that 
 did transpire there. 
 
 The heathen skipped in and out through the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 203 
 
 back door, nosed everything in the backyard, as 
 if he couldn t find what ought to be there. It s 
 one thing to take up missionary collections year 
 in and year out for the salvation of the heathen, 
 but it s another thing altogether to see him frisk 
 ing round your parsonage as if he owned it. That 
 Chinaman in the backyard didn t look any more 
 in keeping with a Christian minister than the 
 bulldog did in the front yard. 
 
 While I was considering this the figure of a 
 man appeared at one of the windows. Never 
 before have I longed for the sinful luxury of opera 
 glasses! I could make out that he was tall and 
 clean-shaved, but I could not distinguish his 
 features. He appeared to be staring straight 
 across the street at the window where I stood. No 
 woman is willing to be judged by the eye with 
 which she peeps, or the ear she flirts to a keyhole; 
 so I drew the curtains together gently as a zephyr 
 stirs them in summer weather and retired to the 
 kitchen. 
 
 The competition between Taggy Lipton, Char 
 lotte Warren, and myself, as to who shall make the 
 acquaintance of the new preacher first, has always 
 been strong and at times heated. If Mrs. Lip- 
 ton wins she tells him all the bad news in the 
 church, which members he can trust, and men 
 tions, by description rather than by name, those 
 
204 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 whom she considers stumbling-blocks or Pharisees 
 or busy bodies. If Mrs. Warren gets the first 
 chance at him she tells him how to manage the 
 church and lets him know the "awful mistakes" 
 his predecessor made. But if I come in a neck 
 ahead I tell him what a good people he has come 
 to serve, how devoted we are to the preacher, 
 ever ready to hold up his hands; leaving it with 
 him to discover how difficult we are and how gifted 
 with all human perversities. 
 
 Owing to the fact that my house is nearest the 
 parsonage, and to the pardonable eagerness of 
 my spirit to be up and doing, I am usually the 
 first one to meet him. 
 
 My interest was quickened by what I had seen, 
 and more particularly by what I had not seen. 
 I was concerned to know what manner of man 
 this was, come to preach the Gospel with a fine 
 car, a bulldog, and a heathen for his personal at 
 tributes. 
 
 It is the custom here for the preacher to come 
 first, while his wife makes a visit to her folks. I 
 reflected that this was all the better reason to 
 bestir myself in Brother Wade s behalf, and to 
 go over at the earliest possible moment to see 
 whether he was comfortable. Before the middle of 
 the afternoon I fixed up a little, not too much, took 
 the cake, and crossed the street to the parsonage. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 205 
 
 The heathen opened the door. And, seeing 
 the cake, I think he was for sending me back to 
 the kitchen, but I knew my place; so I marched 
 past him into the parlour. 
 
 "Tell Brother Wade Mrs. Thompson wishes to 
 see him," I said, setting the cake on the centre 
 table and turning upon him with Christian au 
 thority in my eye. 
 
 He bowed, strained out a sound that resembled 
 a sniff or a grunt, or a word which had not yet 
 grown into language, and disappeared. 
 
 I looked about me with the avid curiosity of a 
 woman who is alone among somebody else s things. 
 
 The room was the same little dingy parlour with 
 golden-oak furniture. Yet it was not the same. 
 The sofa was drawn up in front of the fire, as if 
 it meant to keep warm and enjoy itself. The 
 chairs reared back, as if they might cross their 
 legs presently. A gun leaned against the wall in 
 one corner. Fishing rods, reels, and nets littered 
 the floor. Kitto s "Commentaries on the Old and 
 New Testaments," which have been the whole of 
 the parsonage library for years, were packed into 
 the bottom shelf of the bookcase. And the shelves 
 above were glowing with volumes bound in as 
 many colours as Joseph s coat. 
 
 This was no longer the place where children 
 played before the fire; where a man in a rusty, 
 
206 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 long-tailed coat tramped back and forth prepar 
 ing his Sabbath sermon to the shrill music of 
 these young voices. I missed the pastor s wife s 
 workbasket. And bless my soul what had 
 become of the pictures on the walls? The 
 Aid Society spent three dollars for them "The 
 Martyr s Crown," " Clinging to the Cross," and a 
 really splendid coloured print of Wycliffe being 
 burned at the stake. They were not there. 
 
 Suddenly I saw something. A very large pic 
 ture hung above the mantel. It inhabited the 
 room, gave it a meaning and a majesty that were 
 new and strange. The colours were subdued and 
 very rich, like memories that blend and soften 
 beneath the tone of time. The background be 
 neath a distant sky was filled with the figures of 
 men and women clad in New Testament clothes. 
 They pressed forward with eager, listening faces. 
 In the foreground stood Jesus, with a young man, 
 who kneeled before him. 
 
 I recognized the scene portrayed as that of the 
 "rich young ruler," who, having everything else, 
 desired eternal life. It was all there in the picture 
 not the words, but the meaning. The majesty 
 and terrible tenderness in the face of Jesus; the 
 pride, wealth, and respectability of the world 
 kneeling at His feet in the figure of this young 
 man, who seemed already to have heard the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 207 
 
 command: "Sell whatsoever thou hast, and give 
 to the poor, . . . and come, and take up 
 thy cross, and follow me." The face of the kneel 
 ing man bore that expression which is thus inter 
 preted: "He went away grieved; for he had great 
 possessions." 
 
 Never before have I seen such a picture in a 
 Methodist parsonage. The men who live in them 
 usually have had no great possessions; so they 
 find it easy to follow the Prince of an invisible 
 Kingdom. 
 
 I was standing in the middle of the room, trying 
 to offset the impression of the other things scat 
 tered about, the meaning of the fishing tackle 
 and the variegated library blooming above Kitto s 
 "Commentaries," with the significance of this pic 
 ture, when the door opened behind me and I 
 stood in the presence of our new pastor. 
 
 He was tall; not spare, but slender. His brown, 
 coarse hair was so thick it rolled opulently from 
 the part. The bones of his face showed beneath 
 the smooth tanned skin like a steel frame, delicate, 
 and strong. He had the lips of a man, pleasing 
 and wistful; but he had the clear, passionless blue 
 eyes of a priest. His clothes, not clerical, fitted 
 him with a kind of elegance. They belonged to 
 him like a worldly charm, as if he had not chosen 
 his tailor from among the brethren. 
 
208 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 All this I saw in the first uplook I had at him 
 over the top of my spectacles as he entered the 
 room. 
 
 "Mrs. Thompson?" he said, advancing. 
 
 "Yes; and you are our new pastor?" I returned, 
 forgetting to mention the cake or to ask him about 
 his wife and children; in fact, forgetting every 
 thing, because he looked at me so hard as if he 
 had seen me before but could not remember where. 
 
 "It is good of you to drop in like this," he said, 
 still holding my hand and leading me to a seat on 
 the sofa in a manner that made me wish I had 
 worn my best dress. 
 
 Then he drew his chair up, sat down, and bent 
 a little forward to me, which somehow implied a 
 compliment. I do not know whether he meant 
 it for my Dorcas soul or for just the old woman 
 who had come out in a blustering wind and a 
 drizzling rain to welcome him; but I felt suddenly 
 the faded femininity of my years flame, as if more 
 of me had been recognized and revered than usual. 
 I knew I had two red spots on my cheeks. The 
 corners of his mouth deepened merely two ends 
 of a smile. And somehow I knew he had wished 
 me those little faded pink roses among the wrinkles. 
 
 "I just thought I d come right over and see if 
 there is anything I can do to make you comfort 
 able," I explained nervously. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 209 
 
 "Well, you ve done the only thing I needed. 
 You came," he answered. 
 
 Preachers, as a rule, are offish to women. They 
 will feed out of your hand and keep their distance 
 at the same time. The Saint Paul in them never 
 really trusts us. That is why I say, and have al 
 ways said, that if a preacher gets into trouble with 
 one the fault is more hers than his. I have 
 noticed time and again that the pastors we have 
 here prefer to sit more than two arms lengths from 
 the best female saint in this church, no matter how 
 old she is in her virtues and Christian fortitude. 
 Even Lily Triggs couldn t get near enough to sing 
 out of the same book with Brother Worthen. 
 Thus, I was not prepared for Brother Wade s easy 
 manner. I was flustered. 
 
 "It s a habit," I said primly. 
 
 "To visit the preacher?" 
 
 "And his family; yes." 
 
 "Well, keep it up." 
 
 I shot a glance at him side wise. His face was 
 turned away, as if he had something on it not for 
 me to see. But I saw something else a cowlick 
 on the crown of his head; a little place up there 
 where the hair stood up, denying the order of 
 things inside. In the days to come I recognized it 
 as the place in this man where the boy of him still 
 lived, impish, fantastic, and never quite conse- 
 
210 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 crated. Sometimes, when he would be preaching 
 and bent his head forward for emphasis, I could 
 see the minister of God in front and that rebellious 
 boy of him behind, with his hair tousled. 
 
 But now the only thing I understood was that 
 there was something in the situation, which charmed 
 and amused him, that was concealed from me. 
 
 We went on talking. I felt that I was being led 
 away from the things I wished to say, and the 
 things he ought to know about the church, to some 
 thing else he preferred to know. 
 
 I have looked many a preacher through and 
 through at a glance. I can tell the minute I lay 
 eyes on one whether his Gospel will be meek or 
 militant. But this was the first time I ever had 
 one to look me through as if he knew me from my 
 a-b-ab, to my nether transgressions. It was like 
 having my spiritual pockets picked when I had 
 come to deliver a welcome address and put him on 
 his feet in the church. I felt a pardonable irrita 
 tion; and I made up my mind to say what I d come 
 to say, if it was the last thing I ever did. I waited 
 with repressed energy for the next pause in the con 
 versation, which was so polite as to be almost 
 secular. The moment it occurred I shot in: 
 
 "We are glad to have you with us this year, 
 Brother Wade." 
 
 "Thank you. I am delighted with my appoint- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 ment. Berton Circuit has quite a reputation in 
 the Conference," he answered, smiling, but with 
 such directness I knew some one had been tattling. 
 
 "Yes; but you mustn t be discouraged. This 
 church needs " 
 
 "How many inhabitants has Berton?" he in 
 terrupted. 
 
 "Fifteen hundred, counting the coloured people; 
 about a thousand whites. The membership of our 
 church " 
 
 "How many churches?" cutting me off again; 
 not rudely, but like a physician who sticks a fever 
 thermometer in your mouth when you want to go 
 on telling him how you feel. 
 
 "Three for the white people, not counting Olive- 
 Vine," I answered. 
 
 "Why not count Olive- Vine?" 
 
 "It belongs to the Primitive Baptists, and " 
 
 "Four churches," he went on, "for a thousand 
 people! And what is the aggregate member 
 ship?" 
 
 I just folded my hands and looked at him. Did 
 he think he was called to all of them? I was 
 tempted to tell him he d do well to fix his attention 
 on the one congregation he d been sent to serve; but 
 I bore with him. 
 
 "The Methodists have two hundred members," 
 I answered patiently; "more than the Presby- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 terians and Baptists put together. But we hear 
 that there are only twenty on the roll at Olive- 
 Vine." 
 
 "What do these churches pay, all told, for mis 
 sions, preachers salaries everything?" 
 
 "The Methodists lead, of course. Since Ber- 
 ton has been made a half station, with two services 
 a month, we pay six hundred dollars a year, every 
 thing included, the Baptists nearly as much, and I 
 hear the Presbyterians collect more; but that s be 
 cause they have two or three rich members. No 
 body knows what the pastor of Olive- Vine gets, but 
 it s all the people give, because they don t believe 
 in missions, or Sunday-schools, or anything but 
 close communion, cold-water baptism " 
 
 "And in Jesus, the Saviour of Men," he put in so 
 quickly that I felt rebuffed. 
 
 "I begin to see how things are," he mused, not 
 noticing that I had snatched off my spectacles and 
 was looking at him with a strictly doctrinal stare. 
 "Four churches, worth, say, thirty thousand dol 
 lars; four hundred members, contributing two 
 thousand dollars for the support of the church, 
 missions, and ministry. Probably one thousand 
 more for repairs and incidentals. That s about 
 five dollars a head, counting the women and 
 children." 
 
 "But, Brother Wade, they don t. There are 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 213 
 
 many members who give nothing, and as many 
 more who give almost nothing." 
 
 " That would probably bring the tax up to twenty 
 dollars on an average for those who do pay." 
 
 "Tax! Tax!" I exclaimed, scandalized at the 
 use of this secular word about the Lord s moneys. 
 
 "What about your school?" he asked, paying no 
 attention to what I wanted to go on saying. 
 
 I told him we had a fine school, with three 
 teachers. 
 
 "They should receive about three thousand dol 
 lars a year, at the very least," he mumbled to him 
 self. 
 
 "They are thankful to get two thousand," I cor 
 rected. "The state doesn t pay its teachers very 
 well, you know." 
 
 "And the people cannot if they are taxed three 
 thousand for preachers and missions." 
 
 To hear him, one might think a bailiff took the 
 Conference collection! My idea of a Methodist 
 itinerant is that he should attend to his own busi 
 ness and keep out of all the other businesses 
 round him. I was about to take a peck at Brother 
 Wade, by telling him so for his own good, when he 
 began again: 
 
 "Any places of amusement?" 
 
 " No, thank heaven ! You will not have theatres 
 or dance halls to contend with here." 
 
214 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "Well, we must do something about that." 
 
 "Don t you think of such a thing!" I exclaimed, 
 deeply troubled. 
 
 "Well, I won t now," he laughed. 
 
 I felt during the next few minutes, as we talked 
 of any little thing, that he was smoothing my 
 feathers; that he was aware of the vague anxieties 
 in my mind. Though I was still troubled, I felt 
 strangely soothed and confidential. And before I 
 could fly up out of reach he looked at me as if he 
 had just found me in an old hymn book and 
 wanted to hear the tune. 
 
 "Tell me about yourself," he suggested gently. 
 
 "There s nothing to tell. I was born here; I ve 
 grown up and grown old in the church." 
 
 "Not in the world?" 
 
 "No; I ve never seen much of the world," I be 
 gan. 
 
 Then a queer thing happened to me. I looked 
 up at him, this man with the eyes of a priest, and 
 the mouth drawn across his face like a secret he 
 kept, and the boyish cowlick on his head, giving 
 him away. I was moved to tell him something 
 I d never confessed before, not even to William. 
 
 "But, Brother Wade, sometimes I ve been 
 tempted. I ve wanted to see things no Christian 
 woman ought to see, and to hear things and to do 
 things ! I can t get over wishing, just wishing " 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 215 
 
 With that, my mouth got the best of me and 
 primped up so I couldn t get it down. I began to 
 pat my foot, which is a nervous habit I have, and 
 to pat my knee, which I always do when I pat my 
 foot. But not another word could I get out. 
 
 "I know," he said kindly; "but you never did 
 any of those things." 
 
 "Well, I couldn t, you see, here in Berton. 
 There are so few sins a respectable woman could 
 commit," I answered, laughing, because he threw 
 back his head and laughed like a human being. 
 
 "And you ve always stood by the pastor," he 
 went on, grinning as if he accused me of that. 
 
 "If only you knew what I ve endured holding up 
 the hands of preachers!" I exclaimed, not realizing 
 I was talking to one, until he laughed again. 
 
 "I can imagine that has been no easy job." 
 
 "Not a job. It was my duty," I corrected. 
 "They ve all been good men. But this is a poor 
 charge; so we get the young ones before they know 
 how and the old ones when they are about to quit. 
 The young ones whoop and rant until they come 
 down with the laryngitis, not realizing that the 
 Gospel is a still small voice, and that they ve got 
 to save themselves to preach it for the next forty 
 years. 
 
 "Or they do right in the wrong place, which al 
 ways upsets the stewards or hurts the women s 
 
216 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 feelings. Or they don t visit enough; or they 
 .preach heresy without knowing it s heresy. And 
 the old ones well, you know how it is. They ve 
 outgrown the ways of youth. They don t draw 
 the young people, and they take the rest of us for 
 granted, like an easy chair they drop into after a 
 long, long journey. I don t blame em. But it s 
 been hard on this church and I reckon it s been 
 harder on them." 
 
 He sat silent, staring in the fire. I thought I d 
 discouraged him, so I added : 
 
 "But their wives have been a great help to them. 
 It s years since we had a single man, which is a 
 mercy. We used to get em so young and so poor 
 they couldn t marry, and we had to look after em, 
 even to see whether they kept their feet dry and 
 took medicine when they had a bad cold." 
 
 He made no reply; just looked round at me as if 
 I d caught him with his head wet from going in 
 swimming on the sly. 
 
 Then I got up to go, and caught sight of Jimmy 
 Parks little old high chair in the hall, which re 
 minded me of his wife and children. 
 
 "When s Sister Wade coming?" I asked. 
 
 "I don t know," he answered slowly, like a man 
 breaking bad news, cutting his eye at me. "The 
 fact is, I m not married." 
 
 "Not married!" I fairly screamed. "Why, we 
 
" NOT MARRIED! i FAIRLY SCREAMED. WHY, WE HEARD 
 
 YOU HAD A WIFE AND AND A HOUSEFUL OF CHILDREN " 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 217 
 
 heard you had a wife and and a houseful of 
 children." 
 
 "Mistake!" he said, grinning. 
 
 "But we haven t had a bachelor preacher for 
 twenty years! We ve got a parsonage. That 
 entitles us to a pastor with a wife." 
 
 All this came out indignantly, before I could 
 stop, I was so taken aback. 
 
 "I m sorry. But it may not be so bad as you 
 fear. I ll do the best I can. If I get cold feet, 
 or a sore throat, I ll know where to come for 
 help," he answered, smiling. 
 
 By this time my mind was running back and 
 forth so fast through the circuit, with this preacher 
 who had no wife for a shield and buckler, that I 
 forgot the cake. We were standing in the hall, 
 both of us looking at that baby s high chair reared 
 back against the wall. 
 
 Then he said something about the parsonage, 
 which, if he hadn t been the pastor sent to us by 
 the Conference, would have made me suspect 
 he d never been inside one before. Experience 
 damages illusions faster than most people can 
 mend them. It seemed to me that Brother Wade 
 had wrapped that Little house about him like a 
 spiritual garment, not knowing yet how cold it is 
 in winter or how hot in summer. 
 
 "I like it living in this house," he concluded. 
 
218 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "It contains the Gospel of poverty and charity, 
 the Scriptures of men and women who have denied 
 themselves, little worn places on the rugs where 
 children played. I m sure it is full of prayers 
 odd, how you get an idea like that from just things 
 sometimes, isn t it?" 
 
 "Yes, it is; very odd. . . . You ll find that 
 the plumbing s bad," I added dryly as I went 
 down the steps. 
 
 When I was halfway across the street I remem 
 bered something. 
 
 "Wait a minute, Brother Wade," I called, turn 
 ing back and seeing him still standing in the door 
 way. "I just wanted to ask you one thing," I 
 panted. "How do you pray the Lord s Prayer?" 
 
 "How do I pray the Lord s Prayer?" he asked, 
 looking puzzled, as if he might not be able offhand 
 to remember the prayer at all. 
 
 "Yes; do you say Forgive us our trespasses, 
 as we forgive those who trespass against us/ or 
 do you say Forgive us our debts?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; of course" relieved. "I say tres 
 passes/ Why?" 
 
 "The Shanklins are all Episcopalians. They 
 have no church here and they won t come to ours 
 if the preacher says Forgive us our debts. Those 
 poor people were without the Gospel all last year 
 because Brother Battle said debts. " 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 219 
 
 "Ah, I see! Well, they are safe this year as 
 trespassers, which means more against them than 
 being debtors," he said, not laughing, but as if 
 he was ready to accuse the whole Shanklin tribe 
 of their deeper sins. 
 
 I was not sure, when I knelt to say my prayers 
 that night, whether I should thank God for our 
 new pastor or ask Him to have mercy on the 
 Methodists in Berton. I was unsettled in my 
 spirit, which is worse than being unsettled in 
 your mind, when you ve been sitting and singing 
 your soul "away to everlasting bliss" for nearly 
 forty years in a familiar place. 
 
 But I had not got so far as this in my devotion 
 when the telephone bell rang. 
 
 It is wrong to make a woman angry when she s 
 on her knees before the throne of grace; but I 
 was too angry to go on, knowing Sally at the 
 telephone was like the importunate widow. So 
 I rose from my indignant knees and flounced into 
 the cold hall. 
 
 "Is this you, Sister Thompson?" she cheeped 
 in her snowbird voice. 
 
 "It s always me, Sally, when you ring this 
 number," I answered irritably. 
 
 "Have you been over to the parsonage yet?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
220 A Circuit Riders Widow 
 
 "What kind of preacher did we get?" 
 
 "Methodist," I returned maliciously. 
 
 There was a pause as if I d shot cold water on 
 her through the phone. 
 
 "Of course he s a Methodist! I just wanted 
 to know what you thought of him. 
 
 She began again primly, as if she didn t con 
 sider herself responsible for the rudeness of a 
 woman who pretended to be a Christian, and 
 she d hang up the receiver then and there. But I 
 knew she wouldn t; so I answered: 
 
 "It s not what I think of him or what anybody 
 thinks that s going to count this year, Sally; but 
 it s what he thinks." 
 
 "Oh, then he s a strong character. We need 
 a strong man to pull this church up." 
 
 "We ve got him." 
 
 "I reckon he was glad to see the high chair." 
 
 "I left him doting on it" dryly. 
 
 "Sister Warren s going to send her last winter s 
 coat over for Sister Wade as soon as she gets 
 
 in." 
 
 "Tell her she d better wait until she sees her." 
 
 "Why?" The tone was breathless with curi 
 osity. I knew she awaited the answer, to fill in 
 the lines of Sister Wade s figure. 
 
 "Because it might not fit," I answered evasively. 
 
 I could see Sally at the other end of the phone, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 her hair skinned back, her eyes rolled up, trying 
 to think of something else she wanted to know. 
 
 "Was that really his car?" came the next ques 
 tion. 
 
 "I didn t ask him." 
 
 "Sam says it can t be. He says if Brother 
 Wade could afford a fine automobile like that the 
 bishops would have given him a better appoint 
 ment." 
 
 "You tell Sam Parks a Methodist steward 
 ought to know better than to slander his bishop," 
 I answered sharply. 
 
 "Oh, he didn t mean it that way," she sniffed. 
 "Well, good-night! I do hope Brother Wade s 
 the right man for this church" in a last effort 
 to draw my fire. 
 
 But I held to my reserve. I was in no mood to 
 betray the preacher by gossiping about my visit. 
 Besides, I never talk about a new pastor. It s 
 like predicting the weather and then have it turn 
 against you and make you a prophet without 
 honour in your own church. 
 
 The next day was Sunday. Before time for 
 services the rear seats in our church were filled 
 with Baptists and Presbyterians. They always 
 come in force to hear our new pastor preach his 
 first sermon, and they always occupy the frigid 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 zone in this church, as if it agreed with them better 
 spiritually. 
 
 The Methodists were spread out comfortably 
 in the middle latitudes, with a sprinkling of the 
 sterner, stronger saints in the amen corners. The 
 front pews were empty, as if the body of the con 
 gregation shrank from the uncertainty of a new 
 pastor. All the most promising young sinners in 
 town were still standing outside on the pave 
 ment. Now and then one of them would sneak 
 up the steps, look in and draw back. They were 
 too meek in their transgressions to risk those front 
 pews with a new preacher in the pulpit; for if he 
 should prove to have a furnace soul and the sparks 
 of his Gospel flew out they would have no pro 
 tection in that exposed place. 
 
 The choir had assembled almost beyond the 
 front, for they had no choice in this matter of 
 places. We could see Sam Parks working his 
 head this way, and that, trying to pull his Adam s 
 apple up out of his collar, getting ready to sing 
 bass. We could hear Oscar Fain snuffing and 
 clearing his throat, getting ready to skin the tune 
 with his tenor. Evalina Lipton and Lily Triggs 
 sat a certain distance apart, as if neither wished 
 her alto or her soprano to be too closely associated 
 with the other. They coughed, looked straight 
 ahead, with their velvet hats sticking up like 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 223 
 
 high notes put in sidewise. Susie King sat upon 
 the stool and bent anxiously over the organ, study 
 ing the opening chords of 
 
 Come ye that love the Lord 
 And let your joys be known. 
 
 The clock, placed significantly on the wall 
 opposite the pulpit, marked the time five minutes 
 after eleven; and no sign of the preacher! The 
 people began to stir. Little suppressed sounds, 
 words barely whispered ran softly sibilant through 
 the house; watch cases snapped. Then we realized 
 suddenly that there was a commotion outside. 
 Instantly everybody s head seemed to be put on 
 backward and every face was turned toward the 
 door through which Felix Wade came, followed 
 by all the young men and boys who had gathered 
 before the church. They slipped into the front 
 pews like young puppies when they approach 
 forbidden places, walling their eyes, ears down, and 
 tails drawn beseechingly low. 
 
 The service began at once and proceeded as 
 usual. We stood and sang. We read the re 
 sponses. We knelt and prayed. We sat up and 
 sang again. All done with automatic precision 
 while we kept our eyes on the preacher, speculat 
 ing on what manner of man we had drawn for this 
 year s spiritual conflicts. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 It was not until he opened the Bible to read the 
 morning lesson that we realized there had been no 
 collection. 
 
 "He s forgotten to take the offering!" somebody 
 whispered behind me. 
 
 The stewards exchanged glances, half rose from 
 their seats as if they meant to get it anyhow. 
 With all those Baptists and Presbyterians in the 
 house, it was criminal negligence to omit the col 
 lection! I thought so myself. 
 
 But it was too late. The voice of a young man 
 filled the house; not the sonorous pastoral tones to 
 which we had long been accustomed, even in the 
 youngest preachers, but the clear, deep tones of 
 just a man, modulated by a kind of elegance. 
 
 /"And I, brethren, when I came to you, 
 came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, 
 declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I 
 determined not to know anything among you, save 
 Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with 
 you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trem 
 bling. And my speech and my preaching was not 
 with enticing words of man s wisdom, but in 
 demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that 
 your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, 
 but in the power of God. . . . Amen!" 
 
 The last word was added after a perceptible 
 pause. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow Z25 
 
 Then he went back and read the second verse 
 again: 
 
 " For I determined not to know anything 
 among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 
 . . . Part of the second chapter of First 
 Corinthians." 
 
 He stood staring down at the open book before 
 him. He waited so long that a strange fear seized 
 me lest he should stop there, walk from the pulpit 
 and leave the house, having delivered his message 
 in this brief sentence. 
 
 At last he began to speak, with his eyes still upon 
 the book, vaguely, like a man who dares not fully 
 trust himself. I have known a convert to falter 
 the same way the first time he is called on to lead in 
 prayer. But if ever such a one does receive the 
 new gift of his tongue he surpasses any elder saint 
 in the power of prayer. So now it was with this 
 young man before us. Presently he lifted his eyes as 
 if they were the wings of his soul, suddenly set free. 
 
 I have heard many better sermons just ser 
 mons, you understand but never one that dealt 
 with a certain Scripture as if it were the living 
 thought of the man who was talking, and not the 
 words of an apostle spoken two thousand years 
 ago. There was no authority in his manner; no 
 accusative searching of the people to brand their 
 secret unfaithfulness with the hot iron of the Gos- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 pel, which is a form of inquisition peculiar to 
 preachers. He merely promised himself. He was 
 determined to know nothing among us but Jesus 
 Christ. He took this vow against all unright 
 eousness in himself, and in Berton, as if he were 
 taking a pledge against strong drink instead of 
 preaching a sermon. It was like that, his manner 
 one who has recently made a narrow escape and 
 now looks fearfully down from a high but danger 
 ous refuge. We were to be his home; but he 
 would occupy only the table-lands where we per 
 formed our good deeds, which is a very small terri 
 tory in this community. 
 
 Before he finished, the carnal mind all the 
 human narrowness of us was bottled up and 
 blockaded behind our better natures. And I must 
 say some of those present were harder hit than if 
 he d come out in the open and fought their beset 
 ting sins with the most damaging curses of Isaiah. 
 Men and women are so long accustomed to having 
 their transgressions flung at them from the pulpit 
 that they cease to worry over this; but to be 
 quarantined into just their virtues was a new and 
 embarrassing experience. 
 
 I don t know why it is, but I m rather farsighted 
 in church; and once or twice I couldn t resist cut 
 ting my eye round just to see how the sermon was 
 "taking." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 227 
 
 Some of the people sat reared back; some bent 
 their heads as we do in a pouring rain. Mrs. 
 Warren seemed to be holding herself down w r ith her 
 double chin. She wouldn t look at the preacher; 
 and she couldn t look at anybody else, for she knew 
 every one of us understood better than the preacher 
 did that he was putting up a guard-rail with this 
 sermon against the special privilege she enjoyed, 
 like sanctification, of revealing to him those things 
 in his people which had least to do with the re 
 ligious thoroughfare of Jesus Christ in them. 
 Mrs. Lip ton was visibly aggrieved. Her nose 
 stuck out, her mouth dropped, and her chin re 
 ceded as if he had already accused her of gossiping, 
 when she hadn t said a word had not even met 
 him! The stewards stared straight ahead, as 
 much as to say: "He s making his bed. Let him 
 lie on it if he can!" 
 
 I could not see the Baptists and Presbyterians, 
 but I knew what thoughts were running about 
 among them. They were doing to our backs 
 what we usually did to our own backs. For 
 Christian backbiting is one of the acid forms of 
 piety in all churches. A preacher is swift and ex 
 perienced in discovering every shortcoming and 
 man-besetting sin among the people he has come to 
 serve. If he gets to his new appointment as late 
 as twenty-four hours before he conducts his first 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 service, he knows every backslidden man and 
 every meddlesome female Pharisee in the congrega 
 tion; because somebody tells him by way of in 
 suring him against snares and pitfalls, such as call 
 ing on the wrong brother to lead in prayer or show 
 ing himself too friendly to the lady serpent in the 
 choir. He begins his ministry laden with every 
 body s transgressions. 
 
 While I was considering Brother Wade bereaved 
 of all human help in these matters for this was 
 exactly what his message meant and wondering 
 what on earth would happen if somebody didn t 
 break through and tell him a few things for his own 
 safety about the peculiar conditions in this church 
 especially the choir he brought his sermon to 
 an end and capped my anxieties by praying the 
 closing prayer himself. This is a privilege Brother 
 Warren has had in this church for a quarter of a 
 century. 
 
 I went down on my knees as usual; but, by the 
 grace of God, I can sometimes trust the other per 
 son to pray without following every word with my 
 private approval; so now I peeped through the 
 lattice of my fingers at old Tom Warren, sitting 
 bolt upright, glaring as if he d been insulted before 
 the very throne of heaven. I doubt that any one 
 followed the prayer. We were all secretly staring 
 through our fingers or over the tops of hymn books 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 229 
 
 at what we could see of the preacher. We were 
 mystified by this stranger within our gates, who 
 looked like an emigrant from the world of wealth 
 and fashion, who possessed the magnetism and 
 grace of an accomplished public speaker, and who 
 made pledges of himself to us from the Gospel ac 
 cording to Saint Paul. 
 
 As I came out of the church Sally Parks just 
 looked at me and went on. Then the congregation 
 streamed forth, all talking, but not about the ser 
 mon or the preacher. They went their different 
 ways, in a hurry to get where it would be safe to 
 talk. 
 
 At last came Felix Wade, walking swiftly with a 
 long stride, his coat tails cleaving to his shapely 
 legs as if they had been taught to do it. 
 
 "Good morning, Brother Wade," I said, offering 
 my hand. 
 
 He took it, looking at me doubtfully; then, 
 throwing up his other hand, he replied, ruffling his 
 cowlick as if I was somehow connected with that in 
 his mind. I thought maybe he had forgotten me, 
 seeing so many strange faces and shaking hands 
 with so many people as he did after the service. 
 But I was wrong. He called my name at once. 
 
 " Oh, good morning, Sister Thompson. I wanted 
 to see you about something. What was it?" 
 still rumpling his hair and covering me with eyes 
 
230 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 that lied and twinkled admiringly, just to compli 
 ment an old woman. 
 
 "Maybe you were thinking you d go home with 
 me to dinner. I m expecting you," I suggested 
 diffidently, for I had heard Charlotte Warren say, 
 as she came out, that he had refused all invitations. 
 
 "I am much obliged; but I have guests of my 
 own, you see," he answered, wagging his head to 
 ward the parsonage, where perhaps a dozen young 
 men were standing on the steps waiting for him 
 the same youths who had followed him into the 
 church at the beginning of the service. 
 
 "Not for dinner?" I gasped. 
 
 "Yes" smiling. 
 
 "Heaven preserve the man!" I cried. "Don t 
 you know there are only nine plates and six knives 
 and forks in that parsonage?" 
 
 "That s it!" he exclaimed. "I knew I needed 
 your assistance most awfully. Will you lend me a 
 few things? Lum tells me we are short in spoons, 
 too." 
 
 "You are short in everything," I said, bustling 
 at the thought of his predicament. "Send your 
 heathen over for what he needs." 
 
 "Thanks! I knew I could depend upon you," 
 he replied cheerfully. 
 
 "Brother Wade, that was a good sermon," I 
 said, detaining him timidly. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 231 
 
 "Not exactly a sermon," he answered, looking at 
 me quickly. 
 
 "No; not exactly. You didn t leave yourself 
 much margin." 
 
 "All I dare take," he answered gravely. 
 
 The days that followed were filled with such ex 
 citement as we have never had hi Berton, not even 
 during a heated political campaign. It was not 
 that kind, but suppressed, eager, increasing like a 
 dam of secret waters. All eyes were focussed upon 
 the Methodist parsonage, and upon the man who 
 occasionally issued forth from it to do strangely 
 incredible things; or what was still more in 
 credible who did not come forth when he was 
 expected. 
 
 The stewards met as usual on the first night 
 after prayer meeting to fix the pastor s salary for 
 the coming year. In all our experience as sup 
 porters of the ministry, never before had the pastor 
 been absent on this important occasion. 
 
 If he is young and timid, with only one or two 
 children, he may sit back and say nothing while 
 the board of stewards explains w^hy the church 
 may not be able to pay the preacher as much this 
 year certainly no more. Or if he has three or 
 four children and a delicate wife, and is in debt 
 on account of the expense of moving from one 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 side of the state to the other, he may stand up 
 to them like a hungry prophet complaining at a 
 continued diet of locusts and wild honey. He 
 will explain why he cannot possibly live on what 
 they paid the last preacher, and bargain until he 
 gets the raise in salary he needs. But he is always 
 there, looking like the lean Word in the face, wait 
 ing to find out whether he can afford to live or 
 just starve through the year. 
 
 Brother Wade bowed himself out of the church 
 that night and left the stewards high and dry, 
 as if what they paid the preacher was a matter 
 to be settled by their own consciences not 
 his. 
 
 The result was they did not settle it at all. We 
 heard that they agreed to let the church pay 
 "what it felt able to pay," thereby spreading the 
 responsibility out thinner than it ought to have 
 been spread. 
 
 The next thing we heard was that the telephone 
 had been taken out of the parsonage. 
 
 "Thomas tried to get Brother Wade for an 
 hour last night before he found out what was the 
 matter," said Mrs. Warren at the Woman s Mis 
 sionary Society meeting. 
 
 "Sam did, too," put in Sally Parks. "He 
 wanted to tell him what the stewards had decided 
 to do about the salary." 
 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 233 
 
 "You mean what they decided not to do," I 
 coolly amended. 
 
 "I think the pastor owes it to his people to 
 keep within speaking relation to them all the 
 time, when it costs but a dollar and a half a month 
 to do it!" Mrs. Lip ton added after a pause, by 
 way of avoiding the action of the stewards, which 
 is always a tender subject. 
 
 "Maybe he doesn t want to be within speaking 
 distance all the time," I said. "It s like being 
 held by a wire night and day. I ve been called 
 from my knees in prayer to answer the telephone 
 myself" giving Sally Parks w r hat was coming 
 to her. 
 
 "Still, since he s a single man, and we can t 
 be running in and out the way we ve always done 
 at the parsonage, I think he ought to have kept 
 that telephone," Mrs. Warren insisted primly. 
 
 "Well, there s one consolation: Lily Triggs won t 
 take up so much of his time discussing the church 
 music over it!" Mrs. Lip ton sniffed. 
 
 Then we fell to work on the heathens in the 
 uttermost parts of the earth ; for, being respectable 
 God-fearing women, we do not discuss the director 
 of our choir except where two or three are gathered 
 together confidentially for that purpose certainly 
 not if Charlotte is present. But I had a picture 
 in my mind of Lily Triggs sitting in her parlour, 
 
234 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 with her hair skewed up on top of her head, her 
 pinched-up flower-pink face turned sidewise, with 
 the receiver to her ear and her red lips to the 
 transmitter, shaking her sinfully small foot, wait 
 ing and waiting to say, "Is this you, Brother 
 Wade?" in her sweetest singing voice. "This is 
 Lily Triggs speaking. I thought you might want 
 to give some directions about the hymns for next 
 
 Sunday " And so forth, and so on, for an 
 
 hour, if she could have kept him that long. 
 
 The only private information the town had of 
 him was that the heathen did his laundry, and 
 that Brother Wade spent more for gasoline and 
 spark plugs and inner tubes that first week than 
 he did for food, lights, and postage. He did not 
 mail a single letter, and not a single letter had come 
 for him at the post-office. He had not even called 
 for his mail. This was very strange. Everybody 
 said so. 
 
 Meantime he acted like a man taking a much- 
 needed holiday. Apparently he was serenely un 
 conscious of the curiosity he excited. He knew 
 nothing about the awful condition the church was 
 in. He had no depressing information about the 
 sins in us which he must overcome. He was the 
 freest man in his walk and conversation we ever 
 had in Berton, except Lem Brock, who died in 
 his bed here a few years ago after reigning as the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 235 
 
 bad man of the community, and commanding 
 more respect for his dangerousness than anybody 
 else ever got for behaving himself. 
 
 But before the end of the first month the pastor 
 had been within intimate soul-speaking distance 
 with every member of his church many times. 
 It was the quickest work in the line of pastoral 
 visiting we had ever known. Each day about 
 three o clock he d flirt into his car. The bulldog 
 would scramble in after him, and he was off. 
 Sometimes, they say, he made as many as ten 
 calls during the afternoon. He fairly took the 
 breath out of Berton, sailing up one street and 
 down the other, with that dog sitting beside him 
 like the graven image of a doubtful association. 
 
 The moment he started, all the Methodist 
 phones in town began to ring in swift succession. 
 The women informed one another, and each one 
 flew from the phone to pick up the children s 
 playthings and maybe dust the family Bible. 
 Then, before she could get her apron off and her 
 hair smoothed, he d be at the door. Or, worse 
 still, he d fly by the house and catch some woman, 
 who didn t have any phone, in the backyard dye 
 ing her last winter s suit, leaving those he skipped 
 on the way to go through the same preparations 
 for him the next day. Then, maybe when they d 
 given him up altogether and settled down reck- 
 
236 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 lessly with the sewing machine in the parlour, he d 
 pop in. 
 
 "I didn t mind his catching me with my collar 
 off, and little Jimmy in nothing but his shirt 
 before I could get his pants on, so much as I did 
 that awful dog he keeps in the car," Sally Parks 
 complained. "A preacher should avoid the very 
 appearance of evil, and that s the evilest-looking 
 beast I ever saw in decent company." 
 
 The same afternoon, when I heard Brother 
 Wade s car stop in front of the parsonage, I went 
 out on the porch and beckoned to him. I can t 
 tell how many times I ve done that, called the 
 preacher across the street between my house and 
 his to tell him something he ought to know, to 
 warn him against some mistake, or to spur him 
 on to something. I ve saved many a one from 
 his own folly or somebody else s folly just in the 
 nick of time. 
 
 He came, followed by the dog. I looked at 
 him and then at this scandalous beast. 
 
 "Brother Wade," I said, coming straight to 
 the point, "that s a terrible-looking dog." 
 
 "It s the way he s made," he answered, smiling. 
 
 "He looks bad dangerous!" I insisted. 
 
 " He s as gentle as a lamb." He stooped to stroke 
 the head of the animal. 
 
 "He was bred to fight." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 237 
 
 "He never fights." 
 
 "Where s his other ear, then?" I demanded 
 with just suspicion. 
 
 "Oh, that happened before well, before we 
 quit fighting," he replied with some embarrass 
 ment. 
 
 "Appearances are very strong against that dog, 
 Brother Wade!" 
 
 "You might say the same about members of 
 the church, Sister Thompson. I ve seen a man 
 sitting in the amen corner who bore all the marks 
 of a doubtful and dangerous character upon his 
 face," he returned significantly. 
 
 "When you do, don t trust him with the col 
 lections or with your confidence. Sitting high 
 up in the church doesn t give a man a certificate of 
 good character, and living in a parsonage doesn t 
 change the nature of a bulldog," I answered, know 
 ing exactly who I was talking about and not 
 ashamed to do it. "Can t you exchange that 
 animal for a kinder-looking dog?" I insisted 
 after a pause. 
 
 "If I did he might go back to his old habits 
 and lose the other ear!" he laughed. 
 
 "Brother W T ade, I m compelled to tell it to 
 you plain, then " I began and hesitated. 
 
 "Well?" coolly. 
 
 "I don t judge a man by the dog he keeps, but 
 
238 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 a lot of people in this town will. They can t get 
 used to the preacher driving up to their door to 
 make a pastoral call with a brass-bound bulldog 
 sitting beside him. It it looks wrong!" 
 
 "Oh, if that s all, I ll leave him at home. Never 
 occurred to me this objection. Association of 
 ideas, I suppose," he laughed. 
 
 "Yes" feeling the bigot rising in me; "cards 
 are associated with gambling, so we mustn t play 
 cards. Dancing is associated with sin, so we 
 mustn t dance. Some music is associated with 
 wicked indulgence, so we mustn t sing it. And 
 some dogs, Brother Wade, are associated with the 
 cruelest sports, so " 
 
 "Yes; I see. Bill," he said sternly, "you remain 
 at home with Lum after this." 
 
 And he did. From that day he never went 
 pastoral visiting with his master. 
 
 We had gone in by this time and were sitting 
 before the fire. Brother Wade continued to re 
 gard me with a certain gentle curiosity. 
 
 "I m just thinking. Ah, would you mind telling 
 me: Is it so that you never played cards?" 
 
 "Never!" 
 
 "Nor danced not even when you were young?" 
 
 "No," I answered with a sigh. 
 
 "It s awful and it s beautiful to live like 
 that " he said, more to himself than to me. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 239 
 
 "I don t deserve credit. I wanted to do both 
 many a time." 
 
 "That s what makes it awful and beautiful 
 that you didn t." 
 
 "I doubt if those are the worst sins," I went on 
 "those natural desires for amusement and joy we 
 have when we are young. I ve had harder trials 
 since I became a Christian. The spiritual force in 
 us is like a gun that kicks sometimes " 
 
 "Yes?" he asked, looking up as if he recognized 
 something familiar. 
 
 "You d hardly believe it," I went on saying, 
 "but women are terribly bruised by their own 
 souls. Our fault is that we want to know some 
 thing all the time. We sit in our houses and won 
 der and wonder what s going on, because we never 
 can find out, no matter how much we search 
 and ask. It s wrong; it leads to all manner of 
 evils you d never suspect in us good women, I 
 
 mean." 
 
 "What does?" 
 
 "Curiosity. We can conquer everything but 
 that. I ve always suspected that Satan gossiped 
 with Eve enough to make her crave to know more 
 than she could find out before he offered her the 
 fruit of knowledge. She was the first disciple of 
 higher education. And " 
 
 He interrupted me with a laugh so full of merri- 
 
240 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 ment that I feared he might think I was being 
 flippant about Genesis; so I went on quickly: 
 
 "But we didn t get it knowledge; only an in 
 satiable serpent curiosity. The hardest- won vic 
 tories I ve ever had as a Christian woman have been 
 to keep the forked tongue out of my eyes and the 
 hiss off my lips because I ve found out something 
 about somebody that I should not have known." 
 
 Afterward I wondered whether all the other 
 women in the church were so ready to tell this man 
 things about their own failings, since he would not 
 permit the failings of others to be mentioned. It 
 imparted an element of confidence and safety in the 
 pastoral relation to know that Sally Parks would 
 never be allowed to tell him that she considered 
 me dictatorial in the missionary society and med 
 dlesome in the church. 
 
 On Monday after the third Sunday Felix Wade 
 disappeared from Berton. He was absent until 
 the following Saturday. No one knew where he 
 had gone or for what purpose. That question 
 stared at him from the face of every man, woman, 
 and child in Berton; but he offered no explana 
 tion. 
 
 Now, a preacher may be a "free man in Christ," 
 as the Scriptures promise, but God Himself cannot 
 make him free in the minds of his own people. 
 They feel that he belongs literally to his church. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 241 
 
 And naturally the members keep an eye upon him. 
 When our pastor, before this time, left us even for a 
 day we knew where he had gone usually to a 
 district meeting and when he would return. We 
 knew how much money he had in the bank; and if 
 he had none we knew that, too. We knew where he 
 spent his vacation, if he got one, and how much the 
 suit of clothes he wore cost. So, when Brother 
 Wade went off twice in the course of his first 
 month, without telling anybody where he was 
 going, we didn t know what to think or even what 
 to suspect. 
 
 He always preached a good sermon the following 
 Sunday, never forgot the collection again, and kept 
 the open countenance of a guiltless man. Still, we 
 wanted to know where he went. It was a breach 
 of confidence not to know. 
 
 Whatever others may have suspected I was cer 
 tain that he had never conducted a service or 
 preached a sermon until he came to us. He had 
 forgotten the collection that first Sunday, which 
 is the last thing an experienced pastor would forget. 
 And, though his discourse was spiritual to the point 
 of asceticism, his choice of words never was made 
 from a theological lexicon. His delivery was too 
 politely, delicately restrained to suggest the aban 
 don of a preacher flinging himself against Satan 
 with the flaming sword of righteousness. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 I have not listened to preachers for forty years 
 without knowing a thing or two. It was what I 
 didn t know that troubled me. And nobody knew 
 the man himself only his ministry, which was still 
 too short to afford side lights upon his character. 
 I had my suspicions that every member of the 
 church was confiding in him. Also, they were 
 awaiting a few personal confidences from him in re 
 turn which he blandly avoided giving. 
 
 This was queer, because preachers are usually 
 very confidential. They tell everything, from the 
 sins they used to have to the pains and aches and 
 tribulations they have now, with merely the fervid 
 hope of reward in the future. 
 
 Finally, while Brother Wade was off on his third 
 disappearance, I thought of something so natural 
 and proper that I wondered it hadn t occurred to 
 me sooner. I wrote a letter to our presiding elder. 
 I told him what a fine preacher Brother Wade was; 
 how well he was taking hold of the young people in 
 the community; how conscientious he was about 
 his pastoral visiting everything I could think of 
 by way of recommending him. Then I added that 
 we were so pleased with him we wanted to know 
 how we happened to get him. How long had he 
 been in the ministry? From what Conference had 
 he been transferred? The reply came at once. It 
 was brief. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 243 
 
 DEAR SISTER THOMPSON: 
 
 Your letter is one of a dozen similar letters that 
 have come to me from the members of Brother 
 Wade s congregation. I am glad he is so well re 
 ceived. We hope he will do a great work in Berton 
 and heal those dissensions in the church that have 
 been a great affliction to the bishops and elders. 
 
 I am unable to answer your questions or those 
 of the same general nature concerning him in the 
 other letters. His case is remarkable in the fact 
 that he came to us licensed to preach and highly 
 recommended by the Bishop. This was sufficient 
 assurance to the brethren who received him into 
 our Conference. Accept him as from the Lord, 
 and do what you can to uphold and strengthen his 
 hands in the ministry. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 P. E. PATTLJXG. 
 
 I went back and read this sentence: "We hope 
 he will do a great work in Berton and heal those 
 dissensions in the church that have been a great 
 affliction to the bishops and elders." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THERE is no possible way to divorce religion 
 from secular life, and no way to reconcile 
 the one with the other. Man is a mixed 
 metaphor, an incorrect composition from the be 
 ginning. He is very busy squandering the patri 
 mony of his spirit in the commerce of this present 
 world. But when he grows sick of himself and all 
 his works he turns to God. Then when he dis 
 covers the terrific demands the Almighty makes he 
 draws back and swears he is the promoter of his 
 own salvation. Of all the perversities in this 
 world there are none like those which he practises 
 trying to avoid the issue of his own soul. He will 
 keep books in this business, credit himself with 
 seven chosen virtues, two or three vices, strike off 
 a margin for incidental sins and do it all so 
 privately that only the angels can distinguish him 
 from a saint. He is just good enough to be en 
 durable and just bad enough to be natural. But 
 let a man determine to live literally according to 
 the Sermon on the Mount, actually practise pov 
 erty, humility, meekness, mercy, purity, and peace 
 making, and he becomes a menace to the com 
 
 244 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 245 
 
 munity. He commits crimes against the stand 
 ards of the best people. 
 
 So long as we are in the flesh we may only take 
 the Beatitudes with moderation, or take the con 
 sequences, which in the experience of our church 
 proved to be very bad. The reproach was not 
 upon these Scriptures, but upon us here in Berton. 
 But I will say this if Felix Wade had remained 
 pastor of this church long enough to enforce his 
 sublimely impractical form of piety, the last one of 
 us would have been naked, hungry, homeless to the 
 point of starvation. I reckon he might have died 
 a supernatural death, firm in the faith, but we 
 should have been dead just the same, which was 
 too much to ask of a thriving town and a struggling 
 church. 
 
 My purpose is to set down here exactly what 
 happened and to leave those who think they know 
 that it could not have happened to prove what they 
 think they know. 
 
 Berton is so far removed from the nearest large 
 city where daily papers are published, that when 
 the morning edition reaches us it is an afternoon 
 paper, and when the afternoon edition reaches us it 
 is the next morning s paper. 
 
 Now in the summer of 1914, before Felix Wade 
 came to us in the autumn, the headlines of these 
 
246 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 journals informed us that a great war was raging 
 in Europe. This was all we knew about it. We 
 were removed from the immediate sense of what 
 was going on by the fifty years of memories and 
 hardships which had elapsed since our own Civil 
 War. To erase this date from the minds of South 
 ern people would be like trying to remove the 
 symbol A. D. from the history of Christianity. 
 All our thoughts are divided simply and irrevo 
 cably between "before the war" and "after the 
 war." So the news we had of battles in Europe 
 only reminded the old men to tell again of the 
 battle of Gettysburg. And the stories of sacked 
 towns and cities in Belgium merely stirred the 
 old women to tell of Sherman s march through 
 Georgia, and how they boiled the dirt in their 
 smokehouses to get salt with which to season 
 food. No one supposed that a war waged on 
 the other side of the world could affect us one 
 way or the other. 
 
 It was a fact that the Stock Exchange in New 
 York had closed. This was no affair of ours. 
 Decent people in Berton did not approve of the 
 goings on in this Stock Exchange, and never had, 
 It was associated in our minds with gambling in 
 cotton futures, a form of iniquity not practised 
 here. Besides, New York was nearly as far from 
 us as the war itself. The sun was still shining 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 247 
 
 upon fields of corn, and the hills about Berton 
 were covered with cotton. Trade languished, but 
 as trade always takes a midsummer siesta in 
 this town no one was concerned about that. This 
 stagnation was only temporary. The markets 
 would recover when the crops began to move. 
 The merchants said so, the farmers believed it, 
 the professional men were only waiting for this 
 annual migration of crops before they collected 
 accounts. Even the stewards in our church 
 promised to pay something on the preacher s 
 salary "when the crops began to move." 
 
 Then suddenly something happened and every 
 thing stopped. The crops were harvested, but 
 they did not move. In November there were 
 fifty thousand bales of cotton in Berton. The 
 warehouses were filled, the freight depot was 
 covered with it, the streets were lined with ragged 
 bales of it, standing and leaning like poor folk 
 ready to take the train. Then cotton went down 
 to three cents a pound, and Berton was one vast 
 Dives barn, filled with a great harvest while her 
 people suffered for the very necessities of life. 
 We could neither buy what we needed nor sell 
 what we had. 
 
 The war in Europe had crossed the seas, trav 
 elled a thousand miles overland and reached Ber 
 ton. Every man in the country, however poor, 
 
248 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 paid an enormous war tax during the winter of 
 1914. And since no munitions factories had been 
 established in this too temperamental part of the 
 country, the South was not in a position, as the 
 North and West were, to recoup itself financially 
 for these losses by furnishing ammunition to the 
 Allies upon strictly neutral terms. 
 
 One disaster followed another. First the Citi 
 zens Bank of Berton closed automatically, as 
 banks do in a panic, and John Henry Lipton, 
 who was cashier, lost his job. Then the stocks 
 in which Tom Warren had invested most of his 
 money dropped way below par and ceased to 
 pay dividends. Charlotte had to dismiss her 
 servant and do her own work, which she did with 
 such an air of outraged dignity that she was more 
 formidable than ever. Molly Brown was obliged 
 to sell her fifty-dollar organ for twelve dollars to 
 pay her taxes. 
 
 "It s just as well," she said to me with a sigh. 
 "I never could play a tune on it, but I took a 
 worldly pride in having an organ in my parlour. 
 Now there ain t a single thing left in my house 
 that I don t actually need!" 
 
 The Peterses sold their horse and buggy for a 
 little ready money to go on until Roger could sell 
 his cotton. Sally Parks admitted that her family 
 was living on the hard stock in Sam s grocery 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 249 
 
 store, which she said was very bad on account 
 of the weevils in the lady peas and the oat 
 meal. 
 
 Now when our sons and daughters die, we can 
 say with Job: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath 
 taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" 
 But when it comes to the loss of wealth and com 
 fort, we cannot lay that to Him, for the Lord never 
 confers treasures upon us in this world and He 
 never takes them away. We get them by hook 
 or crook and our fellowmen do the taking away. 
 
 The panic struck Berton shortly after Brother 
 Wade came to us. And we were so concerned 
 about our own affairs that we ceased to speculate 
 about him as we had done at first. I reckon we 
 lost consciousness spiritually for a time. When 
 we recovered from the shock we found him 
 strangely cheerful, unaffected by the misfortunes 
 of the community. 
 
 The same week the bank went into the hands 
 of a receiver and Lipton lost his position, Tom 
 Warren lost three thousand dollars in the failure 
 of the Coal and Ice Company of Berton. Natu 
 rally the congregation in our church showed the 
 effects of these disasters the following Sunday. 
 Many men and some women wore that anxious 
 look which the fear of spiritual damnation never 
 inspires. We were all very low in our minds. 
 
250 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 And it made us feel queer when Brother Wade 
 opened the service with: 
 
 Safely through another week, 
 God has brought us on our way; 
 
 Let us now a blessing seek, 
 Waiting in His courts to-day. 
 
 I reckon we were still safe in the midst of these 
 earthly misfortunes. But when you have lost 
 your job, and maybe your deposit in the bank 
 and half your property, it s not so easy to feel 
 safe, much less to sing about it. 
 
 We did have a woman in this town once with 
 this unnatural spiritual exaltation. She was filled 
 with the Spirit. She said she could neither sin 
 nor suffer, and she could rejoice in the face of any 
 sorrow. Then her baby died. When we went 
 to the funeral, expecting to offer sympathy to 
 a heart-broken mother, she met us at the door 
 with a smile and invited us into the parlour where 
 the casket was. She showed how great her faith 
 was, but it everlastingly ruined her in this town. 
 Bearing her affliction that way seemed inhuman. 
 
 Brother Wade took as his text that day: 
 "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the 
 kingdom of heaven." He said being poor in 
 spirit meant literally preferring poverty, that 
 poverty was the natural condition of Christians 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 251 
 
 in this world, that we must not want, but must 
 want only to give whatever we had. This, he 
 said, was the price of citizenship in heaven. 
 
 Neither the Warrens nor the Liptons were in 
 heaven, and they showed it by the deaf-and-dumb 
 faces they turned toward the pulpit that day. 
 As we came out of the church Charlotte said to 
 Sam Parks: 
 
 "There s such a thing as being wonderfully 
 sustained by the grace of God when it s somebody 
 else who s lost everything he s got in the world! 
 When Brother Wade finds his own salary cut in 
 half, and that he can get only 10 per cent, of his 
 church collections, he will sing another tune!" 
 
 I thought as much myself. If he d only said 
 something sympathetic about the hardness of 
 the times, we should have felt he was nearer kin 
 to us. But never once during that dreadful 
 winter did he refer to the distress in the town 
 nor to any worldly condition. The moment we 
 crossed the threshold of the church we were the 
 Lord s ravens, His lilies of the field who should 
 take no thought about how we should be fed nor 
 wherewith we should be clothed. But when you 
 are still in the body, which is very sensitive to 
 cold and hunger, it is difficult to trust just to the 
 wing feathers of faith in immortal life. 
 
 He preached steadily on the Beatitudes during 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 eight weeks of the worst financial depression we 
 ever had in Berton. I am not complaining, you 
 understand, but I have noticed that we Christians 
 appreciate these Scriptures more when they do 
 not apply so dangerously close to the fix we are in. 
 Besides a pastor has the advantage when it comes 
 to living up to the Beatitudes. What is the 
 average man s religion is not only a pastor s re 
 ligion but his business by which he earns a living. 
 We were accustomed to sermons on these greatest 
 of all sermons, but we accepted them before this 
 time with reservations necessary for carrying on 
 the carnal affairs of our little world. No other 
 preacher ever took advantage of the situation to 
 fit them to us literally. But Felix Wade would 
 get into the pulpit every Sunday morning with 
 that cowlick reached up on the back of his head, 
 his face flushed with the blood of a man, and his 
 eyes cooled as if the spirit in him looked down 
 upon us with a merciless determination to squeeze 
 us out of our bodies. 
 
 "Brethren," he said one Sunday, "the poor in 
 heart do see God. This is not a figure of speech, 
 but a law of the spiritual visions, exact as that 
 governing refracted angles of light in this world. 
 The merciful do obtain mercy. If there is one 
 among you without mercy who has received love 
 or charity or forgiveness, that man is a thief." 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 253 
 
 If he had swung his arm in a fine gesture, raised 
 his voice and shouted, THAT MAN S A THIEF! it 
 wouldn t have been so bad. Some of the force 
 of the thing would have passed off in the rhetorical 
 explosion. But he never raised his voice, and he 
 was too intimate with his "Thou art the man" 
 forefinger, which he occasionally wagged at us 
 in a manner not eloquent, but definite. 
 
 We were getting the Gospel, pure and undefiled, 
 but I say it made me nervous, as we had fallen into 
 the hands of one too young in spiritual life, not yet 
 accustomed to making concessions to our dust and 
 desires who was wielding a terrible sword of the 
 spirit. I had forebodings, like the earlier Chris 
 tians when they did not know for certain what fate 
 awaited them, whether they were to be cast to the 
 lions or burned at the stake. My impression was 
 that we were about to be tried out according to our 
 profession of faith, which is a dangerous experi 
 ment to make with men and women who must con 
 tinue to live in a world governed by material 
 standards. 
 
 I have never known any one who was really in 
 timate with a Methodist preacher, though I ve 
 known many who thought they were. His mi 
 gratory existence does not permit him to form last 
 ing attachments. But I have noticed this, that 
 every one of them chooses a favourite roosting 
 
254 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 place on his circuit, some home where he can preen 
 himself and rest from being just the physician of 
 souls. My house has always been such a refuge, 
 either because I am sure to be of the pastor s fac 
 tion in the church or because I live so near the 
 parsonage. 
 
 Brother Wade had the habit of dropping in on his 
 way home at the end of a round of pastoral visits, 
 or maybe he d see me in the garden. It didn t 
 matter, he came always informally. I would not 
 call him a chicken-eating preacher, but he had a 
 man s craving for food prepared by a woman. He 
 was fond of a certain pudding I made. He d fol 
 low his nose in sometimes when he smelled a par 
 ticularly savoury odour in passing. Nothing 
 would do but I must teach Lum to prepare some 
 dish the way I served it. This was how that 
 heathen got into my kitchen, a circumstance which 
 led to startling consequences later on, as this 
 record will show. 
 
 No man could be farther removed from his Gos 
 pel austerity than our pastor was on these oc 
 casions. He would not discuss church affairs or 
 current events in the town. And, but for those 
 mysterious excursions he made from time to time 
 away from Berton, you might have supposed he 
 had forgotten the world beyond these hills. I had 
 an old plush-bound family album with silver clasps 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 255 
 
 which amused him as a picture book entertains a 
 child. He d turn the pages of this book, smile over 
 the chignon headdress of the women and the 
 ludicrously dignified faces of the men. He wanted 
 to know who this one was and that one, encourag 
 ing me to become the Boswell biographer of these 
 men and women, most of whom were dead and 
 gone before he was born. Occasionally he would 
 look up at me when I d be chanting my tale about 
 one of them. And I d feel like an old spinnet 
 tinkling a tune. 
 
 There was the picture of a child somewhere in 
 the album, a little saucer-faced girl with colourless 
 fair hair, wide eyes, and a turned-up nose. 
 
 "Do you remember her?" he asked mischiev 
 ously the first time he saw it. 
 
 "Only vaguely," I answered, confused. 
 
 "Funny little smudge," eying me provocatively. 
 "I suppose she was a good little thing!" 
 
 "I can t say, it s so long ago," I answered, smil 
 ing. "The chief thing I recall about her at that 
 age was that she believed in a land where the 
 clouds lived." 
 
 He closed the album, arose, and went to the win 
 dow. The weather was very bad. Snow covered 
 the ground, every bough and twig was limned with 
 frost. The church across the way looked as if an 
 old-fashioned white counterpane had been spread 
 
256 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 over it with a fringe of icicles hanging from the 
 eaves. 
 
 "We are in for a long freeze," I said presently, 
 when he had returned to the fire. 
 
 "Madam," he began, ignoring the weather and 
 addressing me in the exaggerated manner he often 
 was pleased to affect, "may I ask you a delicate 
 question?" 
 
 "What is it?" I asked, looking up from my 
 knitting. 
 
 "When a saint is alone in her house, when the 
 little girl is gone who believed in the land where the 
 clouds live, and she has served a long, long sentence 
 to just faith in the evidence of things unseen, what 
 are her thoughts?" 
 
 "There are no such saints. When you are alone 
 you are not a saint any more than you are a 
 colonel, or a doctor of divinity!" I answered. 
 
 "What then?" he demanded. 
 
 "Always just yourself, no spiritual airs, no 
 worldly airs. If you ve set yeast to rise, you 
 watch it. If some one is in distress, you think of 
 him, on a day like this, and of the birds in the snow. 
 You are in and out of the spirit like a woman is in 
 and out of her house, attending to the things out 
 side as well as to prayers inside. If the Lord in 
 tended that we should live only in the spirit, He 
 would not have made us so carefully in the flesh," I 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 257 
 
 concluded, looking at him significantly, for he had 
 been preaching then on the Beatitudes for eight 
 Sabbaths in succession. And the Sermon on the 
 Mount differs from the Ten Commandments as a 
 code of laws governing the spiritual life differs from 
 one laid down for just the moral Life in this present 
 world. 
 
 What I hoped he d understand was that the back 
 of my soul was aching from so much Gospel 
 stretching. But he evaded the issue. 
 
 "Go on," he said, smiling. "What were you 
 about to tell me when you interrupted yourself?" 
 
 "It is nothing really to tell, but when one grows 
 old there are things in the Scriptures which stand 
 out and up as if they were looking at you," I ad 
 mitted reluctantly, knowing that he was tempt 
 ing my heavenly confidences as he often did. 
 
 "What, for example?" he asked. 
 
 "The messengers that the Lord sent," I con 
 fessed. "When I was young the angels who ap 
 peared to Abraham and to Jacob and to the others, 
 you know, they belonged back there, like the rod 
 with which Moses smote the rock. But now, 
 when all the prophecies of my years have been ful 
 filled, when there is no one to come, when I am old 
 and alone in my house it s foolish, but I m always 
 expecting a messenger not the terrible one who 
 cries: Behold, I stand at the door! but a little 
 
258 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 old daily bread messenger of His loving kind 
 
 ness." 
 
 "I understand," he answered gently. 
 
 "It s just a feeling," I went on, "and the queer 
 part is that long ago I saw the pictures of one of 
 those angels. Wings and flaming sword he had, 
 but, dear me, his legs were so thin, and he wore 
 striped stockings!" 
 
 He threw back his head and shouted with 
 laughter. 
 
 "So, I m always expecting one like that, with 
 striped stockings. Isn t it awful?" 
 
 "It s delightful! "he cried. 
 
 What I am trying to tell is that though this man 
 preached the word in a manner to shrive us of our 
 very flesh, he was himself as simple and kind as if 
 he d chosen himself to be a child in all things. But 
 the moment you trod upon his Gospel grounds he 
 was not the same. You felt the Cross in him, a 
 fanatical negation of life. He was a sort of high 
 wayman of the spirit, bent upon robbing us of the 
 things of time and sense. 
 
 "Brother Wade," I said one day, "your ser 
 mons on the Beatitudes are very strong." 
 
 He did not reply, merely fixed his eye upon me 
 and waited for what he must have felt was coming. 
 
 "But," I went on lamely, "they are designed to 
 be more gradual in their effects, to develop spiritual 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 259 
 
 standards in nations through ages; not not all at 
 once and now." 
 
 "Why not for each individual man and now?" 
 he objected quickly. 
 
 "Because for one man or one set of men to live 
 literally like that would tempt too many others to 
 take advantage of well, of their Christian help 
 lessness." 
 
 " What has that to do with the issue? One must 
 be willing to lose the whole w r orld," he returned 
 obstinately. 
 
 "Willing or not, it comes to the same thing. 
 We can t do it. The world s here. And we are in 
 it. Not even faith can remove us from it." 
 
 "If I believed that, I d surrender my credentials 
 to-morrow," he answered, turning away. 
 
 The next day was Sunday and the storm broke, 
 of which it seemed I alone had been the weather 
 prophet, for the amazement upon the faces of the 
 congregation as Felix Wade unfolded his plan was 
 complete and far from Christian. 
 
 He read the story of the rich young ruler, and he 
 took as his text the advice of Jesus to that young 
 man: "Sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the 
 poor . . . take up thy cross, and follow me!" 
 
 It was a soft morning in the early spring. The 
 fragrance of the warming earth and of secret 
 flowers filled the air. Through the windows we 
 
260 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 could see the pale green mist of tender leaves 
 swinging like a veil from every shrub and tree. 
 
 No one listened very attentively. The people 
 were relaxed, drowsy with the sweet somnambu- 
 lance of spring. We supposed Brother Wade was 
 about to deliver the annual missionary sermon re 
 quired of every Methodist itinerant. At the close 
 of the service we expected him to take up the for 
 eign missionary collection, which is usually done at 
 this season. 
 
 I have heard so many missionary sermons myself 
 that I feel I can do my duty and pay what I ought 
 to pay to the cause without taxing myself to listen 
 very closely to what the preacher says, just as I 
 sometimes leave him to lead the prayer without 
 following that very carefully. I caught a sentence 
 here and there because he was an abrupt speaker 
 who sometimes shocked the very sleepers in the 
 church with a dash of cold-water Gospel. I re 
 called afterward that he said in the beginning of 
 his discourse something like this: "We have never 
 proved the existence of Almighty God, because we 
 have never lived by faith. We only profess to be 
 lieve. We actually live as if there was no Provi 
 dence. This is as true of the Christian churches as 
 it is of the unchristian world. The way to prove 
 the omnipotence and fatherhood of God is to try 
 Him out by the Word. If we do not then receive 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 261 
 
 the evidences of salvation, the joy and peace of the 
 saints, then there is no God." 
 
 Well, I wished he had not said that, but I com 
 forted myself that no one appeared to be listening, 
 and that every member had already made up his 
 mind what he would or would not give to foreign 
 missions anyhow. So I settled down until he 
 should finish with the missionary journeys of 
 Paul, which are always the major part of every 
 preacher s appeal for missions. It was not until 
 later that I remembered the emphasis with which 
 he dwelt upon the fact that Paul s chief purpose 
 was to win converts to the Christian faith. Natu 
 rally this would be the object of a Christian mis 
 sionary. But as he went on about Paul it seemed 
 to me that he was poking at him, as if he merely 
 forgave this great disciple for doing no better, 
 because the times were hard and men had not 
 yet a clear vision of Christianity. He called 
 the Crusaders the second great missionary move 
 ment: "Still, brethren, to win converts to their 
 faith, even by force of amis," he concluded. 
 "But proselyting is not really characteristic of 
 the spirit of Christ. To love and to serve every 
 man, to give all you have and to follow with the 
 cross of Christ, this is the purpose of missions. 
 Mere preaching does not and never will prove the 
 Christian faith." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 I looked round to see if any one had noticed that 
 he accused Paul of proselyting. But Sam Parks 
 was obviously asleep and Tom Warren was nod 
 ding. The women didn t count. They can be 
 sound asleep mentally while they stare like patient 
 saints into the very face of the preacher. 
 
 "Now, brethren," he went on in his coldly 
 modulated voice, "we are in the midst of the third 
 great missionary movement. 
 
 "At the present moment there is a double line 
 of fire and death stretched across the face of 
 Europe. Six million men are fighting six million 
 men. The tribal atrocities of the Middle Ages 
 have been reduced to the exact modern science 
 of the most deadly warfare. All the resources 
 and wealth of these nations are being taxed to 
 expose as many men as possible to death. They 
 are perishing by the thousands every day, of such 
 wounds and tortures as were never made by scalp 
 ing savages. These unhappy men are more truly 
 the victims of their own governments than they 
 are of the enemy. We have but one explanation 
 of this horror, brethren, that the nations engaged 
 in this conflict are not Christian nations. They 
 do not believe and never have believed in the 
 teachings of Christ. 
 
 "It is not my purpose to discuss this reversion 
 to type. Civilization never converted a savage 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 263 
 
 into a Christian. On the contrary, it may en 
 hance his ferocity and his capacity to achieve 
 every crime without breaking a single law, as 
 is now proved by this wave of arson and murder 
 sweeping over the old world. But my purpose is 
 to call your attention to the miracle of Christian 
 missions in our own country, still the land of peace 
 and ideals. 
 
 "During the past six months more American 
 missionaries have gone to the war zone than the 
 Christian churches have sent out in fifty years. 
 More money has been spent in this work than 
 our foreign-mission funds amount to in ten years 
 nearly eighteen million, not counting private 
 charities and gifts. Every one of these mission 
 aries is exposed to greater dangers than Paul 
 encountered even in the prison at Rome. They 
 have died as bravely as Paul died. They have 
 suffered as the early martyrs suffered, and with 
 no less courage. 
 
 "Brethren," he cried, lifting his voice in pas 
 sionate eloquence, "these missionaries were not 
 sent by the Christian churches of this country. 
 The moneys they have spent in the relief of the 
 suffering, wounds, and poverty was not furnished 
 by Christian denominations! And they have not 
 gone to win converts or to impose their creed upon 
 other men, but literally to succour, to give all they 
 
264 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 have and themselves even to death, that they 
 may show mercy and love and become the strength 
 of the weak and the refuge of the destitute. For 
 the first time the spiritual forces in a nation at 
 large have proved superior to the spiritual forces 
 of mere churches. Before this time we knew 
 there were many Christians in this nation; now 
 we know that this is literally a Christian nation, 
 supporting many churches!" 
 
 Sam Parks sat up, snorted, and looked round as 
 if he d heard a clap of thunder and wondered 
 where the cloud was. Everybody moved a little. 
 The people were like leaves suddenly shaken by 
 a wind on a summer day. What was the matter? 
 Something was wrong. We smelled the brim 
 stone odour of heresy or was it heresy? 
 
 "Brethren," Felix Wade went on, after a pause 
 during which he regarded us steadily, " the churches 
 are still taking collections this year for missions 
 in China, Africa, and Japan, to win converts for 
 the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. But 
 has this church as a church has any church in 
 Berton given one dollar this year to the Red 
 Cross missionaries on the battlefields of Europe? 
 The Christian organizations in this town represent 
 denominations whose properties, all told, are 
 worth millions of dollars. Our own Methodist 
 people are at the present time building a million- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 265 
 
 dollar church and a six or seven million dollar 
 university, while a million women and children in 
 Belgium and Poland and France are without food. 
 We are, like Dives, forgetting Lazarus at the gate, 
 preparing to build yet greater churches! 
 
 "Let no man among you excuse his fault in this 
 matter!" he said, lowering his voice and sweeping 
 a gesture over us like a sickle reaping tares. "If 
 you say these are not Christian missionaries, but 
 merely humanitarians gone with no other motive 
 to the war zone, you condemn yourselves, for 
 Christianity is humanitarianism. As Cadmus 
 introduced letters into Greece, so did Jesus Christ 
 introduce the sense of love, sacrifice, and mercy 
 into the experience of mankind. He was the great 
 Humanitarian. Do you think it mattered to 
 Him whether we joined converts to our church? 
 No, by the living God! No! He came to seek 
 and to save that which was lost. Nothing else. 
 A Hindu who practises chastity, honesty, sacrifice, 
 love, and mercy is no less a Christian than a 
 Methodist bishop!" 
 
 Well, it was awful, but he still had us by the 
 hair of the head, and we were not in a position to 
 cry out. 
 
 "Are we to have no part as a church in the 
 greatest, most truly Christian missionary work 
 ever performed in the world?" he went on. "I 
 
266 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 cannot believe it, my brethren. If a man is dying 
 at your door, why step over his body to mail a 
 contribution to a mission in China? It is my 
 privilege to remind you of your duty. Sell what 
 soever thou hast, and give to the poor . . 
 take up thy cross, and follow me. There is no 
 other way, brethren, not in this great emergency, 
 even to keep the peace of this nation. We must 
 be blameless. Therefore, I put the question to 
 you straight. Whom will you have from this 
 church to work in the American missions upon 
 the battlefields of Europe?" 
 
 He asked that as simply as if he had said: 
 "Whom will you elect as delegate to the District 
 Conference?" 
 
 "The members of this church can easily afford 
 a thousand dollars toward the support of this 
 missionary without selling all they have. What 
 we wish to know now is who will go?" 
 
 The congregation could not have been more 
 astonished if this church had been a soulless cor 
 poration asked to send a missionary to China. 
 It was not that we were soulless, but the only 
 thing that protects the disciples of any religion 
 is their creed and their traditions. Otherwise we 
 must literally follow the spirit which takes no 
 account of the needs and demands of material 
 life. Therefore, we were disturbed, almost visibly 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 267 
 
 indignant, at this demand, which was foreign to 
 our methods. Also it was radical. There was 
 no provision in the Discipline of our church for 
 what Brother Wade proposed. The governing 
 powers control the income from every charge as 
 rigidly as if they were rents collected. Besides, 
 we had our missions established in heathen lands 
 for the purposes of converting the people to Chris 
 tianity. What could we do? Six assessments 
 besides the pastor s salary are laid upon every 
 Methodist church. Well, it was unthinkable, 
 this proposition to raise a thousand dollars extra 
 for work in the war zone ! 
 
 Sally Parks leaned over and whispered: "Is he 
 crazy?" 
 
 "No, he isn t accustomed to being a Christian, 
 so he thinks he ought to be one," I whispered 
 back, determined to defend his divine foolish 
 ness if I could. 
 
 "WTiat d you say?" gasped Sally, who never 
 can take a thing until it s made very plain to 
 her. 
 
 "I say, Felix Wade must have been licensed to 
 preach as soon as he was converted. I ve always 
 felt that there was something terribly newborn 
 to God in him. He doesn t know anything about 
 the government of the church." 
 
 Sally drew back and looked at me. She hopes 
 
268 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 and believes I m a good Christian, but she thinks 
 I m erratic and at times viperish. 
 
 We could hear furiously sibilant comments 
 from the people behind us. 
 
 "He hasn t even taken the regular assessments 
 yet!" 
 
 "A thousand dollars ! When we ve been robbed 
 this whole winter on account of this war. He 
 won t get ten cents ! " 
 
 "And who does he think will go? Nobody!" 
 
 "I told you when he came with an automobile, 
 a Chinese servant, and a bulldog that something 
 was wrong!" 
 
 "What is wrong? What s the matter with 
 him?" 
 
 "Crazy, that s what. Wandered off!" 
 
 This was followed by a suppressed titter. 
 
 All this time Felix Wade stood leaning upon 
 the pulpit, his arms folded, with his eyes covering 
 us like spiritual revolvers. The whispering died 
 away. The tension was awful, especially as not 
 one of us expected a response to his appeal. 
 
 Molly Brown was at her wit s ends. If she 
 could have gone to the altar as usual and settled 
 it that way! But the thing demanded was not 
 in her line. Charlotte braced herself, reared back, 
 and looked as if heaven and earth could not move 
 her. Tom Warren was chewing very fast, his 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 269 
 
 white beard wagging and his eyes darting dollar- 
 marked indignation in every direction. 
 
 Then we heard some one stumble into the aisle 
 far back in the church. When something is about 
 to happen of which you do not approve and against 
 which you are not in position to protest, it is best 
 to keep your eyes upon vacancy and let it happen. 
 So we did. No one turned his head; every eye 
 was riveted upon nothing. 
 
 Doctor Edd appeared, walking wearily as if it 
 was a day s journey from the publican bench to the 
 altar. As he drew nearer he seemed to shrink 
 pierced now from behind by so many eyes. 
 
 "Brother Wade," he said in a low voice, "if no 
 one else will go I d like to. I ve longed for this 
 chance since the war began. But," he added, 
 looking up frankly, "I m not fit." 
 
 "The hour makes the man. This is your hour, 
 Doctor," said Brother Wade. Then addressing the 
 congregation, he added: "Brethren, we are very 
 fortunate in securing the doctor for this service." 
 
 He went on to say that he hoped the necessary 
 funds would be subscribed at once. He would not 
 take a public collection, but leave it to each mem 
 ber s conscience to give what he could. The 
 Methodists buzzed like a swarm of angry bees 
 during the days that followed. The stewards of 
 the church were disgusted. If Wade attended to 
 
270 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 his business and to the collection of the regular 
 assessments, he d show some sense. 
 
 I held my peace, which was not peace at all, and 
 said nothing. But the more I thought of the way 
 our pastor had belittled the missionary work of the 
 church in foreign lands, the more I thought about 
 getting converts, the significance implied, the 
 madder I was. If he d only used common sense 
 he d have known that we couldn t get the money, 
 and that Doctor Edd was a good sinner but not to 
 be trusted upon a mission like this. But Felix 
 Wade did not know a human thing about us. That 
 was his limitation. He had stuck to his promise 
 to know nothing among us save Jesus Christ and 
 Him crucified which was the same thing as being 
 hopelessly ignorant of our essential attributes for 
 living in Berton. 
 
 Well, I stood the strain as long as I could. Then 
 I made up my mind to have it out with him and 
 tell him a few things. This time I would not allow 
 him to wheedle the own tongue out of my head to 
 tell what he wanted to hear. I d say what I had 
 to say, if it was the last talking I did in this 
 world. 
 
 This was Thursday afternoon. I was on my way 
 to the Woman s Missionary meeting. I tied my 
 bonnet on tighter than usual and sailed first across 
 the street to the parsonage. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 271 
 
 "Come in!" Brother Wade called cheerfully, 
 hurrying down the steps the way he always does, 
 to conduct me up them. 
 
 "No," I said grimly, "I ve got something to say 
 and I m going to begin now." 
 
 He looked at me mildly, as much as to say: 
 "Dear lady, you are winded already, better sit 
 down ! " But I would not. I planted my fore feet, 
 so to speak, and turned the heels of my indignation 
 full upon him. 
 
 "Brother Wade, I ve been thinking of what you 
 said Sunday about our missionary work." 
 
 "Yes," he assented, as if that was what I should 
 have been doing. 
 
 "And I just want to say that the Methodist 
 Church is not to blame for not having missions and 
 missionaries in Germany and France and England. 
 Until this war began there was a general impression 
 to the effect that these were Christian nations." 
 When I get started I can talk very fast, and I did 
 now, smacking my fist on my palms for emphasis. 
 "For nearly a hundred years we ve been sending 
 salvation to the heathens, and a hundred years 
 after this war s ended we ll be doing that." 
 
 "Yes, yes," he agreed soothingly as he led me up 
 the steps in spite of my wishing to hold back. 
 "But what s the matter?" 
 
 "I was helping to pay the expenses of a Bible 
 
272 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 woman in Siam before you were born!" I gasped 
 as we reached the top. 
 
 "Oh, not so long ago as that!" he objected 
 mischievously as he literally landed me in a 
 chair. 
 
 "This church has always stood for missions, and 
 it doesn t become our pastor to reproach us be 
 cause we are not prepared to take care of Christian 
 folk who should know better than to murder one 
 another," I concluded with something very near a 
 sob. 
 
 "The church of God must always be prepared, 
 at least in the spirit, to serve and to pity and to for 
 give," he said, looking at me gravely. 
 
 "Well, don t we do that? For forty years I ve 
 pinched and saved and given to the church. Most 
 of us have made sacrifices for the work!" I cried 
 indignantly. 
 
 "Yes, I am sure of it. But there is no end to 
 these demands. We must sacrifice all, if necessary, 
 give all, if necessary," he answered. 
 
 "And who, then, will care for us, feed and clothe 
 us?" I demanded. 
 
 "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have 
 nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His 
 head!" he repeated slowly. 
 
 Well, you can t answer that. So I just sat there 
 feeling the tears upon my cheeks, knowing that 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 273 
 
 something was wrong, not able to tell exactly 
 what was wrong. 
 
 "Brother Wade," I began with an effort, "I m 
 an old woman. I have no possible way of earning 
 my own livelihood. My income amounts to less 
 than three hundred dollars a year. I pay fifty 
 dollars of that to the church. But I ve always 
 stood by the pastor." 
 
 "Yes?" He made it a question as he watched 
 me untying the corner of my handkerchief. 
 
 "Here s twenty -five cents toward that Red 
 Cross fund." 
 
 He took it and looked up at me with scandalous 
 wit, as if he d won a bet which I d just paid. 
 
 " You are as likely to raise a thousand dollars out 
 of this church as Doctor Edd is to remain sober," I 
 said, half crying. 
 
 He went on turning over my little slick quarter 
 in his hand and grinning at it. 
 
 "I m greatly encouraged," he answered after a 
 pause. "Practically all the money has been 
 raised." 
 
 "What s that? "I gasped. 
 
 "I say we have the thousand dollars, and the 
 doctor is still sober!" 
 
 You could have knocked me down with a feather 
 I was so astonished. Then I thought of some 
 thing that others had been more generous, that 
 
274 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 my contribution must look very mean and stingy 
 in comparison. The children of God do have their 
 little vanities, too. I fished up another quarter 
 from my pocket and offered it to him as I arose. 
 
 " Maybe I ought to give more, since others have 
 given so much," I said tearfully, "but I haven t 
 the faith to do it!" 
 
 I went down the steps feeling very poor, not be 
 cause I had so little but because I dared give so 
 little. He accompanied me to the gate, regarding 
 me from beneath his brows with a smile half 
 troubled, half tender. 
 
 The next Sunday he took the breath out of the 
 congregation by announcing at the close of the 
 service that the money for the Red Cross work of 
 our church had been paid, and that Doctor Edd 
 was already on his way to New York, from which 
 port he would sail for France. 
 
 Everybody looked at his neighbour with this 
 question in his eye: "How much did you give?" 
 But no one appeared to be willing to let his right 
 hand know what his left had done in this business. 
 As for me, I d given so little that I told Sally, feel 
 ing it was not proper to take more credit than was 
 due. 
 
 For some indefinable reason the church s 
 worldly confidence in Brother Wade was not 
 strengthened by this performance. The members 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 275 
 
 stood in awe of him. But no fault could be found 
 with him. He attended to his pastoral duties as if 
 they were not duties at all, but the natural ex 
 pression of his interest and good will. 
 
 One circumstance afforded much secret satis 
 faction to some of us. This was his attitude to 
 Lily Triggs. Later, when the question arose, no 
 one could remember introducing him to her when 
 he first came to us. We did recall the fact that she 
 had not gone up on this occasion in her usual ami 
 able angel manner to welcome him. Before long it 
 was apparent that she was actually trying to get 
 out of the choir. She was frequently absent. 
 
 Sally said she didn t think Lily was well, she had 
 lost interest in everything. And the Suffrage 
 League was on its last legs. 
 
 " As for the choir, she added, " I think the reason 
 she neglects that is on account of Brother Wade." 
 
 "What s he done? "I asked. 
 
 "Oh, nothing. But you know he s queer. Lily 
 told Charlotte that he didn t appeal to her. She 
 says he s so antipathetic she simply can t sing. 
 Musical temperament, I suppose." 
 
 "I doubt that." 
 
 "What can be the matter then?" she asked. 
 
 "I don t know, but Lily s not the woman to have 
 her singing voice quenched and her light put out by 
 a handsome young man with the manners of a 
 
276 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 knight and the soul of a priest. She d never be 
 able to resist that combination, unless there was a 
 more definite trouble than the squirming of her 
 musical temperament." 
 
 "Mary, your suspicions of that poor girl are un 
 worthy of you!" she chided. 
 
 "I know it, and the Lord will remember it 
 against Lily that she fired the mind of an old 
 woman with suspicions unworthy of a Christian," 
 I answered shamelessly. 
 
 We had in March of this year a heated municipal 
 campaign conducted with much animus in favour 
 of a more economical government, and upon the 
 demand that statements of the town s expenses 
 and balances should be published monthly. The 
 citizens were taxed to the limit allowed by the laws 
 of this state, but no one knew what became of the 
 money, and so on, and so forth. It was the usual 
 thing one set of politicians trying to put another 
 set out of office. But it was a popular cause. The 
 Baptist and Presbyterian ministers were high up in 
 the Good Government League, and Tom Warren 
 was running on the reform ticket for mayor. 
 Naturally the Methodists expected the pastor to 
 "take a stand." Every Sunday we listened in 
 vain for a sermon on the duties of Christian citizen 
 ship. Finally a committee called on him and asked 
 for his support. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 277 
 
 "As a Christian minister we feel that you should 
 let Berton know how you stand in this fight, 
 Brother Wade," said Sam Parks, who was the 
 spokesman. 
 
 "When I became a Christian minister, Brother 
 Parks, I withdrew from the business world to 
 engage exclusively in the business of preaching 
 the Gospel and living accordingly. That requires 
 all my strength, time, and courage. Besides, this 
 town is a corporation like any other. Every 
 citizen in it is a stockholder. If a corporation 
 mismanages its affairs, that is a secular matter 
 in which the church of God should have no part. 
 I am not here to accuse one man or to recommend 
 another, but to keep ever before you the Son of 
 Man, that you may follow Him and forsake all 
 strife, every wordly thought or interest which con 
 flicts with His teachings." 
 
 "But you are in favour of law and order and 
 honest government?" persisted Sam. 
 
 "So is every man in Berton," he laughed. "You 
 are only one party of men accusing another party 
 of men. I will admit something, Brother Parks, 
 which I never meant should be known here," 
 he went on after a pause. " Before I became what 
 I am I was for years interested in political matters. 
 So long as I am a Christian minister I shall not 
 be a politician nor take part in these issues. This 
 
278 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 is not a criticism upon those who do. I merely 
 say that one must choose either the one or the 
 other. You can t be a preacher and fight the 
 members of your own church in a political cam 
 paign." 
 
 This was the first reference Brother Wade had 
 made to his past life. He consistently evaded 
 giving further information about that. While the 
 other preachers in Berton shouted anathemas from 
 their pulpits against graft and exhorted the breth 
 ren to vote the reform ticket, he "availed himself 
 of the opportunity" to preach from this text: "A 
 new commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
 one another." 
 
 The quality of the man always determines the 
 quality of his virtues and faith and even the use 
 he makes of them. Religion makes some people 
 presumptuous, ill-bred, unspeakably offensive. 
 They use their virtues to insult others. Their 
 piety is the fire they kindle beneath other men s 
 reputations. They have the instinct of spiritual 
 bounders, and God will undoubtedly keep an Ellis 
 Island quarantine in some part of the floating 
 heavens for such saints. I reckon one reason 
 Christianity is not universal in its appeal is due 
 as much to this as to the obvious hypocrisies of 
 those who sometimes make great professions. 
 
 Some people vulgarize the nature of the Al- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 279 
 
 mighty by claiming kin with Him. Felix Wade 
 was not one of these. He was informed with the 
 grace of goodness. He made a fine and delicate 
 art of living uprightly. He was like a man with 
 such a splendid ancestry he never had to mention 
 his family connections. You must be gross enough 
 yourself to corner him in order to force him to 
 admit his personal relations to Providence. He 
 never told of his own spiritual struggles, never gave 
 his "experience." He simply walked among us 
 living the Word, wearing the Faith as if it was the 
 dress suit of his salvation. Sally Parks said once 
 that Brother Wade was so nice and polite and 
 reserved about his goodness she hated for him to 
 know about our sins in Berton, they were such 
 common, snub-nosed transgressions. Sally is a 
 very dull woman, but she can feel her way to 
 saying a thing like that when smarter folks miss 
 the point. 
 
 The trouble with him was that he either could 
 not or would not reach into the normal life of the 
 community. He was for placing the Holy Grail 
 into every man s hands. And you cannot do it. 
 The church recoiled from the literal demands he 
 made spiritually upon the members. The people 
 defended themselves from him by indifference. 
 But we might have got safely through the year as 
 a dead church if he had not stirred up a hornet s 
 
280 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 nest among the very elect. I refer to those in 
 whom much local authority in the church is 
 vested. 
 
 Early in April the public-school building of 
 Berton was burned. Three hundred students 
 were turned into the streets in the middle of the 
 spring term. It was a great misfortune, especially 
 since Berton is the educational centre for a large 
 section. The following Sunday Brother Wade 
 added an educational postscript to his sermon. 
 
 He referred to the burning of the school. Some 
 thing must be done at once. He supposed it was 
 every man s business to help in this crisis. He 
 desired, therefore, to lay a plan before the con 
 gregation by which the school term might be 
 finished, and which he had no doubt would meet 
 the approval of every Christian man and woman 
 present. 
 
 "Brethren," he went on, referring to a slip of 
 notes which he held in his hand, "there are four 
 churches in this town. These buildings are worth 
 at least sixty thousand dollars. They are only 
 in use a part of Sunday each week. The remain 
 ing six days they are closed. They serve no pur 
 pose. This is an enormous waste of the church s 
 property. In no other business do we practise 
 such poor economy. 
 
 "They should be open every day. And the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 281 
 
 business of salvation should go on in them every 
 day. Education is essential to salvation, as 
 ignorance is the enemy of righteousness. You 
 have in Berton enough churches to house all the 
 departments of a university, to say nothing of a 
 high school. My proposition, brethren, is to offer 
 this church to the trustess of the Berton High 
 School. Doubtless the authorities of other de 
 nominations will be glad to lend their churches 
 also." 
 
 I do not know of anything so dangerous to 
 accepted Christian traditions as the actual Chris 
 tianity which we profess. Nothing else enrages 
 us so much as to have our idolatries disturbed and 
 exposed to our own gaze. 
 
 What Brother Wade had said was the literal 
 truth. There is scarcely a town of fifteen hundred 
 inhabitants in Georgia which has not enough 
 empty churches in it to serve all the purposes of 
 higher education. Yet it is the custom to burden 
 the people with bonds and enormous taxes to get 
 schools built, because to use the church for this 
 purpose is unthinkable. I do not know why, 
 unless we feel, without exactly thinking it, that 
 we leave the Lord in His house when we close it 
 on Sunday evenings and desire that He shall not 
 be disturbed until we come again to Him on the 
 next Sabbath. 
 
282 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 There was a moment of scandalized silence 
 measured by one long exchange of glances be 
 tween our pastor and his congregation, when he 
 finished what he had to say and stood waiting 
 for whatever might happen. Then Tom Warren 
 stood up. He was so mad that one almost ex 
 pected his beard to catch fire. 
 
 "Brother Wade, this is the house of God!" 
 he began indignantly. "It was built for worship. 
 So long as I am one of the trustees appointed by 
 our Conference it shall never be profaned!" 
 
 "How profaned?" asked Brother Wade. 
 
 "I don t know what you call profanity, but 
 to the folks that built this house it would be a 
 sacrilege to have a hundred children messing in 
 here, running in and out of the pulpit, cutting 
 their names on these sacred benches, and eating 
 their victuals on the altar!" 
 
 "It s all in the point of view, my brother," 
 Brother Wade answered mildly. " To me it seems 
 far more profane for a man to hate his brethren in 
 this house. The noise a child makes is no more 
 than the song of a sparrow under the eaves. The 
 marks he leaves, they may be seen and cleared 
 away, but who can defend himself against the 
 secret thoughts of another?" 
 
 Well, I can t tell it the way they went on 
 Felix Wade in the pulpit, the three trustees and 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 283 
 
 the stewards hopping up and down in the pews 
 like popcorn on a hot griddle. They were all 
 against him. And they said so with a vehemence 
 never seen before among Christian brethren in 
 that place. 
 
 The women kept silent that is to say, we only 
 whispered the one to the other. We are forbidden 
 to speak in the Methodist Church except to give 
 our Christian experience or to shout. A woman 
 cannot even read the missionary report of her 
 society in our Quarterly Conference. She can hold 
 no office in the church. In communities where 
 there is not a single Christian man to be Sunday- 
 school superintendent they will do without a 
 Sunday-school rather than allow a woman to take 
 the place. The Methodists are rigidly literal in 
 their interpretations of Paul s command that the 
 women should "keep silence in the churches." 
 We are allowed on some of the executive boards 
 and we are exhorted to do most of the work for 
 missions, but the house of God is made a sort of 
 reproach to us, a place where we must feel our 
 unworthiness to man. I m not complaining, you 
 understand, I m just telling the truth. And if 
 some of the women I know ever meet Paul in 
 Paradise, he will be called on to explain what he 
 had against us or take to his wings. 
 
 We sat there listening to Sam Parks tell of the 
 
284 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 awful danger in secularizing the church by allow 
 ing the children to say their lessons in it until I 
 couldn t stand it. 
 
 "Sally," I whispered, "one might think Brother 
 Wade was trying to change this church into a 
 theatre the way Sam s carrying on." 
 
 She s fond of Sam and will hide her own con 
 victions like a good wife to stand by him. So she 
 made no reply, and sat beside me, holding in to 
 keep me from knowing she agreed with me. But I 
 went on: 
 
 "If this church is more sacred to these stewards 
 than the welfare of their children, why don t they 
 say so in the plain terms of idolatry and have done 
 with it!" 
 
 "Don t talk so loud!" continued Sally. 
 
 "I m not talking, my dear, I m whispering," I 
 said, making my tones hissing keen. "Listen at 
 em, fussing about the children committing sacri 
 lege by romping at recess. Are you less sacred to 
 Sam because his children have climbed over you 
 and been rocked to sleep upon your knees since 
 they were born? I reckon not!" 
 
 I could see Sally s colour begin to flame, and she 
 cast her eye so coldly on Sam that he sat 
 down. 
 
 "These stewards are just a gang of rougher, 
 meaner, older boys, pushing the little fellows out of 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 285 
 
 this place because they can!" I whispered louder 
 than ever. "Let s get up and leave." 
 
 With that I flounced out, followed by most of the 
 women, and feeling as I usually do when I ve flung 
 the fat in the fire. 
 
 Next to a revival nothing livens a church so 
 much as a furious row. And for the next few 
 weeks every church in Berton experienced a kind 
 of fierce animation. Most of the women were for 
 opening them to the school. All the deacons, 
 vestrymen, and stewards were against it. The 
 children merely looked on, listened, and were 
 doubtless glad their fathers spiritual instincts 
 were stronger than their paternal instincts, thus 
 effectually closing the churches against them. 
 
 There was a large factory settlement two miles 
 from Berton. In June these cotton mills were 
 shut down. Five hundred people were thrown out 
 of employment, and the town council passed a 
 strict ordinance against "loafers," which, if it had 
 been enforced, would have landed some of our best 
 citizens in the calaboose. But it was designed to 
 protect the town from the idle and destitute mill 
 population. Thus Berton disposed of a grave 
 problem after the accepted civil method for dealing 
 with the unemployed. Whenever a question of 
 ethics becomes too expensive to settle ethically, the 
 best way is to settle it economically, to your own 
 
286 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 advantage. Berton left the dead to bury their 
 dead at the factory and went on comfortably 
 about its own business. 
 
 But Felix Wade began to visit his own people less 
 and to spend much of his time among the factory 
 people. No one knew what he was doing out 
 there. Some said he was organizing a mission. 
 We did know that he was neglecting certain finan 
 cial duties connected with his own church and that 
 everything was in a bad way. 
 
 "The people are disaffected," Sam Parks said 
 one day. "We can t even get quarterage. We 
 have paid Wade less than two hundred dollars 
 since he came here. It s a mystery how he gets on, 
 unless, as most of us believe, he has private means 
 of his own." 
 
 "Everything would clear up if he d just start a 
 revival. Why doesn t he do that?" Sally put in. 
 
 "He d better start something. Warren s threat 
 ening to prefer charges against him at the next 
 Quarterly Conference," grunted Sam. 
 
 "What kind of charges?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know maladministration, neglect 
 of duty, anything," he answered indifferently. 
 
 When I was returning from the Parkses that 
 afternoon Brother Wade overtook me. Contrary 
 to his usual bantering cheerfulness he had nothing 
 to say, beyond admitting at my suggestion that 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 287 
 
 it was a beautiful day. He was changed. One 
 could not say how, but there was a subtle differ 
 ence, a remoteness, as if he had withdrawn his 
 spirit from those present. I looked up at him 
 keenly. He was very pale, with a thinness I had 
 not noticed before. His clothes were covered with 
 dust, and they were his best preaching clothes, 
 which I thought was a pity. It was queer, seeing 
 him so unkempt who had come to us so spick-and- 
 span, as if we had worn him out. 
 
 "Well," I reflected to myself, "he has worn us 
 out, too." 
 
 "Been to the factory again?" I asked, merely to 
 break the silence. 
 
 "Yes," he answered. 
 
 "You are out there most of the tune now, aren t 
 you?" I went on, determined to get where I was 
 going. 
 
 "The people need me," he replied with a gentle 
 brevity which seemed to exclude me and Berton 
 from that place. 
 
 "We need you, too. When will you begin the 
 revival?" 
 
 "What revival?" he asked dully. 
 
 "We always have one during August in our 
 church. Some of the members think you should 
 begin it as soon as possible," I explained. 
 
 "I d hoped for one before this time," he an- 
 
288 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 swered regretfully, "but there is no chance. The 
 church is not ready. The people will not give in." 
 
 " Not ready ! What do you mean ? " I exclaimed. 
 "You have only to announce the services. The 
 people are literally hungry for it." 
 
 "Sister Thompson, a religious revival is either a 
 reform or a spiritual orgy." 
 
 "What s that?" I interrupted, feeling rebuked 
 by his tone or by something in his manner. 
 
 "It would be easy to stir the emotions of the 
 people in this town. Being dead in their virtues 
 they naturally crave some excitement. If that 
 excitement takes the form of a religious revival it 
 satisfies the conscience and the appetite for intoxi 
 cants at the same time, but it is no less an orgy than 
 any other form of inebriation." 
 
 "Don t blaspheme the Holy Spirit, Brother 
 Wade!" I cried, deeply troubled. 
 
 "That s what many a so-called revival of re 
 ligion is a blasphemy," he answered coldly, and 
 then went on after a pause: "When the members 
 of a church refuse to do their plain duty, when they 
 avoid the service of Christ as our church has done 
 time and again this year, to start a revival in it 
 would be to start a lie, to encourage the people to 
 cover their transgressions with professions and 
 prayers." 
 
 "I don t understand," I said sorrowfully. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 289 
 
 "When people are moved spiritually they repent 
 of their sins and resolve to do better. That s a 
 revival." 
 
 " When people attend a highly emotional play in 
 a theatre they are stirred to tears by the drama of 
 sorrow. Their sympathies are with the hard- 
 struggling hero and they hate the villain as we hate 
 the devil in a revival. But all of that is lost mo 
 tion morally. They go out to live exactly as they 
 lived before. The same thing is true of a revival. 
 It is a highly emotional dramatization of religious 
 idealism which never affects the character of people 
 who dodge the real issues in the Christian life." 
 
 "What issues have we dodged in this church?" 
 I demanded indignantly. 
 
 "The members failed to support the mission 
 work in the war zone. Our publican alone faced 
 that." 
 
 "But I thought " 
 
 "When there was a heated municipal campaign 
 here in April more than a thousand dollars was 
 spent to elect the reform ticket," he interrupted. 
 "But when the school was burned the members of 
 our church turned their own children into the 
 streets rather than permit them to use the church 
 as a school." 
 
 "Yes," I admitted, "that was wrong." 
 
 "When the mills closed out here four weeks ago, 
 
290 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 and a whole community was left without employ 
 ment more than a hundred of them destitute 
 our reform mayor and council passed an ordinance 
 which kept them from setting foot in this town, but 
 not one dollar has been contributed to relieve their 
 dire distress." 
 
 "But we couldn t support all those people, 
 making mendicants of them!" I protested. 
 
 "That s what Christianity is for. It is the 
 science of humanities applied intelligently to the 
 social and industrial conditions of life. It is the 
 church s business to study and actually to solve 
 these problems. Believe me, dear lady, so long as 
 we think of the life of Christ in the terms of doc 
 trines and creeds we shall never discover what re 
 ligion is. What we call a revival is often a false 
 stimulation of the spiritual life, not only injurious 
 but blasphemous." 
 
 "Many do repent of their sins during revivals. 
 They are converted and they do live differently," I 
 insisted. 
 
 "So far so good. But they are saved only from 
 the sins they had, a meagre personal salvation. A 
 man, I tell you, can be as dead in his virtues as any 
 sinner in his transgressions, with a church for his 
 sepulchre!" 
 
 I looked at him too scandalized to speak the in 
 dignation I felt, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 291 
 
 "I have had a very strange experience," he went 
 on calmly. 
 
 "You must have had!" I shot back. 
 
 "I was awakened to the reasonableness and the 
 human importance of the teachings of Jesus out 
 side the church. If I d been brought up in the 
 church, the Sunday-schools, all that, you know, I 
 doubt if I should ever have realized the full signifi 
 cance of the Christian religion. It has been re 
 duced to a formula there which the church can 
 handle, as you d manage any other business. You 
 are taught certain doctrines of repentance and sal 
 vation. You accept a certain creed. Then you 
 pay your dues, and leave it to the denominational 
 boards to distribute your charities and send the 
 missionaries. But nobody risks the great experi 
 ment of faith and sacrifice except according to 
 established customs." 
 
 "Well, we do most of the good that s done in the 
 world. And " 
 
 "No, we do not," he interrupted. "Great 
 spiritual forces are at work outside the church 
 blind, desperate energies, but all moving hi the 
 ritfht direction. We shall live to see wonderful 
 revivals of religion in this nation, which are pre 
 paring now in the patient adjustment of man to 
 man. It is the world which belongs to God, the 
 world, which all Christians are taught to hate. 
 
92 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 And presently the world must save the churches 
 again as it has purged them many times already of 
 greed and hypocrisies." 
 
 "Who are you?" I demanded, stopping sud 
 denly to look him up and down. 
 
 "Felix Wade, pastor in charge of the church at 
 Berton," he answered simply. 
 
 "No, tell me who you really are," I insisted 
 earnestly. 
 
 "The stranger within your gates, who is not 
 likely to prove his wings," he said, smiling down 
 at me in his familiar, teasing gentleness. 
 
 You can always tell when the apple has turned 
 to ashes on a man s or a woman s lips. They are 
 sure to smile too valiantly. I thought I detected 
 the courage of despair in this face. So many 
 times I have revived the sinking souls of preachers 
 who were on the verge of heresy simply from phy 
 sical exhaustion, complicated with some failure of 
 cherished hopes, that I knew what to do. 
 
 "You ll think better of all these things when 
 you have rested," I said kindly. "Come in now 
 and have some tea." 
 
 "No, thanks, I m really in a great hurry," he 
 said, opening the gate for me. 
 
 "We ve walked as if we were going for the doc 
 tor," I complained, realizing that I was quite out 
 of breath. 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 293 
 
 "In fact I m on my way now to telegraph for 
 one," he said. 
 
 "Who s ill?" I asked anxiously. 
 
 "Everybody at the mills, or at least they are 
 all in danger of being ill. We have fifty cases of 
 typhoid there now. Frightful situation. Phy 
 sician employed by the company left when the 
 mills closed. No nurses. I hope to get what we 
 imperatively need to-night, however," he said, 
 hurrying off. 
 
 I went in and sat down upon my doorstep, which 
 is low and concealed from the street by two box 
 wood bushes. I had a good deal to think about. 
 
 In the first place, I was troubled for the church. 
 Preachers came and preachers went, but the church 
 remained with us. Brother Wade was a spiritual 
 radical. He wished us to live strictly as if we 
 were in the spirit when we were still in our bodies. 
 He was trying to live among us without a working 
 knowledge of our strictly secular natures. I hope 
 I m a Christian woman, but my hope is tragically 
 mixed with the experience I ve had of just mortal 
 perversity. And no man can put the wisdom of 
 things as they are behind him without being more 
 of a fool than the Lord requires of him. We 
 had troubles ahead of us, I reflected with a sigh. 
 
 Then there was that thousand dollars which 
 the church had given to the Red Cross work in 
 
294 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 the war zone. Who had given it? Only a woman 
 knows the sweet anguish of unsatisfied curiosity. 
 And here was Brother Wade telegraphing for 
 doctors and nurses for the factory folk. Who was 
 paying for all that? I hoped he would not lay 
 the matter before our church! He was always 
 going off at a tangent. Well, he couldn t get very 
 far on the quarterage the church paid him! The 
 question was how he made ends meet. And, by 
 the way, where was his car? I had not seen 
 him in it for nearly a month. Sally and I ought 
 to go out and take some things to the sick people 
 at the factory I d mention that to her to 
 morrow. 
 
 Thus my thoughts ran back and forth the way 
 they do when you know there is nothing you can 
 do to help matters. 
 
 It was now quite dark, the soft warm darkness 
 of a summer night. The town is always very 
 quiet at this homing hour. Lights twinkled from 
 windows down the street. Now and then a white 
 moth blew by like a blossom in the darkness. 
 
 I may have dozed, which is a fault I have when 
 I sit too long in one place. Anyhow it seemed to 
 me that I had been listening drowsily to voices 
 for some time before I realized that in fact two 
 persons were talking with suppressed animation 
 across the street. 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 295 
 
 I arose and peered over the boxwood. I could 
 distinguish Lum by his white clothes, standing 
 in the side door of the parsonage. The other 
 person was a woman, wrapped on this summer 
 night in a long black coat. 
 
 "No, him a Clishtian now!" he was saying. 
 
 "Don t speak so loud!" the woman cautioned. 
 
 To my horror I recognized the thin childish 
 tones of Lily Triggs speaking voice. The next 
 moment she moved like a darker shade down the 
 street. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IF THERE is anything worse for a woman s 
 peace of mind than having something which 
 she cannot tell, it is suspecting something 
 which she does not know. 
 
 The criticism Brother Wade had made of the 
 church to me was a breach of loyalty unpardon 
 able in a Methodist preacher. What I thought 
 was that a man can go so far right that, for all 
 practical purposes, he is hopelessly wrong. To 
 have offered this defense would have been to con 
 fess that the Christian faith, as taught in the New 
 Testament, is an impossible religion which is not 
 so. I was torn between the devotion of a life 
 time to this little weatherbeaten church in Berton 
 and sympathy with this strange young preacher, 
 who was beginning to show the tension of a hope 
 less struggle. I could not be with him. I had 
 neither the strength nor the courage to make such 
 radical changes in the habits of my spiritual life, 
 so long adjusted to just the weather of my own 
 human nature. 
 
 I doubt that this is a Christian civilization, 
 strictly speaking, or that there ever can be such 
 
 296 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 297 
 
 a civilization. The best of us pass, like Moses, 
 with only the vision of the Promised Land of our 
 souls, which we are not fit to enter. Our institu 
 tions are designed to meet the emergencies and 
 desires of human beings not immortal spirits. 
 Our immediate salvation depends upon material 
 conditions. The church proves this no less than 
 a business corporation. The ideal may be spirit 
 ual, but the active aim is always more and more 
 material. The only difference is in the methods 
 employed. 
 
 Men trained to business and worldly ambitions 
 achieve wealth and success by their own efforts 
 and labours. The church proclaims the Gospel 
 of sacrifice and achieves wealth and success. But 
 it never earns! From the earliest days of re 
 ligious idolatry, when men made burnt offerings 
 to their gods, until now, we are still inspired by 
 faith to give of our wealth and substance to the 
 church always giving, giving, until the earth is 
 heavily laden with churches and other religious 
 organizations, built and supported by the treasures 
 which we think we have laid up in heaven; while 
 the poor are still poorer and the good not much 
 better. 
 
 It may be because I am old and tired, but I 
 cannot see that these conditions can be changed. 
 It is not so bad as it is just natural. Besides, 
 
298 A Circuit Riders Widow 
 
 every time the church gets too far ahead in the 
 game the world steps in and cleans it up which 
 is also right. 
 
 What Brother Wade wanted was something 
 supernatural. And no one is equal to that except 
 momentarily. You cannot keep it up and remain 
 sane. 
 
 But to have repeated in Berton what he had 
 said would have started a scandal a very easy 
 thing to do at any time. This gave me a com 
 pressed-air feeling every time I met Sally Parks 
 or any one else who wanted to talk about what 
 a bad fix the church was in. 
 
 The thing I suspected gave me even more 
 trouble. Since the night I had seen Lily Triggs 
 talking with that heathen Brother Wade keeps 
 for a servant I could not rest. I became an in 
 voluntary spy upon the parsonage. I d slip across 
 my parlour to the window and part the curtains 
 slyly to see if anything was going on over there 
 that should not go on. This was wrong and gave 
 me a sense of guilt. But the unknown past of 
 Felix Wade seemed to be licking out its tongue 
 at me with deadly fascination. 
 
 It is not so easy for a man to live above sus 
 picion, no matter how well he lives. Being a man 
 at all is in itself a very suspicious circumstance. 
 The reputation of the sex is not good. There is 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 299 
 
 a mean but generally accepted theory that, even 
 if he is innocent, he is in imminent danger of one 
 or two temptations. He has never risen above 
 having his virtue conjugated in the subjunctive 
 mood. He may, can, or must be good. He might, 
 could, would, or should be good. Or, saddest of 
 all, he might, could, would, or should have been 
 good! It all depends upon whether accident or 
 association casts him upon the shifting sands of 
 the wrong woman s smile. 
 
 I do not hold these views myself, but the strictly 
 feminine serpent in me does. Brother Wade 
 preached an austere Gospel and he lived a con 
 secrated life. My suspicion was that, to be so 
 good, he must have been very bad. He was like 
 one who takes a desperate remedy for a desperate 
 trouble. I doubt that Saint Francis of Assisi 
 would have gone the lengths he did in piety and 
 renunciation if he had not gone first all the gaits in 
 the other direction. I am well acquainted with 
 the ordinary good man, who has never had any 
 vices and who is as confirmed in his virtues as 
 any one could be in the tobacco habit. 
 
 We have had more than one pastor here with 
 only a second-hand knowledge of the wicked world. 
 Every one of them lambasted us with an occa 
 sional cat-o -nine-tails sermon on dancing and 
 other worldly amusements of which we were 
 
300 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 awkwardly innocent. I do not know why it is, 
 but if a preacher has never seen the inside of a 
 ballroom or danced with a woman he is sure to 
 have an evil imagination about those things. Not, 
 you understand, that there is any question about 
 its being wrong to dance or to enjoy many other 
 diversions which I have often sinfully craved, but 
 there is an awful possibility that this kind of 
 preaching actually nourishes our instincts for 
 these sins which we cannot afford. 
 
 Brother Wade was different. He never referred 
 to the iniquities of the world. He showed none of 
 the spiritual fox fire so often employed by the emo 
 tional evangelist when he entertains the congrega 
 tion with lurid descriptions of the "life he once 
 led." If only he had confided something of his past 
 life the church would have been drawn closer to 
 him; but he was the most reserved, self-effacing 
 preacher I ever knew. He asked neither sympathy 
 nor help for himself. He was for binding us all, 
 hand and foot, to the cross of Christ. 
 
 September is usually the best month of the year 
 in this church; for by this time we have usually 
 paid most of the assessments, passed through a re 
 vival, and been furbished up spiritually. But this 
 year we were able to make no such terms with the 
 Almighty. We had the feeling that our salvation 
 rent had not been paid, and that we should like to 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 301 
 
 forgive each other the usual trespasses, as we al 
 ways do, stirred by a revival. But we did not 
 know how to go about it on a "cold collar." One s 
 spirit must be sweetly holden by some divine il 
 lusion before he can walk up to a man he knows has 
 wronged him and say: "Forgive me, brother; the 
 fault was all mine." And this is the accepted way. 
 If you tell the truth and say, "I forgive you, my 
 brother, though you were entirely in the wrong," 
 you have only clinched his hard feelings against 
 you with another year s grip. You must admit 
 that you were the offender, especially if you were 
 not, but the victim of his injustice. 
 
 I reckon I have made friends with Charlotte 
 Warren a dozen times this way by telling a lie just 
 for conscience s sake which is a thing I cannot do 
 unless I ve been in the wine press of a revival and 
 had my spirit badly bruised by the Word. But if 
 I do admit that the fault is my fault she is very 
 gracious about it, and says it s all right; and that 
 Christians must forgive one another as they hope 
 to be forgiven. And won t I come round to tea at 
 her house on Wednesday night, just to show the 
 Woman s Missionary Society, which is always the 
 bloody sands where we have our difficulties, that 
 we are once more in love and charity with one an 
 other? These peace-offering teas of Charlotte s 
 are the bitterest pills I ve ever had to swallow as a 
 
302 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Christian woman. And I always take them dur 
 ing revivals, when I m unnaturally strong in the 
 faith. 
 
 But Charlotte had not spoken to me for three 
 months now, owing to a circumstance I shall relate 
 presently. And we were getting farther apart 
 every day, owing to the lack of the usual religious 
 stimulation. 
 
 Sometimes I was indignant with our pastor; then 
 I d see the situation with a kind of malevolent wit. 
 The church was filled every Sunday with Metho 
 dist orphans, listening like strangely chastened 
 children to Brother Wade preaching the Gospel of 
 laying down our lives here and now for Christ, 
 hoping hungrily that he d relent and give us the 
 chance to do the usual superficial things in the 
 name of the Lord. 
 
 I cannot remember a time when the members of 
 this church did not groan and complain at the 
 amount we are assessed for Conference collections. 
 The stewards give the pastor to understand that 
 he ll do well if he gets 50 per cent; then the 
 struggle begins to raise them. It is like shoving a 
 heavily loaded team up a long hill the preacher 
 shouting encouragement or threatening us with a 
 loss of reputation in the Conference. A few old 
 saints behind push for dear life. 
 
 Tom Warren has a way of sucking his teeth with 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 303 
 
 a sort of sibilant wrath at such times. We can al 
 ways hear him clicking and clucking in the amen 
 corner, because he is our one rich man and our 
 chief stingy man, and he knows everybody is wait 
 ing to see what he subscribes. Well, it was funny 
 now to watch him begin to stir angrily in his seat 
 and suck through his teeth as if he were spitting fire 
 at Brother Wade, who would not ask him for his 
 money. 
 
 The Baptists held their "protracted meeting," 
 and the Presbyterians had a series of dignified 
 devotional services. The Primitive Baptists at 
 the bottom of the hill had their "foot- washing," 
 and still the Methodists remained dead in their 
 trespasses and sins. We could not measure up to 
 Brother Wade s Gospel, but we wanted to be re 
 vived. We longed to sing 
 
 Just as I am, without one plea, 
 
 Lamb of God, we come to Thee 
 
 and come to the altar as usual during the singing 
 of the last stanza and let it go at that, with all our 
 sins and backsli dings. But our pastor went on 
 stoning us with the Gospel of service and sacrifice. 
 He even cut out the experience meeting we some 
 times had on Wednesday night when the brethren 
 and sisters told what was the matter with them and 
 asked the prayers of all Christian people. 
 
304 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 The tragic figure in every church is some man 
 who believes he has committed the unpardonable 
 sin and that the Lord has forsaken him. This is 
 always a man. I never knew or heard of a woman 
 who thought she could do so enormously wrong. 
 
 David Rivers was the apostate in our church. 
 He lived alone in a sawmill shack in the woods 
 above the town. He was of great stature roughly 
 made, as if he had got himself together out of 
 the deeper earth. His beard was black. The 
 hair came low upon his forehead, like a coarse 
 black fringe. His eyes were dark and expression 
 less. No one knew from whence he came or any 
 thing of his history. He was merely the sorrowful 
 shade of a man who had drifted in with a sawmill. 
 His business was the snaking of logs down the hill 
 sides to this mill. 
 
 He never came to Berton except to purchase sup 
 plies. On these rare occasions he attended to his 
 business and hurried away, looking no man in the 
 face, never speaking if it was possible to avoid 
 speech. 
 
 But when there was a revival in our church he 
 came regularly to the night services, sitting far 
 back, like a damned soul, in the darkest corner of 
 the house. He was always the first to respond 
 when penitents were invited to seek forgiveness for 
 their sins, stumbling like a somnambulist down the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 305 
 
 aisle to the altar. We prayed and wrestled with 
 him in vain. He never received the blessing. Each 
 year he returned to us at this season, always hurry 
 ing to the altar, never praying for himself, never 
 confiding his troubles; merely kneeling there and 
 staring straight before him like one who beholds a 
 horrid vision. 
 
 Now as the summer waned, with no prospect of a 
 revival in our church, David began to appear every 
 day with the shades of evening in Berton, still si 
 lent, but with the animation of a strange terror in 
 his haggard face. He would come striding down 
 the street and halt in front of the church, stare at 
 the darkened windows, then hurry away. 
 
 One evening late in September Brother Wade 
 was sitting on my porch when David s great strad 
 dling figure loomed in the moonlight on the op 
 posite side of the street. He stood regarding the 
 dark and silent church. Once he raised his hands 
 above his head in a gesture of frenzied despair. At 
 last he turned and walked swiftly toward the par 
 sonage, mounted the steps, and struck heavily 
 upon the door. 
 
 "Who is that man?" asked Brother Wade. 
 
 "David Rivers," I answered. 
 
 "He should have been called Saul," he said, ris 
 ing to answer the summons rapped so imperiously. 
 
 "He has been seeking religion for years. They 
 
306 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 say he is an apostate," I explained, speaking very 
 low, for the man had caught sight of us and was 
 now crossing the street. 
 
 "Come in, David," I said when he reached the 
 steps. 
 
 "Is this the pastor of the Methodist Church?" 
 he asked, fixing his sombre eyes upon Brother 
 Wade. 
 
 "Yes," Brother Wade answered, advancing 
 and offering his hand. "What can I do for 
 
 you?" 
 
 David stood, with his long arms hanging, his face 
 lifted. 
 
 "When s the revival going- to start over there?" 
 he demanded, with a motion of his head toward the 
 church. 
 
 "I don t know. Why?" asked Brother Wade. 
 
 "It must begin! I can t stand it no longer. I 
 want another chance!" he cried, again lifting his 
 arms in that gesture of despair. 
 
 Brother Wade went swiftly down the steps and 
 laid his hand upon the man s shoulder. 
 
 " I ve sinned ! Do you understand that? " David 
 groaned. 
 
 "Yes," answered Brother Wade gently. 
 
 "I ve sinned the unpardonable sin," he whis 
 pered hoarsely. "All the year I am by myself 
 with it, up there in the woods." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 307 
 
 He paused, looked about him as if the thing he 
 had done was visible. Then he went on: 
 
 " I ll never be forgiven. But when the meeting s 
 going on over there in the church, and all the 
 Christian people are praying for me, it ain t so 
 terrible. That s the only rest I get." 
 
 "There is but one sin," said Brother Wade 
 "the sin against love." 
 
 "Yes; that s it. How d you know?" gasped the 
 man. 
 
 "There is but one forgiveness," Brother Wade 
 went on in tones of authority. 
 
 "Not for me!" interrupted David. 
 
 "That is, to love; to give your life hi love," the 
 preacher continued, holding the eyes of the apos 
 tate with a stronger gaze. 
 
 "I don t know what you mean," David moaned. 
 "And I can t pray." 
 
 "To love is to pray," answered the other. 
 
 "But not to be forgiven! You don t know what 
 I ve done!" he cried. 
 
 "That makes no difference. To love is to be 
 forgiven." 
 
 "But I can t love. Don t you understand? 
 I m damned! I can t even hate; I m dead!" 
 
 "To serve is to live!" came the reply. 
 
 It was as if I beheld two spirits wrestling upon 
 my doorstep, which is a fearsome sight, when one 
 
308 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 of them thinks he is damned and the other thinks 
 salvation is a life sentence to service and sacrifice. 
 
 I slipped quietly into the house, feeling that 
 this was no place for an old woman who takes her 
 religion according to the emergencies of the mo 
 ment, and maybe trusts the Lord more than her 
 daily deeds warrant. 
 
 More than an hour elapsed before they finally 
 concluded that strange argument, and I heard the 
 two men going off together. 
 
 My knowledge of worldly churches in cities is 
 limited; but in the villages and country, where 
 there are wide silences, and much home life of the 
 heaven and the earth upon the hills to encompass 
 the brooding spirit of men, these apostates are 
 familiar figures. They usually discover them 
 selves during protracted meetings, and they rarely 
 recover from the horror of the conviction that 
 they have committed the unpardonable sin, 
 though it often transpires that such a man cannot 
 tell himself exactly what he has done. 
 
 Once, many years ago, a famous minister of the 
 Methodist Church in this state was preaching 
 a sermon on apostasy. Suddenly a man, just an 
 ordinary farmer, rose and left the house. That 
 night his body was found within fifty yards of 
 the church door. He had slain himself while 
 the altar was filled with penitents, drawn there 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 309 
 
 by the terror they had of the fate with which they 
 were threatened. 
 
 It is all very well to say that a suicide is men 
 tally defective, but the human soul is a very deli 
 cate instrument. It never swings so far wrong in 
 a bad man as many suspect nor so far right in a 
 good one as we are inclined to believe; but let it 
 once balance too far either way and the perfectly 
 normal man becomes a defective. He can be a 
 dipsomaniac spiritually as surely as any other 
 drunkard may be the victim of delirium. 
 
 Maybe it is blasphemous to say such a thing, 
 but my belief is that we should pray the Lord to 
 save us from extreme worldliness and from ex 
 treme piety, and especially from the extreme dark 
 ness of our own rational minds. 
 
 A few days later I met Taggy Lipton coming out 
 of Sam Parks grocery store. 
 
 "Have you heard the news?" she asked as we 
 walked down the street together. "David Rivers 
 has professed religion!" 
 
 "Well, that s a mercy," I answered, feeling 
 more curiosity than I was willing to show. 
 
 "He s sold his oxen, quit the sawmill, and taken 
 the position of orderly in that hospital Brother 
 Wade is running for the factory people with the 
 fever," she explained. 
 
310 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "But how d he get religion?" I asked. 
 
 "That s how he sold all he had, gave it to the 
 hospital, and then went to work there. John 
 Henry says you wouldn t know David, he s so 
 up in his spirit; ready to laugh and talk like any 
 body else." 
 
 "Brother Wade had better mind what he s 
 doing!" I could not refrain from saying. 
 
 "Why, I thought you d be glad we got at least 
 one convert!" she exclaimed. 
 
 "He s put David up to sacrificing the only means 
 he has of a livelihood. What will the man do? 
 That hospital is only a temporary affair," I ex 
 plained. 
 
 "Did you know that Brother Wade sold his 
 car?" she asked. 
 
 "I suspected as much," I answered, for we had 
 not seen his fine big car since he roared out of 
 town with it one morning on one of those mys 
 terious trips he took shortly after the fever epi 
 demic started at the factory. 
 
 "John Henry says it s just as well he did get 
 rid of it, for the church is not paying enough 
 quarterage to keep him in gasoline. Everybody 
 seems to think he has means of his own," she con 
 cluded. 
 
 "Which is a poor reason for cheating him out of 
 his salary as pastor," I retorted. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 311 
 
 It was about this time that Brother Wade s 
 bulldog began to come to my door every morning 
 and look up at me more agreeably than usual, as 
 if he d adopted me as a friend of the family and 
 was by the same token entitled to the scraps from 
 the table. I thought nothing of this circum 
 stance, because Lum was in and out of my kitchen 
 every day, pretending to learn my ways of cook 
 ing. The dog always accompanied him. I was 
 loath to feed him; but he was very thin and I 
 thought the heathen was neglecting him, so he 
 shared the scraps with the cat. Then I d take 
 the broom to him and drive him home, for fear 
 Brother Wade would think I was bribing his ugly 
 beast to stay at my house. 
 
 One afternoon I went to see Sally Parks about 
 the missionary program for our society. When I 
 came home, about six o clock, that dog was sitting 
 out in the yard looking very queer and unsettled 
 in his mind. 
 
 "Begone!" I cried, stamping my foot at him. 
 
 But, instead of going, he shot round the corner 
 of the house as if he had urgent business in the 
 backyard. I hurried in to get the broom, which 
 is the only weapon I ever keep. 
 
 At this moment I heard a door closing softly 
 with a creak. It was the pantry door, because 
 that is the only one in the house which makes a 
 
312 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 noise. I stood for an instant transfixed with 
 horror. 
 
 The woman never lived who did not expect to 
 find a robber hi the house. I can no more get 
 into my bed at night without looking under it 
 than I can sleep without saying my prayers. I 
 reckon this is the cave woman s instinct not for 
 burglars, but just the elemental fear of a strange 
 man; for I never look anywhere else for him. Wo 
 men never do. But now, after all these years of 
 expecting to find him, he literally was there not 
 under my poor old innocent bed, but in my pantry, 
 of course. 
 
 The floor vibrated beneath the quick slippered 
 tread of feet across the kitchen floor. No power 
 on earth could have drawn me one step forward to 
 defend my things. If I d had the strength to 
 move I should have fled back out of the front 
 door and left him in undisputed possession. 
 
 At this moment I saw Lum glide through the 
 back door, bent double, with his apron covering 
 something. Indignation gave me a swiftness that 
 I have not had for many a year. I rushed out in 
 time to see him dart back toward the kitchen. 
 
 He was flying through the hall when I met him 
 face to face, with the broom lifted high over my 
 head. 
 
 He made some kind of a mewing heathen sound 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 313 
 
 as he rushed past, merely turning me sidewise to 
 make room for his own greatly exaggerated person, 
 for my hall is narrow and I am two-thirds the 
 width of it. 
 
 I can only hope no one saw me chasing that 
 heathen across the street to the parsonage. The 
 transit was made in silence, for I had no wind to 
 spare in futile maledictions; but when he turned 
 at bay in his own kitchen I still had the broom 
 and the will to use it. 
 
 I snatched his apron aside and disclosed the 
 parsonage bread tray filled with an assortment of 
 my household supplies a pile of flour in one end, 
 with a lump of lard as large as a cocoanut embedded 
 in it; a pound of butter; a can filled with coffee; 
 and the only jar of raspberry marmalade I had 
 left from our last Quarterly Conference. Wedged 
 in between the butter and the coffee can, I could 
 see the wrapper on a cake of bath soap. 
 
 "What does this mean?" I cried. 
 
 "Eats," he explained simply, regarding me with 
 a graven-image expression. 
 
 I was too much astonished by his mild shame- 
 lessness to speak. 
 
 "Take a little every day," he explained after a 
 pause. 
 
 "So you ve been doing this before!" I exclaimed. 
 
 He nodded his head. Then he set the tray down, 
 
314 A Circuit Rider 9 s Widow 
 
 moved across the room with that slick tread he 
 has, flung the pantry door open, and beckoned 
 me to enter. I did, with a certain feeling of 
 proprietorship, for I had helped many a time to 
 stock this pantry. Every shelf was empty. 
 There was not a dust of flour in the bin; not a 
 scrap of meat. An old cracked-rice jar lay yawn 
 ing sidewise in one corner. 
 
 "What what s the matter here?" I cried. 
 
 He merely grunted a curious half sound and 
 spread his palms downward, with a listless gesture. 
 
 "How long has it been like that?" I demanded, 
 drawing back from that accusing pantry. 
 
 "One mebbe two mont s. No mon. Velly 
 bad!" 
 
 "Who else have you been stealing from?" I 
 asked with widening suspicion. 
 
 He made a gesture with both hands, spreading 
 them like thin yellow claws in a manner that 
 indicated the whole town. 
 
 "From everybody?" I gasped. 
 
 " No, no ! Not the Baps. From the Methodys. 
 Owe my master. No pay. Takee leetle here, 
 leetle there. Do velly well," he explained coolly. 
 
 There is an element of the virago in every up- 
 and-doing woman, which never is converted to 
 meekness or patience. When things go too far 
 wrong in my house, especially in the kitchen, I 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 315 
 
 always kick the cat, lifting him humanely upon 
 the top of my foot and flinging him furiously 
 across the room. It does not hurt him and it 
 relieves the snarled bobbin of my nerves as "strong 
 language" relieves a man. 
 
 As I stood staring at that heathen, flattened 
 against the pantry door like a yellow shadow, I 
 felt the cat-kicking feeling coming on. But he 
 was shaped so little like a cat that I was obliged 
 to seize him by the collar instead. 
 
 "Never do such a thing again, you heathen 
 rogue!" I exclaimed, shaking him violently. 
 
 "No can starve," he insisted imperturbably the 
 moment I released him. 
 
 "What will your master say?" I threatened. 
 
 "Know nothing; say nothing," he answered 
 shrewdly. 
 
 Well, here was a situation our pastor keeping 
 soul and body together upon rations stolen by a 
 heathen, while the church owed him several 
 hundred dollars in salary. We have had preachers 
 here who were not above asking for things, even 
 when they received all that was promised on 
 quarterage. Now we had one who would not even 
 ask for what was due him. 
 
 I was in no condition financially to provide for 
 another family, but there was nothing else to do 
 until something could be done. I ordered Lum to 
 
316 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 follow and went back to add a few things that his 
 depredations had not included. 
 
 While we filled the basket, Lum, animated by 
 the prospect of proper food, was moved to con 
 fidences. 
 
 "My master velly lich before we come here. 
 Spend the money fast; have big time. Then 
 much trouble dam lady; dam wine; dam those 
 politics everything. Give all he have to his God. 
 Velly expensive being a Clishtian," he squeaked. 
 
 "Where d he live then?" I could not resist ask 
 ing. 
 
 He retreated; he effaced himself. He became 
 the graven image of stupidity. 
 
 "In New York?" 
 
 Still no reply. 
 
 "Where he knew Lily Triggs?" 
 
 I had stuck a knife in him; he would die without 
 flinching, but speak never! So his face told 
 me. 
 
 "What did she want the night she talked to you 
 at the back door?" I demanded suddenly. 
 
 "Velly dam lady that; no speakee to her," he re 
 turned after considering the question. 
 
 "Yes, you did. I saw you both," I said sternly. 
 
 "No!" he lied, laying hold of the basket in a 
 great hurry to be gone. 
 
 I went out on the porch and sat down to con- 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 317 
 
 sider what should be done. We have always had 
 donation parties for our pastors when we had 
 reason to believe their domestic ends were not 
 meeting. As many of us as could get together 
 would descend upon the parsonage some evening. 
 A dray would follow, loaded with groceries. The 
 women brought cakes, jellies; even a bedquilt some 
 times if it was a very cold winter. 
 
 But it was not so easy to get donations for a 
 preacher who had alienated many prominent mem 
 bers of the church and who appeared to be ignorant 
 of this fact. More than that, he was now sus 
 pected of being a rich crank. How should I go 
 about telling the people he was living on their in 
 voluntary charity? I recalled a circumstance in 
 this connection that was funny besides being 
 scandalous in the light of Lum s confession. 
 
 Charlotte Warren had some very fine fowls 
 three hens and a rooster which were her pride, be 
 cause they laid so many eggs. She was now mys 
 tified about these hens. They had not produced 
 an egg in weeks. She told Taggy that she had 
 spent hah 5 they were worth buying eggmaking food 
 for them. She said she knew they wanted to lay 
 because they cackled as if they did. 
 
 "And would you believe it, Sister Lip ton," she 
 concluded finally, "one of those hens went to set 
 ting without ever laying an egg! The poor thing 
 
318 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 thought she had, you know, on account of that 
 high-powered food I d been giving her." 
 
 Taggy, who told me of this, said she thought it 
 must be a thief, because she had missed five pullets 
 from her spring hatchings. She almost knew we 
 had a professional rogue in Berton, because so 
 many people were complaining. Milk delivered 
 at certain houses was taken, the thief alternating 
 from one to the other. The Peterses lost their 
 cantaloupes, and Sam Parks sat up one whole night 
 trying to catch the person who was taking vege 
 tables from his garden. 
 
 "He s no ordinary rogue," Sally complained, 
 "for he actually stole the only bloom I had on my 
 Martha Washington bush last night." 
 
 When I passed through the parsonage that after 
 noon I saw this rose languishing in a vase in the 
 dining-room table! 
 
 Brother Wade was the only literal believer I had 
 ever known in the Lord s promise to feed the 
 young ravens and he was living by the depreda 
 tions of that heathen on his neighbours ! 
 
 If the Scriptures I do not understand will leave 
 me alone I will not push them too close with ex 
 periments. I don t pretend to understand the 
 meaning of "Take no thought, saying, WTiat shall 
 we eat? ... or, Wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed? " My belief is that the Lord always used 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 319 
 
 highly poetic language and that He only meant 
 that we should not give too much ambition merely 
 to the getting of substance; for I have observed 
 that they who make no provision for the future 
 either steal or starve, or live on the charity of those 
 who have been very thoughtful of the future. 
 
 What I am trying to say is this: There is no 
 place in the world, as it is now organized, for the 
 austere renunciations that Brother Wade preached 
 and practised, to the despair of all Christian 
 people. Growth in grace consists chiefly in keep 
 ing up the struggle that no man wins. 
 
 I had about made up my mind to call up Sally 
 Parks over the phone and tell her I d been over to 
 the parsonage that day and found the pantry 
 empty, when I saw Brother Wade entering the 
 gate. 
 
 He came up, saluted me in his pleasantly ex 
 aggerated manner, dropped into the chair beside 
 me, and leaned back. He looked very tired, calm, 
 and blessed, as a man does when he s giving all his 
 goods to feed the poor, and his body to be burned 
 and has charity besides. 
 
 We exchanged some remarks about the weather. 
 He thought there was already the edge of autumn 
 in those September days. 
 
 "The yellow butterflies have not come yet, so we 
 can t tell when we shall have frost," I said. 
 
320 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "What have butterflies to do with frost? I 
 thought they were the air blossoms of summer 
 days," he commented idly. 
 
 "When you see tiny yellow butterflies rising and 
 wheeling low above the grass in the meadows, it is 
 a sign that we shall have enough frost in ten days 
 to turn the leaves the same colour," I explained. 
 
 He said he hoped they d come soon. I knew he 
 was thinking of the sick people at the factory who 
 needed the bracing cold weather. I wanted to ask 
 him how he got the money to keep up that im 
 provised hospital, pay the doctor and two nurses. 
 I knew that I should break over presently and ask 
 him one of half a dozen questions that were gather 
 ing a kind of speaking force in my mind. 
 
 "Dear lady," he said after a thoughtful pause, 
 "do you happen to have any gruel in the house?" 
 
 "Gruel?" I exclaimed, staring at him over my 
 spectacles. "Why should I have gruel? I m never 
 ill." 
 
 "That s true," smiling frankly. "You are so 
 marvellously well in the spirit and humanly hardy 
 in the flesh that I could never think of you in a 
 sublimated body with wings!" 
 
 "The Lord must make them extra strong, at any 
 rate," I replied, laughing. 
 
 He slipped lower in his chair, stretched his long 
 legs, crossed his dusty shoes, and gazed with that 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 321 
 
 narrowing smile at his own thoughts, which was a 
 habit he had, very provoking to me now, when I 
 wanted to know more about the gruel business. 
 
 "Ever think of this," he went on, without look 
 ing up, "that all the angels and saints mentioned in 
 the Scriptures are referred to as he s?" 
 
 "That s because the Scriptures were all written 
 by men the ballots they cast in advance for their 
 own immortality. The prejudices of your sex have 
 laid a sort of spiritual impropriety upon us in the 
 next world," I retorted sharply. 
 
 "I don t know," he laughed; "women may be 
 needed so much forever in this world that the Lord 
 can t spare you just to sing soprano in heaven. 
 There is so much kindness of light in some of you; 
 so much darkness in others of you. You are like 
 the weather, which is bright to-day and cloudy to 
 morrow. You, for example, would make a fine, 
 large, round day which might return, like Halley s 
 Comet only oftener for thousands of years. 
 You d come, I imagine, somewhere in the harvest 
 season of summer weather; very kind and golden, 
 with just a cold snap to your early morning, and a 
 wide lavender mist spreading over your evening, 
 like the answer to all the prayers you ve ever 
 said, changed to that peace and silence one feels 
 then." 
 
 "Listen to me, Brother Wade!" I exclaimed 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 earnestly. "Never say such things abroad in this 
 town!" 
 
 "I won t. I was speaking in strictest confi 
 dence," he laughed. "But why this warning?" 
 
 "Because people do not understand poetic forms 
 of speech here. They don t anywhere, guided by 
 doctrines and creeds. The most awful experience 
 I ever had as a Christian woman came from telling 
 Sally Parks that I remembered playing with Eve s 
 little girls as a child, and later straying off with the 
 Cleopatra Sisters in Egypt!" 
 
 Then I had to tell him about that. During the 
 narrative he rumpled his cowlick and laughed like a 
 boy. 
 
 "Well, I ll be careful not to involve you in an 
 other scandal," he said at last. "But, really, 
 women do remind me more of the weather than 
 they do of anything else. We have only one pa 
 tient left now in our hospital at the factory; and 
 she s just a poor little dusk of a woman, very dim, 
 as if she d fade into night presently without a 
 single star. It is for her I wanted the gruel," he 
 explained. 
 
 "Can t you get it hot out there?" I asked, not 
 ungraciously, merely intimating the essential char 
 acter of gruel. 
 
 "The fact is, we ve about come to the end of our 
 resources," he said soberly. "The nurses left last 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 323 
 
 week. The doctor is gone. And we ve used up 
 everything. This girl was a factory hand no 
 kindred; no one to see her through; only an old 
 woman we ve hired to take care of her. The 
 people who have not drifted away are desti 
 tute." 
 
 "Where d you get the money to keep up that 
 hospital, anyhow?" I demanded suddenly. 
 
 He looked up at me as if I d committed a breach 
 of etiquette. But I ve always been superior to my 
 manners when the emergency demanded some 
 thing stronger. 
 
 "Not from the people in Berton?" I persisted. 
 
 "Many of them have sent out supplies, you 
 know," he hedged. 
 
 "Not funds to pay nurses and buy medicines. 
 You have spent a lot of money out there." 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 "Where is your car?" I asked, closing in. 
 
 "Sold it," he admitted, but as if that was none 
 of my business. 
 
 "So that s how you raised the money to take 
 care of fifty cases of typhoid fever!" I accused. 
 "You d better have spent some of it on your own 
 living expenses!" 
 
 "I do very well, thanks to Lum," he put in 
 quickly. "He thinks he s only a heathen. He s 
 really one of the best Christians I know." 
 
324 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "He s one of the slickest " I caught myself 
 
 in time and did not finish the sentence. 
 
 "The term slick applies only to Lum s feet " 
 
 " and his hands," I added significantly. 
 
 "I thought you liked him," he said with a hint of 
 reproach. 
 
 "I ve worked for the salvation of the heathen 
 for forty years, but I don t trust one when he gets 
 into my house; or even when he s across the street 
 in yours!" I replied, with unchristian candour. 
 
 "He s the most frugal of mortals," he defended. 
 "I really wonder how he manages to provide so well 
 on what I ve been able to spare." 
 
 "It s a mercy you don t know how he man 
 ages!" I sniffed. 
 
 "Well, he hasn t cooked the cat yet," he laughed, 
 missing the point. "I assure you that he is a de 
 voted and faithful creature." 
 
 "Your devoted and faithful creature was seen 
 one night not long ago talking to Mrs. Lily Triggs 
 at the back door of the parsonage," I said, and was 
 frightened the next moment at the black change in 
 Felix Wade s face. But it was too late to retreat; 
 so I went on: 
 
 "Mrs. Triggs has been a thorn in the church here 
 for four years. One way or another she has been 
 the cause of the removal of four pastors in suc 
 
 cession." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 325 
 
 "I have never spoken to her. She is no longer 
 in our choir. She does not even attend services," 
 he said, on the defensive for the first time since I 
 had known him. 
 
 "Which makes it all the more suspicious that she 
 should be seen after dark whispering with your ser 
 vant," I replied. 
 
 "Who saw them?" he asked. 
 
 "I did. She wanted something. I heard her 
 tell him not to speak so loud." 
 
 He sat with his head bowed, a deep frown upon 
 his face. 
 
 "Brother Wade," I began again, "no matter 
 how innocent he is, a preacher cannot survive a 
 mystery. It s a kind of shade that stands between 
 him and his people. They feel it, and they resent 
 it when they would not resent having a reformed 
 criminal for their pastor, so long as they knew 
 actually knew all about him. I do not know why 
 this is so, but it is. The members of this church 
 have been slinking round in your darkness for a 
 year!" 
 
 "And you? " he asked in a tone which might have 
 been that of a dying Caesar to his friend Brutus. 
 
 "Oh, I ve taken you along with the other part of 
 my religion by faith; but, humanly speaking, I ve 
 been uneasy about you. Something s going to hap 
 pen presently," I said. 
 
326 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "It has already happened," he answered. 
 
 "What?" I asked in alarm. 
 
 "One of the stewards has preferred charges 
 against me to the Presiding Elder," he said, as if it 
 did not matter at all. 
 
 "What kind of charges?" I asked, knowing that 
 Tom Warren had been meddling. 
 
 "Maladministration; neglect of duty. He was 
 entirely justified from his point of view," he ad 
 mitted calmly. 
 
 "But you have been a good pastor. We ve 
 never had a man who visited the people more, even 
 during this awful summer when you ve had so much 
 to do at the factory," I said, changing to the other 
 side and defending him. 
 
 "I ve been a failure, though, as the financial 
 agent of the church. I have not raised the assess 
 ments. That is one of the charges." 
 
 "Why don t you do it?" I demanded. 
 
 "I made a mistake. I did not understand 
 when I entered the ministry of this church. I 
 should never have taken upon me the duties of a 
 financial agent under the disguise of the ministry of 
 Christ if I had known what I was doing," he said 
 simply. 
 
 "But it is not so!" I cried indignantly. "Hun 
 dreds of men and women have been converted in 
 this church." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 327 
 
 "Converted to the church; sworn to support its 
 institutions a heavy burden; merely to practise 
 personal Christian charity with what little they 
 can spare after the church is paid. I took the same 
 vows. But, not realizing how these people have 
 been trained to perform their Christian duties of 
 love and sacrifice through a corporation, I have 
 been loath to deprive them of the privileges they 
 should enjoy. 
 
 "You know how it has been. They cannot 
 serve God personally only through the church. 
 It s like hiring a certain body of men to do your 
 peace-and-good-will to men, according to the per 
 sonal ambition, judgment, and ability of those men 
 religion by proxy. There s no such thing!" 
 
 "But we must have some kind of organization," 
 I insisted, "some methods to avoid overlapping in 
 terests in Christian work; and, worse still, the sen 
 timental blindness of foolish giving and foolish 
 
 service." 
 
 "Undoubtedly, yes. But the present methods 
 are blindly sentimental. What is the real trouble 
 now with this church? Indignant because they 
 have not been asked to pay six hundred dollars for 
 Home Missions which might as well be foreign; 
 and for Foreign Missions when several hundred 
 people two miles distant are suffering for the 
 necessities of life. Fifty children out there have 
 
328 A Circuit Riders Widow 
 
 had neither school nor teacher this year. The 
 money paid by the women in the four churches of 
 Berton for Foreign Missions would have paid a 
 teacher for nine months. It s all wrong! This 
 church should have given fifty dollars to Missions 
 this year, and a thousand dollars at least to the re 
 lief of the destitute at the factory to say nothing 
 of what it owed to the sufferers in the war 
 
 zone." 
 
 I thought of Doctor Edd and the thousand dol 
 lars already sent, but something warned me not to 
 mention this. 
 
 "I am also charged with neglect of my spiritual 
 duties to the church. We have had no revival. 
 The complaint is that I devoted my time and ser 
 vices to another community at the season usually 
 set aside here for the revival." 
 
 "We do need one," I put in; "we ve never oeen 
 so cold as a church." 
 
 "A man may easily deceive himself into a sense 
 of peace with God, hypnotized by emotional con 
 ditions; but it is not the right peace!" he exclaimed 
 passionately. "You pay for that with all you are 
 and have and can do!" 
 
 I sighed. One cannot argue with a fanatic. He 
 is always impossibly right and practically wrong. 
 
 "This steward does not appear to have heard of 
 Mrs. Triggs evening visit to the parsonage," he 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 329 
 
 said presently. "Otherwise he might have 
 another charge." 
 
 "You know I would never have mentioned 
 that!" I cried, offended. 
 
 "No; you are incapable of that. You would 
 suffer in silence any doubt of your pastor, being 
 made beautifully biased in his defense. Still you 
 have suffered ! " He looked up, gently accusing. 
 
 "I have never questioned any preacher we ve 
 had here. They have been men of unimpeachable 
 integrity. But Lily Triggs is dangerous. She s 
 especially fatal one way or the other to preachers," 
 I insisted. 
 
 "Well, in confidence, I will tell you what she 
 wanted," he said, looking at me with a half smile. 
 
 "You knew of her visit then?" I exclaimed. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Lum informed me when I came back 
 from the telegraph station that night. She 
 wanted a package of her letters which I had." 
 
 "You have had letters from her?" I exclaimed, 
 recalling Lily s methods. 
 
 " Not written to me," he corrected, smiling grimly. 
 
 "Before I entered the ministry I was an attor 
 ney in New York. Five years ago I defended a 
 divorce suit brought by his wife against Oliver 
 Triggs. The purpose of the defense was to avoid 
 paying alimony. Part of the evidence introduced 
 was a number of letters written by Mrs. Triggs to a 
 
330 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 certain professor who gave her vocal lessons, if I re 
 member correctly. 
 
 "We lost the case, owing to the fact that these 
 letters, though highly sentimental in character, 
 were not actually incriminating. The amount 
 Triggs was compelled to pay her ruined him. He 
 is a clerk in a lawyer s office now, earning barely 
 enough to keep body and soul together. The 
 woman disappeared. I never heard of her again 
 until I was astonished to find her conducting the 
 music in your church when I came here. Naturally 
 she dropped out, and naturally I did not expose her. 
 There was nothing to tell which could not have 
 been inferred from the fact that she was divorced. 
 
 "But she thinks I still have those letters. Lum 
 tells me she offered him a hundred dollars for them. 
 As a matter of fact, they are on file in New York 
 with the other papers in the case." 
 
 He rose and stood for a moment staring at that 
 church across the way. 
 
 "One cannot escape from one life into another 
 life. When I entered the church I did so, you 
 may say, almost secretly, through the influence of 
 one of your bishops. I severed relations with my 
 friends and everything connected with the world in 
 which I lived. I wished to be literally a different 
 man. The first person I saw when I entered the 
 church over there was Mrs. Triggs, who knew me 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 331 
 
 by reputation at least as quite a different kind of 
 man, with exactly the opposite aims and views 
 from those I hold now." 
 
 "But you still hold them?" I asked anxiously, 
 feeling that things had gone hard with him, and 
 the end not yet in sight. 
 
 "Oh, yes," he answered calmly. "This has 
 been a very profitable year for me. When I 
 came here the spiritual life was still more or less 
 of an adventure in which I had invested heavily. 
 Now it is a reality. One gets to feel very snug in 
 his soul, a small, clean place just wide enough 
 for a ladder, with his own angels ascending and 
 descending; no roof over his head; nothing in his 
 pockets; no fears in his heart. For the first time 
 in my life I have enjoyed perfect freedom like 
 a man started upon a long holiday, with no burden 
 upon his back but the light of the sun." 
 
 It was as good a description as I d ever heard 
 of an ordinary tramp. As I watched him swing 
 ing across the street, evidently in no way cast 
 down by the charges against him, I wondered 
 whether this was not the literal fate that would 
 overtake him. The history of strictly religious 
 pilgrims has always been a dingy tale of the road, 
 of pitying charity, and the contempt of the sane 
 world. It was no work of Providence that he 
 had that heathen to steal his daily bread for him. 
 
332 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Providence is an honest man, and if this kept up 
 the stewards would have charges to make that he 
 could not face. 
 
 I went back into the kitchen to prepare the 
 broth, which I had persuaded him was better for 
 the invalid at the factory than the gruel. 
 
 About eight o clock Molly Brown came in. 
 The October evenings were already cool and we 
 sat down before the fire, Molly telling me all the 
 time that she didn t have a minute to spare and 
 ought not to have come in at all. 
 
 "But I just had to show you this," she said, 
 drawing a letter from her pocket and offering it 
 to me. "It s from Doctor Edd; the first news 
 we ve had of him since he left," she explained as I 
 opened the soiled yellow sheet. 
 
 It was not dated or located. 
 
 "Dear Molly," it began, "this is written from 
 the top bunk of an ambulance. I am in it. Wade 
 furnished the thousand dollars he gave me when 
 I left Berton all except fifty cents. I do not 
 know who gave that. He is a queer duck; bound 
 me to secrecy. But in case anything happens 
 the people should know. I am all right. This 
 has been a great experience, well worth such a 
 life as mine. Tell Wade " 
 
 Here the scrawl ended. I looked up, to see 
 the tears running down Molly s cheeks. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 333 
 
 "I always said Doctor Edd was a good man," 
 she sobbed softly, "and he was brave, too; always 
 fighting in his own lost ditch; never giving up, as 
 any other man might have done, getting drunk 
 so often." 
 
 "What are we going to do about that thousand 
 dollars, Molly?" I began, after we had talked 
 enough about Doctor Edd. "Every Baptist and 
 Presbyterian in this town thinks the Methodist 
 Church gave it. And we didn t." 
 
 "You d better call Sister Warren and tell her. 
 It s the quickest way to tell everybody," Molly 
 suggested simply. 
 
 "Charlotte is not speaking to me now," I 
 objected. 
 
 "Why ain t she speaking to you?" 
 
 "Because when I heard that Tom Warren was 
 getting ready to prefer charges against Brother 
 Wade, I said somebody ought to prefer charges 
 against him for backbiting the preacher, and, as 
 a steward, for not paying him anything to live on; 
 and, as a church member, for keeping up that 
 feud with Roger Peters about the line fence. She 
 told me I had better attend to my own business. 
 I told her that was what I was doing as a Christian 
 woman. She said I was a Christian busybody. 
 You know how Charlotte goes on when she gets 
 mad," I concluded. 
 
334 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Molly looked at me. I will not say that her 
 expression was accusative, but there was a mild 
 judgment in her eye which made me feel like 
 Charlotte s twin sin. And I changed the subject 
 by telling her how little there was in the parsonage 
 pantry. 
 
 I wouldn t give a fig for Molly s courage, or 
 for her wisdom, when it comes to putting up a 
 fight for principles; but she is the best woman in 
 this church when it comes to simple good deeds 
 that she can do with her two hands. 
 
 "I ll just go round among our members to 
 morrow and get some things for the preacher," 
 she said, bidding me good-night. 
 
 So that was done. It was now only two weeks 
 before the Annual Conference met. Molly would 
 provide enough supplies to keep Lum out of mis 
 chief. Meantime, I resolved that Tom Warren 
 should not bring reproach upon Felix Wade if it 
 was possible to work up a better sentiment in the 
 church. But, first, Brother Wade must give me 
 standing rights to make such an appeal; so, with 
 out telling him what was on foot, I told him a few 
 things for his own good. 
 
 "You have no right to impose your convictions 
 upon the members of this church," I said. "We 
 are trained to pay so much every year on the 
 various assessments." 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 335 
 
 He listened patiently, as a man does sometimes 
 when he is convinced against his will. 
 
 "It is your duty to ask for these various amounts 
 and leave it to every man s conscience to give 
 what he chooses. You have then placed the re 
 sponsibility where it belongs," I argued, so shrewdly 
 that he laughed. 
 
 "Very well; I will announce the assessments 
 next Sunday," he agreed. 
 
 And he did; but his manner of doing it only 
 added insult to injury. 
 
 "Brethren," he began abruptly at the close 
 of the sermon, "this church paid twenty-one 
 hundred dollars last year, all told, for pastor s 
 salary and general collections, and four hundred 
 for church repairs. Of our two hundred members 
 a hundred and fifty are children, or persons un 
 able to pay anything. There was, therefore, an 
 assessment of nearly fifty dollars a head. The 
 sum collected probably amounted to more than 
 these members pay in civil and municipal taxes." 
 
 You could have heard a pin drop when he paused 
 for a moment, as if he was considering the next 
 statement. Tom Warren was staring at him as 
 if he had lockjaw. 
 
 "The burden this year has not been so great," 
 he went on coolly, "for you have been able to 
 save eight hundred dollars on the pastor s salary; 
 
336 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 but the general assessments are the same. These 
 amount to nine hundred dollars. Of this sum the 
 various Sunday-school collections come to three 
 hundred. You have, therefore, six hundred to 
 raise for Missions, Home and Foreign, church 
 extension, education, widows and orphans, hos 
 pital, and superannuates. I leave it entirely 
 with your own consciences how much you pay. 
 
 "Brother Warren," he said, turning to the amen 
 corner, "you and Brother Parks will please take 
 the collection." 
 
 As the two stewards passed in and out of the 
 pews we could hear nickels and dimes clinking 
 together in the collection baskets. Brother Wade 
 was entirely out of sight, seated behind the pulpit. 
 
 The amount collected was seven dollars and 
 sixty cents! 
 
 "Thank you, brethren," said Brother Wade, 
 rising to receive the collection. "We will sing 
 the oToxology." 
 
 A man can look in the face very much like a dog 
 looks with his tail drawn between his legs. And 
 that is the way the members of our church looked 
 as we sneaked out. 
 
 "That s no way to take a collection!" snorted 
 Tom Warren in deep disgust. 
 
 "He called your bluff though," I said, edging 
 closer to him in the crowd. "After all the fuss 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 337 
 
 you ve made about these collections, preferring 
 charges against your pastor for neglect of duty!" 
 
 "Madam " he began. 
 
 "Don t Madam me, Tom Warren!" I inter 
 rupted. "I saw you drop a dime in that basket 
 when you know and everybody knows you always 
 give fifty dollars." 
 
 "But, Sister Thompson " Sam Parks began. 
 
 "Don t Sister me, Sam!" I cut in. "You put 
 in but twenty -five cents ! All because the preacher 
 didn t stand up and crack jokes and jolly the 
 money out of your pockets, as if the Lord s house 
 was an auctioneer s hall ! " 
 
 By this time we were upon the pavement. 
 Brother Wade was still in the study behind the 
 pulpit. And I held an impromptu open-air meet 
 ing for the benefit of the clergy so long as there 
 was a single man or woman in sight. 
 
 It is not so bad to be a termagant in the name 
 of the Lord, sometimes, if you know the right 
 spiritual moment for staging the scene. 
 
CHAPTER VIH 
 
 IN NOVEMBER of that year a bishop, thir 
 teen presiding elders, and four hundred 
 itinerant preachers met in the principal 
 Methodist Church of a town not twenty miles 
 from Berton. This was the Annual Conference of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church South, a strictly 
 military as well as Christian organization, with 
 the Methodist Discipline in use as the Manual of 
 Arms. Therefore, this was in the nature of an 
 autumn review of the cavalry and infantry of the 
 church, where every soldier would be called upon 
 to stand up for character inspection, then to tell 
 what he had done for the Lord that year and how 
 much money he had collected for the church. It 
 is a good system, probably the best ever originated 
 by any Christian church, but, like all systems, 
 subject to strange abuses. 
 
 When the conference opened something like five 
 hundred preachers, including superannuates, filled 
 the house. It was not a "fine-looking body of 
 men." They were not remarkable for the in 
 telligence of their expression. Strictly of the 
 fisherman type of Jesus day I should say, or from 
 
 338 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 339 
 
 the ranks of society out of which most privates are 
 taken, with an occasional sleeked-up city pastor or 
 presiding elder among them, showing at a decided 
 disadvantage in the rows upon rows of dingy 
 Methodist itinerants, who indicated so plainly the 
 hardships through which they had passed, the dull 
 weariness of a long struggle, a little worsted in the 
 fight as common soldiers will be, especially if they 
 have fought the powers and principalities of dark 
 ness for a whole year with a mutinous church choir 
 instead of a military band to cheer them on to the 
 fray. 
 
 A house filled with men tired, anxious men in 
 rusty coats is a sombre spectacle. One misses 
 the mitigating circumstances of the flowers and 
 feathers upon women s hats among the cropped 
 heads and gray heads and the peeled-onion crowns 
 of extremely bald heads. 
 
 But there was one foreign note, a row of men and 
 women seated far back in the frigid zone of the 
 church. This might be called a more or less violent 
 quotation from the human scriptures of the 
 Methodist Church at Berton. It was capital 
 ized at the end next the aisle by Charlotte and Tom 
 Warren and italicized at the other end by one 
 Mary Thompson. Sam Parks, John Henry Lip- 
 ton, and Roger Peters occupied the space between 
 these two extremes. Charlotte wore her furs and 
 
340 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 a full-blown red velvet rose with a black plume on 
 her hat. She looked like a grenadier general who 
 was about to break somebody s sword across her 
 knees. I wore the same things I always wear, with 
 my black quilted satin bonnet tied under my chin 
 and my old fur cape which has been scalloped by 
 moths round the edges. I had my spectacles 
 adjusted so that I could poke my neck out, hold 
 my head high, and thrust my chin well forward, 
 which has always been the angle of vision I need 
 when it is necessary to keep my eye on the situa 
 tion. 
 
 Rumours were abroad concerning the church at 
 Berton, always a storm centre by reputation in the 
 Conference. Charges had been preferred against 
 Felix Wade by one of the stewards. The other 
 stewards and many members had sent in a written 
 counter defense of the pastor. No one had ever 
 heard of such a preacher in that conference. For 
 it was established beyond doubt that he had 
 privately contributed a large sum to the Red Cross 
 work in the war zone. He had also maintained 
 a hospital for typhoid fever cases at the factory 
 near Berton, where there was not even a Methodist 
 mission to explain his activities. He maintained 
 this hospital by selling his very fine motor car. The 
 inference was that he had private means, yet evi 
 dence showed that he had no means at all, and that 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 341 
 
 he had suffered for the actual necessities of life be 
 cause the church paid less than one-third of his 
 salary. 
 
 We were in the very spotlight of publicity, 
 stared at from every angle and corner of the house, 
 for we were recognized as members of this afflicted 
 church, some of us come to defend, others to accuse 
 this erratic man who as pastor had served faith 
 fully, but had refused to hold a revival for our 
 famished souls, and had taken the general collec 
 tions at the last minute, apparently under protest. 
 
 If a pastor gives satisfaction he may be trusted 
 to attend the Annual Conference without so much 
 as a lay delegate as an iota subscript. But if three 
 or four old Shanghai rooster stewards and a couple 
 of elderly frizzly hen women show up from his 
 church at Conference, this is a sign that there has 
 been a row, and they have chased him, with wings 
 dragging, to fight to a finish beneath the very nose 
 of the bishop and in the presence of " all Christian 
 people." 
 
 Promptly at nine o clock the Conference was 
 opened with the singing of 
 
 happy day, that fixed my choice 
 On Thee, my Saviour and my God! 
 
 The old hymn rolled like a hallelujah cannonade 
 against all earthly sorrows. Still no one looked 
 
342 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 happy. Hymns, however, are not designed to ex 
 press the joys you can see with the naked eye. So 
 maybe these itinerants, dusty and tired from the 
 long march of the year s gospel, were happy in 
 their doleful way, just to be there for a few days 
 rest and to hope in a better appointment next year. 
 
 The bishop read a selection from the Sermon on 
 the Mount. This was almost painful to us from 
 Berton who had heard Brother Wade preach from 
 these Scriptures so often without doing us much 
 good. 
 
 Then we were led in prayer not too close to the 
 Throne of Grace. As I bent and wedged myself 
 down between the pews with great difficulty, the 
 spaces not having been designed to accommodate 
 an opulent-bodied old lady, I could see us kneeling 
 in the dust of our own spirits afar off, while the 
 bishop had one knee up and one knee down far in 
 advance of us, addressing the Lord like a "prince 
 of the church " with sonorous phrases. I may be a 
 barbarian or I may be a human democrat, but I 
 never liked that term, a "prince of the church." 
 There are no princes among the children of God. 
 But the title has some vogue among Methodists of 
 high degree. 
 
 I do not know if it was because I was so un 
 comfortable in that tight place, or if it was because 
 I have a natural feminine spite at men those who 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 343 
 
 exalt themselves upon their knees but I began to 
 get mad with that bishop, who was praying an un 
 conscionably long time. I thought of something 
 which happened to a little old blue-hen saint I 
 knew years ago. She was a good woman with a 
 fiery temper. She used to sell eggs and butter to a 
 certain bishop s family. One day as she was about 
 to leave the house the great man s wife said to her: 
 
 "Be careful as you go out, the bishop s on the 
 porch. Don t make a noise. You might disturb 
 him. He may be thinking." 
 
 The little old country-church Methodist seized 
 her egg basket with one hand, her nose with the 
 other, lifted her head high in the air and walked 
 past the "prince of the church" as if she d die be 
 fore she d smell a Pharisee. 
 
 By this time our bishop was barely getting 
 started with his petition about what he wanted the 
 Lord to do for the church. You might have 
 thought the Methodist Church was the spiritual 
 bobbin of creation, and all these preachers were 
 only the thread wound on the bobbin. He didn t 
 even mention them. 
 
 I m not complaining. I merely say that old 
 John Elrod, who lived and died a consistent mem 
 ber of our little church at home, could beat him so 
 far in the eloquence and proper spirit of prayer that 
 they were not in the same class. When John was 
 
344 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 called on to lead in prayer he got down on both 
 knees, then he bent his back very low, and put his 
 bald head down so far you couldn t see even the 
 red fringe on the back of it. Then he d use some 
 little simple words, very timidly, as if he were pull 
 ing gently upon the hem of the Lord s garment, 
 just to let Him know he was very bad off and 
 wished to speak to Him privately upon a matter of 
 life and death. 
 
 By this time we all felt as if we were there close 
 up beside John who was doing the talking for us. 
 We were no longer men and women. We were 
 little children who d been doing wrong, fighting 
 and scratching maybe, but our Heavenly Father, 
 who knew from what mixed and dangerous dust 
 we d come, would surely have mercy upon us, see 
 ing that we "wished to do better and be better," 
 which was the simple way Brother Elrod always 
 put it. Many a time I have risen from my knees 
 feeling for the moment young and blessed as if I d 
 slipped the yoke of my years. But now when I 
 struggled up and sat down at the close of that 
 bishop s prayer I felt as if I were near to having a 
 stroke of apoplexy. 
 
 Sometimes lately I ve feared Felix Wade s in 
 fluence has been bad for me. I m still hungering 
 and thirsting after righteousness, but I am not the 
 blindly obedient church worker I once was. I only 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 345 
 
 obey because I do not know how to disobey without 
 hurting my conscience. One s conscience becomes 
 a fixed habit, like any other, and it s dangerous to 
 try to change it in one s old age. 
 
 The next thing in order was the fixing of "the 
 Bar of the Conference." This was a way the 
 bishop had not exactly of separating the sheep 
 from the goats, but it felt very much like that. 
 All those who were not actually members of the 
 Conference were requested to get up and get out, 
 leaving more space for the preachers on the floor. 
 We were assigned to a gallery which ran along the 
 back of the church. 
 
 I felt very personal to myself, filing out along 
 with the other Berton Church goats, for we were 
 about the only people present who had to go. 
 Charlotte thought she d lead the way, but I backed 
 out into the aisle on the other side and beat her to 
 the gallery stairs, which I climbed in time to get a 
 seat by the only window up there. 
 
 When I am in a house I always like to sit be 
 side a window, even if the wind cuts under it 
 like a knife, so as to make sure nothing escapes 
 me on the outside which can be seen from the in 
 side. This is important at our Annual Confer 
 ence, because a good deal of the most secret work 
 of the church is done privily upon the curbstone 
 where two or three are gathered together. You 
 
346 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 never see a presiding elder in these groups or any 
 preacher who has won his spurs in the itinerancy 
 and now holds the best city pastorate. Neither 
 are they the circuit riders who never expect to 
 get any but the poorest appointments. They are 
 usually aspiring preachers, in the gratuitous em 
 ploy of their own interests, or possibly they are 
 sent out as scouts to test the feeling about such 
 and such a man or to measure by some one higher 
 up. But if you come back ten years later a good 
 many of them will be elders and city pastors, 
 sitting in the front of the house, doing a lot of 
 conference business in the open, and carrying the 
 administrative burdens of the church with great 
 dignity and patience. 
 
 I could see some of these heirs apparent to 
 prominent places working in and out, looking 
 very honest and simple, as indeed they are. For 
 nothing is more honest or simpler than proclaim 
 ing to the whole world what you seek while you 
 are struggling to get it. I sat there watching 
 them, chuckling a little to myself at the beautiful 
 artlessness of these young preachers. I sym 
 pathized with them. There are souls to save 
 everywhere. The harvest is as ripe, and even 
 riper, in a rich church than it is on a poor circuit. 
 These men had families to support. And they 
 wanted better appointments for this very decent 
 
* > 
 
 A. 
 **& 
 
 \ 
 
 w 
 
 i , y 
 
 4i "?/* 
 
 el:^ 
 
 *ft\ * 
 
 %.# *fU 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^r 
 
 ; i* 
 
 .-" 
 
 "THE OVERCOAT OF A STRUGGLING METHODIST ITIN 
 ERANT IS LIKELY TO BE FADED BY THE WEATHER OF 
 LONG TRIPS THROUGH THE COUNTRY" 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 347 
 
 reason. Now and then one of them would start 
 off down the street at a clipping, worldly pace, 
 with his long, religious-looking, black coat-tails 
 flapping behind him in the November gale. This 
 meant he was the bearer of useful information to 
 his elder or to some committee in session at an 
 other church. One thing touched me so many 
 of them were without overcoats. Not that they 
 did not possess them, but the overcoat of a strug 
 gling Methodist itinerant is likely to be sadly the 
 worse for wear, faded by the weather of long trips 
 through the country, with the tail pockets in 
 variably stretched out of shape by the things he 
 brings home, gifts from generous members, such 
 as a mess of spareribs tied up in dark brown paper, 
 or maybe a dozen links of sausage carefully wrapped 
 in a flour sack. Such a coat is no proper garment 
 for the couriers of their superior officers, so they 
 button their long-tailed preaching coats elegantly 
 about them and try not to look cold in the bleak 
 November weather. 
 
 Others may say what they please about these 
 anxious young ravens of the Lord s ministry, 
 but they have my full support and sympathy. 
 It s knowing how to caw and flap their wings 
 which attracts the attention of those higher up 
 in the branches of the church. If I were a young 
 preacher I would pray to my Heavenly Father 
 
348 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 night and day to give me the faith of ravens, the 
 harmlessness of a dove, and the wisdom of seven 
 serpents for dealing with my bishop and his elders. 
 There is no doubt at all in my mind that the 
 Lord would answer such a prayer if it was necessary 
 for the good of the preacher s sick wife, say, or 
 that he might have a better school for his children. 
 There is probably no large gathering of men in 
 the country, from an undertakers convention to 
 a bankers association, which transacts business 
 with greater dispatch than the officers of a Metho 
 dist Conference. They can have a discussion 
 over the charter of some institution which belongs 
 to the church, and get their own legal council free 
 of charge by allowing their lawyer lay delegates 
 to speak. They can get long reports from all 
 the church boards, and from every pastor; take 
 up fifteen collections; listen to seven sermons; 
 place four hundred preachers, moving them back 
 and forth over the state of Georgia and through 
 all the districts, until the presiding elders are 
 calmed if not satisfied w T ith the ones they get. 
 They can examine from ten to twenty applicants 
 for the ministry, ordain a dozen deacons and 
 elders, try two or three upon charges preferred 
 against them, and do it all in time to take the 
 early morning train exactly one week from the 
 day the Conference meets. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 349 
 
 As I looked down from the gallery upon that 
 company of four hundred preachers my heart 
 ached. Many of them were the victims of secret 
 complaints made by their people to their presiding 
 elder. The young ones were so diffident, fearful 
 that they should not be able to pass their trial 
 examinations, that the report they must make of 
 their work would be unsatisfactory; and last, but 
 not least, waiting in anguished suspense lest they 
 should not get a better appointment another 
 year, or fearing that they would lose the good one 
 they had this present year. You may call it 
 happy day, if you like, that fixes any man s choice 
 on the Methodist itinerancy as his life s work, but 
 my belief is that it is the parent of many sad days 
 which no man could endure with the courage these 
 men show if the Lord was not his shepherd through 
 the valleys and shadows of these ever-lengthening 
 circuits, as well as being with him beside the still 
 waters in the green pastures. I ve been in the 
 church a long time, and I have not seen much 
 still water and very few green pastures for a Metho 
 dist preacher. So, I say, my heart was with 
 those dingy soldiers of the Faith down there on 
 the conference floor, waiting with only the Lord 
 knows what trepidation for their fate. There 
 were self-seeking men among them, a few poli 
 ticians, one or two Judases; but the overwhelming 
 
350 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 majority of them were honest, faithful men, living 
 more by the spirit than by the meagre quarterage 
 they receive for their services. 
 
 Something like half a million dollars of the 
 church s funds passes through the hands of these 
 four hundred preachers every year. No one 
 watches them, no one can possibly check up their 
 accounts. Yet I have never heard of one who 
 was accused of stealing, though he might be re 
 duced to selling his books to keep food for his 
 family. I doubt if this can be said of any other 
 four hundred men gathered together haphazard 
 as these are from every walk and condition of life. 
 
 I could hear from where I sat an old presiding 
 elder making a plea for a preacher in his district 
 who was ill and could not come to Conference. 
 The bishop was suspicious for the good of the 
 church, of course. How sick was the absent 
 brother would he be able to take an appoint 
 ment another year? The elder was for the 
 preacher. He could not be sure he would be 
 able to take work, but he earnestly advised that 
 he should not be deprived of the chance. He was 
 like a tender friend who lets a palsied man down 
 through the roof, not to be cured, but merely to 
 be fed. 
 
 There was another elder, shaped very much 
 like Moab s washpot, who had been our pastor at 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 351 
 
 Berton when he was young and slender. I re 
 membered pinning a red-flannel bandage under his 
 chin and over the top of his head when he had 
 mumps. He took everything hard his religion, 
 his work, and the mumps nearly killed him. Now 
 he was one of the bishop s many right hands, a 
 man who had gone as far as he could in the church 
 without one blemish upon his reputation, except 
 that he would not "take anything off of anybody." 
 He was known upon one occasion to preach with 
 a gun at his feet in a tent meeting which he held 
 on a mountain moonshine circuit, when the dis 
 tillers tried to run him out. 
 
 We could see another man, making himself very 
 prominent, prancing back and forth from one front 
 side to the other front side of the pulpit. He 
 looked like a Thanksgiving turkey with a Roman 
 nose, dressed in a Prince Albert suit. 
 
 William, my husband, could never bear this 
 man, though William was the most forbearing 
 Christian I ever knew. He said he was built too 
 close to the ground. It was a queer description 
 and didn t mean anything definite, but it fitted 
 this preacher like the negative does a camera. 
 Everybody knew him a man who had gained 
 prominence somehow by failing, with a great and 
 righteous fuss, at everything he was appointed 
 to do. His last fiasco was to split one of our 
 
352 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 largest churches with a moral wedge that he d 
 driven into the board of stewards, which is no 
 place to use violent methods morally. So now 
 he d been kicked up into a connectional office, 
 where if he did no good he would do less harm. 
 
 It is remarkable how much alike all men look 
 when they are sitting down with their backs to 
 you, and you have no way of recognizing them 
 by the length of their legs, which I have always 
 said are the most prominent properties they have. 
 For a long time I could not distinguish Brother 
 Wade from the other preachers seated below. I 
 was beginning to wonder if he was sensible enough 
 to stay outside with the more progressive seekers 
 of the church, when I discovered him by his up 
 standing cowlick. He was seated close against 
 the wall, not too far forward and not far enough 
 back to give the impression of being either sulky or 
 embarrassed. I could not see his face, but the 
 cross-legged comfort with which he leaned in his 
 corner implied the repose of a detached listener 
 and observer of what was going on. The entire 
 length of the bench intervened between him and 
 the next preacher who had apparently quarantined 
 himself against this man in the corner, whose 
 people had preferred charges against him, and 
 who might be a heretic for all he knew. 
 
 This is one of the evils of a good but autocratic 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 353 
 
 church organization. The bishop and elders have 
 power of life and death over these men, in that 
 they can reduce any preacher to the ranks no 
 matter how important a position he has held be 
 fore, if he is suspected of disloyalty to the policies 
 promulgated by the episcopacy, or if he shows too 
 much sympathy with another recalcitrant brother. 
 Some years ago a prominent presiding elder of 
 this Conference wrote a book. This was not so 
 bad, for many preachers do that on the sly, but 
 they have the prudence never to publish them. 
 This elder made the mistake of doing that. I 
 never dared to read the book myself, but a good 
 many people did, and it was said to have something 
 in it about evolution which might be interpreted 
 as a reflection upon the Adam and Eve accuracy 
 of certain Scriptures. The next year the author 
 was reduced from his eldership with a salary of 
 perhaps three thousand dollars, to a little one-horse 
 charge with a salary of less than a thousand. This 
 is the very effective method of court-martial em 
 ployed in our church. And why not? If you 
 choose to be a Methodist itinerant it is your duty 
 to abide by the doctrines and discipline of the 
 organization. That little dried-up middle-aged 
 preacher seated so discreetly remote from Brother 
 Wade knew what he was about, and he was quite 
 right to maintain a theological distance from an- 
 
354 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 other preacher under suspicion the bread and 
 butter of his family next year might depend on 
 that. 
 
 fi I were a Methodist itinerant I would never use 
 the word evolution. It is a bad word, more 
 dangerous than any blasphemy. I cannot bear to 
 hear it, especially in the pulpit. It makes the cold 
 chills run down my back. 
 
 I began to understand why this was so as I sat in 
 the gallery watching the members of that Annual 
 Conference. Evolution is a psychic form of im 
 migration. You are born and bred to one set of 
 ideas, confirmed in one religious creed ideas as 
 warm and comfortable as the house in which you 
 live a creed stretched here and tightened there by 
 long use and experience. Then, some day, you 
 stumble upon the fact that your ideas are not yours 
 at all, but inherited from other folk. Your roof 
 begins to leak. You get the notion that you are a 
 person, not a cell in a church organism. You de 
 sire to worship God according to the emergencies 
 of your own particular soul. That is to say, you 
 migrate, a very perilous business. You may be 
 come the victim of your own evolution. I sighed 
 and thanked my Heavenly Father that there were 
 very few, if any, Immigrants of this kind upon the 
 conference floor. The most dangerous man in 
 sight, I suspected, was Felix Wade. And he was 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 355 
 
 headed back toward the Beatitudes, which is not 
 the direction usually taken by evolutionists. 
 
 One incident of this first session is impressed 
 upon my mind. 
 
 The Annual Conference of the Methodist 
 Church is as distinctly a masculine organization 
 as a political convention. And it is likely to re 
 main so long after women obtain the ballot and 
 become national committeemen in a Presidential 
 furor. No other organization in this world is so 
 opposed to the recognition of women as the govern 
 ing powers of the church. It is the worst example 
 of taxation without representation, for probably 
 two-thirds of the membership in every Christian 
 denomination are composed of women. 
 
 I was just thinking of this, wondering at the 
 neatness with which all reference to the service of 
 Christian women was avoided, when some one 
 handed a telegram to the bishop. 
 
 He opened it; then, looking up, he admitted 
 slowly : 
 
 "A message from the Women s Baptist Union 
 now in session at Savard, saying, John fifteenth 
 chapter, fourth verse. 
 
 He had to find the reference and read it, though 
 it was apparent that he had no use for John s 
 Gospel in this connection. He flirted over the 
 leaves of the Bible rapidly, and let us have it. 
 
356 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 " Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch 
 cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the 
 vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. We 
 will now have the report on education," he con 
 cluded, with not so much as the period pause be 
 tween the reading of the quotation and the next 
 item in the order of business. 
 
 I don t know that I have snickered out in church 
 since I was a child until that morning, seated in 
 the dark gallery above that Annual Conference, and 
 that bishop so mad that he looked really natural 
 and sinful. Every time I thought I was quieting 
 down the artless humour of the situation laid hold 
 of me again, and I d go off in another paroxysm of 
 scandalous mirth. Some old Baptist lady, her 
 spirit perpetually damp with baptismal dews, her 
 doctrinal soul wrapped round this favourite text 
 of all Baptist preachers, had chosen it in defiance 
 to send as a message to the Methodist Conference, 
 or she did it in the simplicity of her heart, having 
 no sense of the fitness of things. But the effect 
 was awful and it was diabolically funny. So I 
 held my sides and laughed, being the only person 
 in the house who dared so much as bat his eye until 
 the breach had been covered two pages deep by the 
 report on education. Charlotte looked round once 
 and spit at me with her eyes. This changed my 
 mind from the Women s Baptist Union to her, 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 357 
 
 which is always a sobering line of reflection with 
 me. 
 
 When we were all crowding out of the church at 
 the close of the session I found myself wedged be 
 tween a preacher whom I did not know and a pre 
 siding elder whom we used to have on our district. 
 He said he was glad to see me there, and I said it 
 was a great privilege to be there. 
 
 "Why is it, Brother Elks," I asked as we pressed 
 forward toward the steps, "that nothing is ever 
 said about the work of Christian women in the 
 church!" 
 
 "Every preacher reports the condition of the 
 Woman s Home and Foreign Missionary Societies 
 on his charge," he answered, as if that settled it. 
 
 "But I m not speaking of that. We are also 
 members of the church itself. We do a lot of 
 work in it, the same kind which is duly reported 
 when the stewards do it they are even given 
 credit for it sometimes when we do it," I explained. 
 
 Brother Elks was very busy trying to get through 
 the jam of loitering, laughing, talking people. One 
 might almost have thought he was fidgeting to 
 escape. 
 
 "This morning," I went on, following him down 
 the steps, "the pastor of the Grassdale Circuit 
 below Berton reported two hundred dollars which 
 we raised, he said, for repairs on the Grassdale 
 
358 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 Church. That was misleading, dishonest. The 
 we s who got that money were she s. The 
 women earned and contributed every dollar of it 
 with their chrysanthemum shows and festivals." 
 I knew well enough why that pastor did not tell 
 who painted and repaired his church for him. He 
 knew that neither bishop nor elders would have 
 liked it if he had given credit where credit was due. 
 
 One night we had a great sermon from the 
 greatest preacher and the most distinguished man 
 in all Southern Methodism. The Conference took 
 on a sort of glow. It seemed to me that some of 
 the old men were exalted prophets, with their faces 
 shining the reflected glory of the speaker s tran 
 scendent eloquence. I felt like shouting myself. 
 Everybody was in the spirit, you might say, they 
 were so moved and excited. 
 
 About the time the very heavens seemed to 
 open, and we could almost see the angels ascending 
 and descending, something happened. Two or 
 three men arose from different parts of the church 
 and made their way to the outer door. 
 
 "What do they mean, leaving at such a mo 
 ment?" I whispered to Sam Parks, who was sitting 
 beside me. 
 
 "They are rich laymen," he explained, grinning 
 broadly. "The preacher s about to take up a big 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 359 
 
 collection. They are going down into the base 
 ment until it s over." 
 
 This is exactly what happened. That man who 
 had stirred us with the very fires of the Holy Ghost 
 now faced about and began to jolly the crowd for 
 money he wanted. 
 
 I shall not tell what the cause was. It is enough 
 to say that it was the enormously expensive project 
 of an enormously rich church, requiring a very 
 large sum. 
 
 During the next half-hour he collected several 
 thousands of dollars from the Conference; that is to 
 say, chiefly from the Methodist preachers nearly 
 all of whom are poor and more than half of them 
 desperately poor. They may have wanted to give, 
 but in any case they had to do it. Some of them 
 saddled themselves with subscriptions that night 
 which it would take them years to pay. There 
 was much laughter and chaffing back and forth. 
 Still, it was a holdup, pure and simple, and the 
 highwayman was a "prince of the church." 
 
 I knew many of the preachers who were signing 
 these subscription blanks. And I could see the 
 poor little faded wife in some parsonage among the 
 Georgia hills who had not had a new winter frock 
 maybe for years, who had pinched and denied her 
 self for her children and for her husband that he 
 might have a new suit to wear to Conference. 
 
360 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 I looked at Felix Wade I thought he should be 
 satisfied with this reckless generosity of the poor. 
 But evidently he was not. He sat regarding the 
 great man, who was squeezing them of their dol 
 lars down to their very dimes, with a deep frown 
 between his eyes. I understood him well enough 
 to know his thoughts. He would have approved 
 if these itinerants had given the very coats off their 
 backs, provided they gave to one poorer than them 
 selves, but never to enhance the wealth of the 
 church, no matter how specious the arguments 
 employed to show how much the church needed 
 what it really only wanted. 
 
 I climbed into the gallery on the fourth day of 
 the Conference a few minutes later than usual. I 
 was the only person there. Charlotte had gone 
 back to Berton on the previous day. But where 
 were the four stewards from our church? So far 
 they had attended every session, giving their 
 whole attention to what was going on. I knew they 
 were still in town, for Brother Wade s trial would 
 not be held until Friday, and Sam Parks, Lipton, 
 and Peters had come to defend him against War 
 ren s attack and to assure the bishop that we 
 wanted him returned to Berton. 
 
 I was looking about over the Conference, think 
 ing perhaps they had slipped in to get better audi 
 ence of the reports and discussion, for we did not 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 361 
 
 always hear what was being said in the gallery. 
 Suddenly I saw something which took my breath. 
 I adjusted my glasses, bent far forward, and looked 
 again. No, I was not mistaken. There was old 
 Torn Warren seated beside Felix Wade, with his 
 arm lying along the top of the bench and curved 
 in an intimate, brotherly manner about Brother 
 Wade s shoulders. The latter leaned a barely 
 perceptible angle in the opposite direction. War 
 ren was whispering and gesticulating in the most 
 friendly manner. Brother Wade listened with a 
 kind of smile, not cordial, nor yet bitter, but a 
 sort of requiescat-in-pace smile, as if he were willing 
 for anybody who wanted it to have the last word. 
 
 I leaned back mystified and strangely indignant, 
 though I should have been glad to see those two 
 men seated so close together in love and charity. 
 
 I happened to glance out of the window, merely, 
 you may say, by way of cooling my thoughts, 
 when I saw something else equally puzzling. The 
 four Berton stewards were down there on the 
 pavement with a presiding elder and half a dozen 
 prominent preachers. Everybody was talking. 
 Sam Parks worked himself in and out of the group, 
 buttonholing first one man, then another. Lip- 
 ton was also explaining something to the presiding 
 elder, who would not listen. His manner was 
 coolly accusative. Roger Peters joined in the 
 
362 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 defense. You can look at a man and tell when 
 he is on the defensive, even if you cannot hear 
 what he is saying. They all wrangled back and 
 forth before the curbstone audience, wagging their 
 heads, spreading their hands, as much as to show 
 how innocent they were of whatever they were 
 guilty. Sam left the group, ran up the steps, 
 evidently looked in. Then he came back, said 
 something, and made an indignant gesture toward 
 the church. 
 
 I thought he must have referred to Tom War 
 ren, scrouged so close to Brother Wade, licking 
 him with his long white beard, which was a sick 
 ening sight to us who knew how ruthlessly he had 
 opposed and accused him. 
 
 The suspense was awful. The fact that one 
 is a large almost spherical woman does not mean 
 that one s mind cannot be elongated and hooked 
 into a starved-eyed interrogation point. I felt 
 exactly like that when Sam Parks came hastily 
 up the stairs and seated himself behind me. 
 
 "Sam," I began at once, pointing to Brother 
 Wade s companion, "what does that mean?" 
 
 "That he has withdrawn his charges against 
 Brother Wade and is now apologizing for having 
 made them." 
 
 I could see that Sam was jealous. 
 
 "But why did he withdraw them?" I asked. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 363 
 
 "Because he s found out who Brother Wade is!" 
 he answered, sneering. 
 
 "Who he is!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Well, who he was, then, before he joined the 
 itinerancy." 
 
 "A lawyer hi New York. I ve known that for 
 some time," I answered. 
 
 "A congressman from New Jersey," he added. 
 
 "A congressman ! " 
 
 I could not have been more astonished if he 
 had called him a fallen angel from Paradise. 
 
 "Yes, a rich man, who has bonded his property 
 and given the income to Christian charities!" 
 
 We sat a moment in silence, then Sam went on, 
 hissing like a fire when you pour water on it 
 he was so mad. 
 
 "Warren says he s sorry he didn t understand 
 Brother Wade better. He wants him to come 
 back another year. He says if he d only known 
 that our pastor he calls him that now with every 
 public breath he draws had funds to spend that 
 way he could have directed him better, and great 
 good would have been accomplished. But we won t 
 get him back," he added regretfully after a pause. 
 
 "Why? "I asked. 
 
 "Well, the whole thing is out now; two or three 
 city churches want him. I understand the Con 
 ference hopes to place him in charge of the hos- 
 
364 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 pital work. But they may all miss what they are 
 after," he concluded, smiling grimly. 
 
 "What are they after?" I asked. 
 
 "His money, of course. Rich, young-ruler 
 type, you know. Didn t exactly sell all he had, 
 but he has legally turned over the income for 
 charity. The rub is that he belongs to the Belgian 
 
 Relief Committee in A , and most of it goes 
 
 into that. Remember the mysterious trips he 
 used to take, and what a fuss there was trying to 
 find out where he d gone and what he was doing?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "Yes, though I can t say that I ever fashed 
 myself that way about Brother Wade s private 
 affairs," I said with dignity. 
 
 "Well," answered Sam, "he went to executive 
 meetings of that committee. We ve made a very 
 serious mistake, Sister Thompson. There is no 
 denying it." 
 
 "You ve made a mistake, Sam Parks, you and 
 the other stewards who failed to support him in 
 his pastorate. I don t know what might have 
 happened if it hadn t been for Molly Brown getting 
 up food and stuff for him that last month!" 
 
 "We thought he had means of his own," he 
 defended. 
 
 "I don t know what you thought, but what 
 you did was to hold back his salary!" 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 365 
 
 "Well, it s too late now to do anything. Peters, 
 Lipton, and I are going home this afternoon," he 
 sighed. 
 
 "You d better take old Tom Warren with you," 
 I snorted. 
 
 And he did go, though Sam always insisted 
 that they showed the back of their hands to him 
 and let him know what they thought of him. 
 
 Every preacher s character must be passed 
 before he is allowed to read the report of his year s 
 work. When his name is called his presiding 
 elder shouts back, "Nothing against him!" 
 
 But if there is something against him he shouts 
 that, too. 
 
 When the name of "Edmund Pathe" was called 
 by the secretary, his presiding elder arose and said : 
 "There is a charge of immorality and maladmin 
 istration against this brother. We are trying him 
 now in the basement." 
 
 These words were distinctly audible in every 
 part of the house. The victim was seated in full 
 view, but no man looked in his direction. He was 
 covered with this shamed charity of his brethren. 
 The bishop went on with what he was doing, as 
 if a man s honour had not perished in the breath 
 of those words. Later we heard that he had 
 "come clear" of the charges against him. But 
 
366 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 will anything ever clear his reputation of that 
 stain, so idly flung against him defenseless? 
 
 This can happen to any Methodist preacher, 
 no matter how innocent he is. Charges may be 
 made against him which fall upon him like a 
 thunderbolt out of a clear sky when his name is 
 called at the Annual Conference under question 
 number twenty-two in our Discipline. As a rule 
 he knows beforehand what is in the wind, but not 
 always. 
 
 The fear of this awful publicity may constrain 
 some preachers to live more discreetly and to be 
 warily prudent toward the soul-sick lady who is 
 the serpent coiled especially for them, just as the 
 fear of everlasting torment drives some ruffian 
 souls to seek forgiveness and membership in the 
 church. But I never liked this kind of damnation 
 gospel to sinners, and I do think the most brutal 
 sight I ever witnessed was that presiding elder 
 announcing grave charges against a man who 
 looked as if he had died beneath the blow; and still 
 stared in front of him with wide, horror-stricken 
 eyes. And he was proved innocent, which must 
 have increased his anguished sense of injustice. 
 
 My ear caught the name of "Walter Bliss." I 
 remembered him forty years ago on the Berton 
 circuit. He was young then, so young in his 
 spiritual life that he still was joyful, radiating 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 367 
 
 courage, hope, and faith with no effort, simply 
 because he was young, innocent, hopeful of a long 
 life in the ministry. "Nothing against him!" 
 shouted the presiding elder. 
 
 Then Walter Bliss stood up. 
 
 I should never have recognized this gray, 
 withered shade of a man. All the hardships of 
 the years, the weariness, the failures they were 
 written like an epitaph upon this scrawny figure, 
 as if there had not been room for this sorrowful 
 script in the wrinkles upon his brow. It was 
 written all over him in the sag of his shoulders, 
 in his trembling knees, in his arms sticking out 
 from his body like the picked wings of a bird. 
 
 He had not risen in the Conference, as we say. 
 He had always been sent to the poorest circuits, 
 where the labour was hardest, and the salary 
 meagre to the point of dried fruit for quarterage. 
 But for forty years when his name was called the 
 presiding elder had always to answer, "Nothing 
 against him!" 
 
 It is a long time to be good. 
 
 He read his report. He admitted that he had 
 not been successful this year. One inferred that 
 he never had been only faithful. He was ab\e 
 to collect about 50 per cent, of his assessments. 
 His salary had not been paid in full. He had held 
 four revivals, but had not received many acces- 
 
368 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 sions to the church. Yes, he had baptized quite 
 a number of infants. 
 
 That was all, but still he stood, like a man col 
 lecting his feeble strength for a final effort. 
 
 "I wish to take the superannuate relation," he 
 said, as simply as that. 
 
 He was done at last. He had gone down in 
 the struggle. No more circuits, no more long 
 journeys through snow and sleet to a church where 
 maybe not three people came to hear him preach 
 that day. Never again the struggle to get his 
 paltry assessments, no more revivals with sinners 
 crowding the altar with him, bending above, teach 
 ing them the great secret of penitence and love. 
 Henceforth he would be only an old preacher with 
 nothing more to suffer, and nothing more to do. 
 It was awful to be so bereaved of his Lord s 
 service. 
 
 He remained standing. He wished to say some 
 thing about those forty years in the itineracy. 
 
 But the bishop did not see him. He called for 
 the next report. Not a word of praise or sympa 
 thy for the man who had just finished giving his 
 life for the church. 
 
 The old preacher slipped slowly back into his 
 seat, looking vaguely confused. How had it hap 
 pened? He was about to say something. But the 
 bishop did not seem to know that. 
 
A Circuit Riders Widow 369 
 
 Sometimes I know that I am not a sufficiently 
 patient Christian. I know it with deep regret and 
 a certain violent satisfaction. And this was one of 
 the times. I wanted to jump up, lean over the 
 balcony rail, and shout: 
 
 " Stop ! That old man wants to say something. 
 It s his last chance as a Methodist itinerant. Give 
 him the floor and holler Amen ! for him." 
 
 If I had done that they would have removed me 
 for disturbing public worship, I reckon. 
 
 But of course the bishop had his side. He was 
 in command of a church conducted according to 
 military ideas. When an old cavalry horse falls in 
 the fight the general doesn t go down and close his 
 dying eyes. He charges straight ahead, which is 
 the right way if he is to get anywhere. But it cer 
 tainly does look very bad to see him doing it in the 
 church of God. I don t say it is wrong I say it 
 looks heartless. 
 
 As the names of the preachers are arranged 
 alphabetically for this investigation of character, 
 Brother Wade s name would come near the close 
 of the session for they managed to pass at odd 
 times only thirty or forty each day. 
 
 On Friday morning they were as far down as the 
 Smiths in the conference. There are several Ts, 
 one or two Us and Vs, then before I could brace 
 myself the secretary called, "Felix Wade!" 
 
370 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "Nothing against him!" responded the pre 
 siding elder. 
 
 Brother Wade stood up and read his astounding 
 report. 
 
 This is made out on blanks, furnished with the 
 printed heads under which reports are to be made. 
 It is a good plan and saves time. The preacher is 
 not supposed to wind himself or the Conference 
 with explanations of why he did so well or so badly 
 with his work that year. He is expected to reduce 
 the whole thing to numerals, recite them and sit 
 down, merely privately asking the Lord to have 
 mercy upon him if he has raised only 10 per cent, 
 of his assessments, which I reckon, until this day, 
 was the lowest report of that kind ever made by a 
 member of this Conference. 
 
 There was a curious stillness, a significant con 
 centration of attention, as Brother Wade held up 
 that little narrow cream-coloured slip of paper. 
 
 1. No accessions to the church. 
 
 2. No revivals held. 
 
 3. One conversion. 
 
 4. Sunday-school assessments paid. 
 
 5. Less than one per cent, of conference collec 
 tions paid. 
 
 6. No salary assessed for pastor. Three hun 
 dred dollars paid. 
 
 7. Five infants baptized. 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 371 
 
 It must have taken him less than one minute to 
 read these items. Then he resumed his seat, folded 
 his legs, and left his cowlick to speak for itself. 
 
 The Bishop stared at him in petrified amazement. 
 The members of the conference eased their necks 
 round, as if they wished to resume a front-face 
 position without being suspected of visual curiosity 
 in this man who had just damned himself. 
 
 In the midst of this appalling stillness our pre 
 siding elder stood up. 
 
 "Bishop," he said in low tones, "Brother Wade 
 desires to surrender his credentials and his license 
 to preach. There is nothing against him, and he 
 has stood with credit his examinations for the com 
 ing year." 
 
 This added assurance that there was nothing 
 against him was important. If charges are pre 
 ferred against a preacher he cannot surrender his 
 ii cense until after the trial. If he is found guilty 
 the church demands them. So this was the earliest 
 possible moment when Brother Wade could have 
 been relieved of his duties. 
 
 The elder advanced, laid these credentials on 
 the bishop s desk, and the incident was closed. 
 The business of the Conference proceeded with 
 the usual machine-like precision. 
 
 I sat like a poor old publican in the dark gallery, 
 the only representative of the church at Berton, 
 
372 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 which somehow I felt had been weighed in the 
 scales and found wanting. We had had the light, 
 and we preferred darkness, at least a well-shaded, 
 world- tin ted cover for our prayers and deeds. 
 
 Momentum gathered by more than a hundred 
 years of progress will carry as large a body as a 
 Christian organization a long way before it begins 
 to wobble. 
 
 The great Methodist Episcopal Church South 
 was certainly moving swiftly and directly to the 
 ends it held in view of being a rich and powerful 
 influence chartered in the name of God but I 
 felt dimly that things were not so well with us as 
 they should be. The atmosphere of an Annual 
 Conference is not spiritual, because it is, strictly 
 speaking, a business meeting, called to audit ac 
 counts and assign the work of the church for an 
 other year. All the fine sermons one hears at a 
 conference do not entirely conceal the real nature 
 and purpose of the body. 
 
 This is as it should be, of course. I am not 
 complaining, I m only explaining why I felt very 
 low in my mind and very humble in my soul as I 
 sat up there in the brown gloom of the balcony. 
 I could not see the people on the conference floor 
 below. My eyes were holden by tears which 
 changed everything into a dark moving mist. I 
 could still hear the sharp, incisive voice of the 
 
A Circuit Rider s Widow 373 
 
 bishop, saying something about church exten 
 sion. 
 
 Then I heard the quick, elastic tread of some 
 one coming up the steps into the gallery. The 
 next moment Felix Wade slipped into the seat 
 beside me. 
 
 We sat there in silence for I know not how long, 
 with the rasping voice of the advancing church 
 cutting the air as the bishop continued his ex 
 hortation. 
 
 "You have been good to me," Brother Wade 
 said finally. 
 
 I fumbled in my reticule, took out my handker 
 chief and wiped the tears from beneath my glasses. 
 But I could not stop my lips from primping. 
 
 "You have held up my hands," he went on. 
 
 I looked round at him and met the familiar, 
 half -tender, half -humorous smile. 
 
 "We needed you, Brother Wade," I whimpered. 
 "We are sorry to lose you." 
 
 "But I ll never lose you, dear lady. I ll re 
 member you all my life as the fair weather of a 
 hard season," he said gently. "I could not go 
 without telling you that." 
 
 "But you are not going now!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "At once. I have an important engagement 
 
 in A to-night. Lum meets me there," he 
 
 said, rising and holding out his hand. 
 
374 A Circuit Rider s Widow 
 
 "You will not return to Berton," I held out, 
 "to pack things?" 
 
 "No; that is already done except" he looked 
 at me like a boy making a present to his grand 
 mother "except the painting which you remem 
 ber hung over the fireplace in the parsonage par 
 lour. I have ventured to bequeath that to you." 
 
 The next moment he was gone. I dropped back 
 in my seat, feeling as a mother must feel after 
 bidding her favourite son good-bye who is already 
 on his way to the wars. And I could not comfort 
 myself, because I did not know what would become 
 of him. 
 
 The bishop was still speaking about the im 
 portance of church extension. But I thought I 
 would get up presently, when I felt better, and go 
 out. Maybe I should be able to catch the noon 
 train for Berton. It did not matter whom we 
 should get for a pastor I made up my mind to 
 let Charlotte run things next year. It was her 
 kind of a church anyhow. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 FORM NO. DD6 ; 60m, 1/83 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
 $ 
 
YB 7481 
 
 GENERAL LIBRARY -U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 M138394 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 p O L M 
 NEIL 
 ^ K S 
 
 .D - RARE 
 
 5TER ST. 
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