Chapter XXII: An "average" Sunday

Sunday was "some" day! Early service at 8 o'clock, a hurried breakfast at 8.45, and then we started for the mission chapel, where the archdeacon was to preach. I was curious to see how this scholar would adapt himself to the sort of congregation I knew he would meet there. Nothing could have been better. He did not "condescend to men of low estate," but gave them as thoughtful a message as he would have delivered at the university, yet clothed in such simple language as the most unlearned could understand.

"Truly," I said to myself, "here is a scribe who bringeth out of his treasure things new as well as old."

The archdeacon has, of course, besides his duty as vicar, many calls for work outside the parish. I was told that this day he was to preach at a church some twelve miles distant, and, therefore, there would be no time for dinner! However, Mrs. Williams made us a package of sandwiches, which we munched as we drove to the church where he was to preach the annual sermon on education.

The church was a barn of a place, and the atmosphere decidedly "evangelical." There were the old square pews which one sees in pictures of the eighteenth century; and when we knelt down my legs were covered by the voluminous folds of a bright-blue silk dress, worn by a farmer's wife, so that I was not quite sure of my identity, till a pair of stout white stockings, encasing most solid ankles, showed me that my own legs had not yet emerged!

The sermon was a plea for parochial schools, which would have left me cold had it not been for the interpretation of the Parable of the Sower, from which the text was taken. "The soil," said the preacher, "is human nature. At the first glance it might seem as if man was no more responsible for his character than is a field for the different conditions of its soil. But there would have been no 'gospel,' that is, 'good news,' in that. No, what it means, every farmer will understand. There is no soil that is hopeless, and none that does not need to be cultivated. Our schools are to make poor soil good, and good soil better." And so on.

On the way home the subject of education could not be ignored. The archdeacon was none too pleased to learn that I did not think well of parochial schools, and insisted that "godless" schools were worse than none. He would not agree that dogmatic teaching might be dispensed with and yet character be built up. When I pointed out that Jews and Catholics made up a large part of our urban population, and, not unnaturally, the one objected to Christian and the other to Protestant teaching, he could only see how unfortunate it was that we had no Established Church! Once more I was impressed by the fact that no man is liberal all through! Though he had been in the "States," his journey had led him only to the South--and that, too, in the days of Reconstruction. He had never seen New York or Ohio or New England, so that I could not feel that he was to be blamed for thinking poorly of our school system. But he made one remark worth remembering, to see if he is a "seer" as well as a prophet, which latter he assuredly is.

"You are doing the thing on the 'cheap.' You do not pay your teachers enough to make it worth while for men to make teaching a profession, and, as a result, not only the girls but the boys as well are for years under the influence of women. This is bad and cannot fail to affect the national character--as you will find if a great crisis were to come. It may, as I have heard it said, tend to 'refinement' of speech and manners, but the price is too high. It will make them effeminate, that is, sentimental, and sometimes hysterical. It is the manly virtues of endurance and disregard of trifles, which men alone can inculcate, which have made England what she is. Should a great war come--and I fear that cannot be long delayed--you will find your boys cannot bear the strain."

I hope that, as Nehemiah liked to say, "It may be counted to me for righteousness" that I refrained from mentioning 1776, or 1812, or even the Civil War--the "Bloody Angle," and Pickett's charge at Gettysburg--for that might have raised the _Alabama_!

In the evening I preached in the parish church--"the noblest parish church in England," I was told Ruskin called it. Well, the sermon was not worthy of the church. I don't know what was the matter. You know how such things go! One trouble was that, all the time I was speaking, I wished to say something else! Ruth haunted me! I could hear her whispering: "Better be dull and decent than 'start something'!" So I was dull!

At nine o'clock we sat down to a supper of cold beef and bread and cheese, and mighty good they tasted. Now was not that a day? I asked the archdeacon if it had been an exceptional day. "Oh, no," he said, "I should say an average day. I often go to the town hall after evening service and speak to the men who do not care to come to church. 'Securalists,' they call themselves, and as they are almost sure to heckle one, it is generally interesting, and sometimes exhausting."

There is no doubt that the English clergy work harder than we do--that is, those who pretend to work. While Americans find the climate trying, I am inclined to think one can accomplish more in a climate like this than in ours, which alternately exhilarates and depresses one. But I suspect there is a deeper reason which we do not like to admit, which is that they are better educated than we are! With us there is too much "cramming" for the occasion, whereas they have a treasury from which they can draw as they have need. It is possible also that there is an advantage in an established church which has not been recognized. While the "dumb dogs" take advantage of the "vested interest" to do as little as possible, the best men work in an atmosphere of leisure almost unknown to us. Unconsciously we are influenced by the competition which is the "life of trade." I do not mean that we do this in any unworthy manner, but with the subconscious feeling that we are expected to "make good," and this leads to "pressing," which is as fatal to the best work as it is to the best golf! Men like Williams seem to me to work without haste and without rest.

It was no "Blue Monday" to which I awoke. All was healthy activity, as if Sunday had been indeed a day of rest. The children were shooed into the schoolroom, for though it was the holidays, there were tasks which must be done before the next term. Mrs. Williams had a meeting of women, for some good work, and the archdeacon had gone to his study as soon as breakfast was finished to talk over and arrange with his curates the work of the new week.

So I drove to the station in a "fly," and bought a third-class ticket. But as I was about to take my place, the guard appeared and, touching his cap, asked if I was from the vicarage. When I said, "Yes," he said, "This way, please," and showed me into a first-class carriage, the door of which he promptly locked, when he had again touched his cap and said: "Thank you, sir."

"But," you will say, "this was 'graft'!" How crude you are! Do you not know that "graft" is confined to Tammany Hall? This was proper respect to persons of importance!

"Convey, the wise it call. Steal! foh; a fico for the phrase."