The Land of Long Ago Part 2

"And old Uncle Gloster says, 'Boss, I'm doin' my best, but it looks like somebody's done hoodooed this bell.' Says he, 'I'm jest gittin'

over a spell o' rheumatism, and my old j'ints won't stand a climb up that ladder, and you'll have to git somebody that's young and spry to go up and see what's the matter.'

"Well, Brother Wilson started off to find somebody who could climb the ladder, and as soon as he got outside the church, he met Judge Grace and old Doctor Brigham, both of 'em members of the church, and he told 'em about the trouble with the bell, and they went in to see what they could do. By the time Brother Wilson had walked around the square, everybody in town knew that the Presbyterian bell wouldn't ring, and all the folks come flockin' to the church; but n.o.body wanted to risk their neck goin' up the old rickety ladder. While they was all standin' there stretchin' their necks and reckonin' about what was the matter, here come John Calvin, and says he, 'Gimme fifty cents, and I'll go up the ladder.'

"And Brother Wilson says, 'No child o' mine shall be hired to do his duty.' Says he, 'John Calvin, if that ladder was a green-apple tree, you'd be at the top of it in less than half a minute. Go up, sir, this instant, and find out what's the matter with that bell.'

"But Judge Grace and Doctor Brigham and the rest o' the men said they'd throw in and make up the fifty cents, and John Calvin put the money in his pocket and went up the ladder. As soon as he got to the top round he hollered down and says he:

"'No wonder the bell won't ring. Here's a yarn sock tied around the clapper.' And down he come with the sock in his hand, and handed it to his father. It turned out afterwards that him and Martin Luther had had a fallin' out that mornin', and he went up and got the sock jest to git even with his brother.

"Well, while they was pa.s.sin' the sock around and speculatin' about it, old Mis' Maria Morris come along with her bag o' knittin' on her arm, goin' to spend the day with some of her friends. She stopped to see what was the matter, and when they told her she says, 'Let me look at the sock,' and she took it and looked at it right close and says she, 'That's Martin Luther Wilson's sock,' says she. 'I spent the day with Mis' Wilson three or four weeks ago, and I saw her round off the toe of this very sock.'

"Well, of course, Brother Wilson started off to look for Martin Luther, and as soon as he was out o' hearin', Judge Grace brought his cane down on the pavement, and says he, 'I hate to say such a thing of my own pastor's son, but they named that boy after the wrong man when they named him Martin Luther,' says he. 'They ought to 'a' named him Beelzebub. That's one good old Bible name,' says he, 'that'll fit a preacher's son nine times out of ten.'

"Brother Wilson went all around the square inquirin' for Martin Luther, and found out that Martin and the rest o' the boys had been seen goin' towards the river, all of 'em bleatin' like young lambs callin' for their mothers. So he come back to the church, and says he to Judge Grace, 'What mortifies me most in this matter is that a boy of mine should have so little sense as to tie his own sock on the bell. It was the act of a fool,' says he, 'and I shall see that it is properly punished.'

"So when Martin Luther got home late that evenin', his mother was standin' on the front door-step waitin' for him, and she took him by the hand and led him into his father's study. And Brother Wilson held up the sock, and says he, 'My son, can you tell me how this came to be tied on the clapper of the church bell?' And Martin Luther says, as prompt as you please, 'Yes, sir; I tied it on myself.' Martin's mother said Brother Wilson looked mighty pleased at that. And then he says, 'Well, didn't you know you'd be found out if you tied your own sock on?' And Martin Luther says, 'Yes, but I had to take my chances on that, for if I'd gone home to git a rag or anything like that, Uncle Gloster might 'a' had the church locked up before I could git back.'

Mis' Wilson used to say that Brother Wilson laughed like he'd heard good news when Martin Luther said that, and says he, 'Well, I'm glad to know you are neither a liar nor a fool, but, all the same, I shall have to correct you severely for this offense.'

"Brother Wilson believed in Solomon's plan for raisin' children, and in them days preachers didn't try to explain away the meanin' of a Bible text like they do now. So he give Martin Luther a good old-fas.h.i.+oned whippin', and then he called for John Calvin, and says he, 'I know you were as deep in the mud as your brother was in the mire, and I understand now why you were so anxious to climb the ladder and see what was the matter with the bell: you only wanted to get your brother into trouble, so I shall give you a double punishment.'

"And besides the whippin', Martin Luther said they made him and John Calvin learn pretty near all the psalms. That's the way children was dealt with in old times. Martin Luther used to say, 'Boys, if I got all this for tyin' one sock on that old bell-clapper, what would it 'a' been if I'd tied a pair o' socks on it?'"

The old farmhouse was in sight, and Nelly's brisk gait showed what she could do if she would. Such inspiration is the thought of home, even to dumb animals. Suddenly I drew rein and a.s.sumed a look of deep dismay.

"Aunt Jane," I cried, "we have forgotten something."

"La, child, you don't say so," said Aunt Jane, turning over the parcels in her lap and hurriedly counting them. "Why, no we ain't.

Here's the soda and the cream o' tartar and the gyarden seed all right."

"But you forgot to tell me the story of the house that was a wedding fee," said I with dramatic solemnity.

"Now did anybody ever!" laughed Aunt Jane. "Skeerin' me to death about a old yarn like that! Well, honey, that story's sixty years old already, and I reckon it'll keep a little longer yet. Some o' these days I'll tell you the story of that old house. I reckon I owe you another story for takin' me to town and bringin' me home so nice. I'm mighty glad I've seen the old place once more, for the next time I go to town maybe I'll go in the direction of the New Jerusalem."

After Nelly had been unharnessed and fed, I sat down on the porch to watch the pa.s.sing of day. Ah! surely it is worth while to go to town now and then just for the pleasure of getting back to the country, to its purer air, its solitude, its blessed stillness. I lifted up my eyes unto the hills and let the sunset and the twilight hold me in their spells till Aunt Jane's voice called me in with a warning of the danger that lurks in falling dew; and when I closed my eyes in sleep that night, my brain was a panorama of strange scenes. Past and present were mingled, as a picture painted within a picture, for, through Aunt Jane's eyes, I, too, had seen double. I had gone to town over the old 'pike, but I had also traveled the road of dead years, and it had led me into the Land of Long Ago.

II

THE HOUSE THAT WAS A WEDDING FEE

[Ill.u.s.tration]

II

THE HOUSE THAT WAS A WEDDING FEE

It was September, the sad month of the year before I heard the promised story of the house that was a wedding fee; for it was Aunt Jane's whim that, as a dramatic sequence, a visit to the house should follow the telling of the tale, and it was hard to find a convenient time for the happening of both events. Meanwhile, I was tantalized by the memory of that half-seen house at the end of the long avenue, and again and again I tried by adroit questions to draw from Aunt Jane the story about which my imagination hovered like a bee about a flower.

"Well," she finally remarked with smiling resignation, "I see there ain't any peace for me till that story's told. Ain't that Johnny Amos goin' by on horseback? Holler to him, child, and ask him to stop here on his way back and hitch old Nelly to the buggy for me. Tell him I'll dance at his weddin' if he'll do that favor for me.

"And now, while we're waitin' for Johnny to come, I'll tell all I can ricollect about that old house. Fetch my basket o' cyarpet-rags, and we'll sit out here on the porch. Here's a needle for you, too, child.

If I can sew and talk at the same time, I reckon you can sew and listen. Jest mix your colors any way you please. I never made a cyarpet except the hit-or-miss kind."

I took my needle and began to sew, first a black, then a red, then a blue strip, but Aunt Jane showed no haste to begin her story.

"Goin' back sixty years," she remarked meditatively, "is like goin' up and rummagin' around in a garret. You don't know what you'll lay your hands on in the dark, and you can't be certain of findin' what you went after. I'm tryin' to think whereabouts I'd better begin so as to git to that old house the quickest."

"No, Aunt Jane, please take the long, roundabout way," I urged.

"Well," she laughed, "come to think about it, it don't make much difference which way I take, for if I start on the short road, it'll be roundabout before I git through with it. You know my failin', child. Well, I reckon the old church is as good a startin'-place as any. You ricollect me p'intin' it out to you the day we went to town, and tellin' you about Martin Luther and the bell. That buildin' was put up when Brother Wilson was pastor of the Presbyterian church.

Before his time they'd been without a preacher for a good while, and things was in a run-down and gone-to-seed sort o' condition when he come up from Tennessee to take the charge.

"Brother Wilson's father and mother was Georgia people, and I ricollect one of his brothers comin' through here with all his slaves on his way to Mizzourah to set 'em free. The family moved from Georgia to Tennessee because there was better schools there, and they wanted to educate their children. They was the sort o' people that thought more of books and learnin' than they did of money. But before Brother Wilson got his schoolin', he took a notion he'd go into the army, and when he wasn't but sixteen or seventeen years old, he was fightin'

under Gen. Andrew Jackson, and went through two campaigns. Then he come home and went to college, and the next thing he was preachin' the gospel.

"It's sort o' curious to think of a man bein' a soldier and a preacher, too. But then, you know, the Bible talks about Christians jest like they was soldiers, and the Christian's life jest like it was a warfare. The Apostle tells us to put on the whole armor of G.o.d, and when he was ready to depart he said, 'I have fought a good fight.' And I used to think that maybe Brother Wilson wouldn't 'a' been as good a preacher as he was if he hadn't first been a good soldier. He used to say, 'I come of fighting stock and preaching stock, and the fighting blood in me had to have its day.' The preachin' blood didn't seem to come out in Martin Luther and John Calvin, but the fightin' blood was there mighty strong. Folks used to say that one or the other of 'em had a fight every day in the week, and if they couldn't git up a fight with some other boy, they'd fight with each other. The druggist said that after Brother Wilson come, he sold as much court-plaster and arnica in a month as he used to sell in six months, and Mis' Zerilda Moore used to declare she never had seen Martin Luther but once when his eyes and nose was the natural shape and color. Some of the church-members was scandalized at havin' their preacher's sons set such a bad example to the rest o' the town boys, and they went to Brother Wilson to talk to him about it. But he jest laughed and says he, 'There's no commandment that says, "Thou shalt not fight," and I can't whip my boys for having the spirit of their forefathers on both sides of the house.' Says he, 'Their great-grandfather on their mother's side was a fighting parson in Revolutionary times. He was in his pulpit one Sunday morning when news was brought that the British were coming, and he stepped down out of his pulpit and organized a company from the men of his congregation, and marched out and whipped the British; and then he went back to the church and finished his sermon.' Says he, 'My boys can't help fighting like their mother's grandfather any more than they can help having their mother's eyes and hair.'

"Now here I am talkin' about Martin Luther Wilson's great-grandfather when I started out to tell you about the old church. Le's see if I can't git back to the straight road and keep on it the rest of the way.

"When Brother Wilson first come, the Presbyterian church was in the old graveyard in the lower part o' town. Maybe you ricollect seem' it the day we went to town. Mighty dismal-lookin' place, all grown up in weeds and underbrush. And he took a look at it and saw jest how things was, and says he, 'You've got your church in the right place. A dead church,' says he, 'ought to be in a graveyard. But,' says he, 'when the spirit of the Lord breathes over this valley of dry bones, I expect to see the dead arise, and we'll build a house of the Lord amongst the habitations of the living.' And bless your life, he went to work and got up a revival that lasted three months, and spread to all the churches--the Babtist and the Methodist and the Christian--till every sinner in town was either converted or at the mourners' bench. And before it was over in town, it started in the country churches and kept up till Sam Amos said it looked to him like the preachers would have to go out o' business for a while or move to some other place, for there wasn't any material in the county for 'em to work on. Mother used to say it was pretty near equal to the big revival they had 'way back yonder in 1830. She said every seat in a church then was a mourners' bench, and such shoutin' and singin' and prayin' never was heard before or since. Some o' the converts would fall in trances, and you couldn't tell whether they was dead or alive.

Uncle Jim Matthews's father, Job Matthews, stayed in a trance for two days and nights, and mother said he never seemed like the same man after that. He never could tell what he'd seen when he was in the trance, and when folks'd question him about it, a sort of a wild look'd come into the old man's eyes and he'd say, 'I've seen things of which it is not lawful for me to speak.' He didn't take any more interest in his farmin' or the family affairs, and when his wife'd try to stir him up and persuade him to work like he'd been used to workin', he'd say: 'The things of this world are temporal, but the things of the other world are eternal. The soul of man is eternal, and this world can never content it. I've seen the abiding-place o' the soul,' he'd say, 'and I'm like a homesick child.' Mother said n.o.body appeared to understand the old man, and his wife'd be so fretted and outdone with him that she'd say that if a person went into a trance, they might as well stay in it, for Job hadn't been any use to the world since he come out of his.

"Well, when the revival was over, and all the converts had been received into the church, Brother Wilson called a meetin' o' the session and says he, 'There's two things to be done now. We've got to come up out of that old graveyard, and build a church in town that'll stand as a monument to this generation of Presbyterians long after their bodies have gone back to the old graveyard and moldered into dust; and while we're doing that,' says he, 'we must bring this congregation up to the standards the church has set for its members.'

And he got the session to pa.s.s resolutions sayin' that all sinful and worldly pleasures like cyard-playin' and horse-racin' and dancin' was forbidden to church-members, and that the Sabbath day must be kept holy and no member of the church could ride or walk or take a journey on the Sabbath unless it was to do some work of necessity or mercy.

Says he, 'This flock has been without a shepherd so long that the Good Shepherd himself could hardly tell which are the sheep and which are the goats. But,' says he, 'the time has come when every man has got to take his stand on the right hand or on the left, so the world can know what he is.'

"Well, of course these strict rulin's went mighty hard with some o'

the church people, for, havin' been without a preacher so long, they'd got clean out of their religious ways. I ricollect they elected old Mr. Joe Bigsby superintendent of the Sunday-school, and the very first Sunday he was examinin' the children to see if their parents had taught 'em the things they ought to know, and he called on Johnny West to say the Lord's Prayer, and John was talkin' to the boy next to him and didn't hear. The old man was mighty quick-tempered, and he hollered out: 'John West! You John! Confound you, sir! Stand up and say the Lord's Prayer.' And then he ricollected himself, and he turned around to Brother Wilson, and says he, 'Now, I know that ain't any way for a Sunday-school superintendent to talk, but,' says he, 'jest give me a little time, and I'll git the hang o' this superintendent business.' Says he, 'When a Presbyterian's been without a church of his own for three years and been driftin' around loose amongst the Methodists and the Babtists, you've got to make some allowance for him.'

"Well, after he'd got the Sunday-school and the weekly prayer-meetin'

started, and all the church-members comin' regular to preachin', and everything runnin' smooth, Brother Wilson set about havin' the church built.

"The way they build churches now, child, is mighty different from the way they used to build 'em. Now n.o.body gives anything but money. It's money, money, money, every which way you turn. But in the olden time the way they built a church was like the way the Israelites built the tabernacle. You ricollect the Bible says, 'Every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, brought an offering to the Lord.' The rich men brought gold and silver, and the rulers brought onyx stones and oil and incense, and the poor men brought wood for the tabernacle and goats' skins and rams' skins, and the women they spun and wove and made purple and scyarlet cloth and fine linen. There wasn't anybody so poor that he couldn't give somethin' if his heart and his spirit was willin'. And that's the way it was when that Presbyterian church was built in the old time.

"The folks that was called rich then would be called poor nowadays, and a man's riches wasn't always money. But if one man had a sand-bank, he'd give sand for the mortar, and if another had good clay for makin' bricks, he'd give the clay, and somebody else that owned slaves'd give the labor--so many days' work--and there'd be the bricks for the walls; and if a church-member was a cyarpenter, he'd give so much of his time and his work, jest like the 'wise-hearted men' that worked on the tabernacle and made the curtains and the cherubims and the sockets of silver and bra.s.s and all the rest of the things that Moses commanded 'em to make.

"I reckon that old subscription paper'd look mighty strange nowadays.

I ricollect one of the members said he'd give fifty dollars in cotton yarn at the price it was sellin' at in the stores; another said he'd give a hundred acres o' land in Monroe County; and another one give a hundred acres o' land 'way up in Illinois. One o' the elders said he'd give twenty-five dollars in s.h.i.+ngles, and when he'd gethered his corn the next fall, he promised to give twenty-five barrels o' corn; another elder paid fifteen dollars in pork, and one o' the deacons who had a two-horse wagon paid sixty dollars in haulin'; and the saddlers and the tailors paid their part in saddlery and tailorin'. It's many a day, honey, since they laid the corner-stone o' that church, and there ain't a crack in the walls yet. The only good work is the work that love does, and in them days folks loved their churches jest as they loved their homes, and the work that went into that church was good work. I ricollect the Sunday they dedicated it the first hymn was,

"'I love thy kingdom, Lord, The house of thine abode, The church our blest Redeemer saved With his own precious blood.'