Part 12 (2/2)
HERE THE ALIEN; THERE THE LITTLE BROWN CHURCH
It was all very well to work out the ”Everyday Doctrines of Delafield.”
To secure their adoption and application by all the churches of Delafield was another matter. The unofficial committee scattered, for one thing. Joe Carbrook went back to medical school, and Marcia to the settlement and the training school. Marty was traveling his circuit. J.
W. and the pastor and a few others continued their studies of the town.
n.o.body had yet ventured to talk about experts, but it began to be evident that the situation would soon require thoroughgoing and skilled a.s.sistance. Otherwise, all that had been learned would surely be lost.
One day in the late fall a stranger dropped in at the Farwell Hardware Store and asked for Mr. J.W. Farwell, Jr. He had called first on Pastor Drury, who was expecting him; and that diplomat had said to him, ”Go see J.W. I think he'll help you to get something started.”
J.W., with two of the other clerks, was unloading a s.h.i.+pment of stovepipes. The marks of his task were conspicuous all over him, and he scarcely looked the part of the public-spirited young Methodist. But the visitor was accustomed to know men when he saw them, under all sorts of disguises.
J.W., called to the front of the store, met the visitor with a good-natured questioning gaze.
”Mr. Farwell, I am Manford Conover, of Philadelphia. Back there we have heard something of the 'Everyday Doctrines of Delafield,' and I've been sent to find out about them--and their authors.”
”Sent?” J.W. repeated. ”Why should anybody send you all the way from Philadelphia to Delafield just for that?” He could not know how much pastoral and even episcopal planning was back of that afternoon call.
”Don't think that we reckon it to be unimportant, Mr. Farwell,” said Mr.
Conover, pleasantly. ”You see I'm from a Methodist society with a long name and a business as big as its name--the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension. The thing some of you are starting here in Delafield is our sort of thing. It may supply our Board with new business in its line, and what we can do for you may make your local work productive of lasting results, in other places as well as here.”
J.W. did not quite understand, but he was willing to be instructed, for he had found out that the effort to promote the ”Everyday Doctrines” was forever developing new possibilities and at the same time revealing new expanses of Delafield ignorance and need. Anybody who appeared to have intelligence and interest was the more welcome.
They talked a while, and then, ”I'll tell you what,” proposed J.W.
”How long do you expect to be in town?” Mr. Conover replied that as yet he had made no arrangement for leaving.
”Then let's get together a few people to-night after prayer meeting. Our pastor, of course, and the editor of the _Dispatch_--he's the right sort, if he does boost 'boosting' a good deal; and Miss Leigh, of the High School--she's all right every way; and Mrs. Whitehill, the president of the Woman's a.s.sociation of our church--that's the women's missionary societies and the Ladies' Aid merged into one--she's a regular progressive; and Harry Field, who's just getting hold of his job in the League; and the Sunday school superintendent. That's dad, you know; he's had the job for a couple of years now, and he's as keen about it as Harry is over the League.”
They got together, and out of that first simple discussion came all sorts of new difficulties for Delafield Methodism to face and master.
Manford Conover was a preacher with a business man's training and viewpoint. He may have mentioned his official t.i.tle, when he first appeared, but n.o.body remembered it. When people couldn't think of his name he was ”the man from the Board,” which was all the same to him.
After that first night's meeting Conover gave several days to walks about Delafield. J.W. had found the shacks and the tenements, and Joe Carbrook had introduced J.W. to Main Street, but it was left to Conover to show him Europe and Africa in Delafield.
There's a certain town in a Middle Western State, far better known than Delafield, rich, intelligent, highly self-content. Its churches and schools and clubs are matters for complacent satisfaction. And you would be safe in saying that not one in five of its well-to-do people know that the town has a Negro quarter, an Italian section, a Bohemian settlement, a Scandinavian community, a good-sized Greek colony, and some other centers of cultures and customs alien to what they a.s.sume is the town's distinctive character.
They know, of course, that such people live in the town--couldn't help knowing it. Their maids are Scandinavian or Negro. They buy vegetables and candy from the Greeks. They hear of bootlegging and blind tigers among certain foreign groups. The rough work of the town is done by men who speak little or no English. But all this makes small impression. It is a commonplace of American town life. And scarcely ever does it present itself as something to be looked into, or needing to be understood.
So Conover found it to be with Delafield. The ”Everyday Doctrines” were well enough, but he knew a good deal of spade work must be done before they could take root and grow. He fronted a condition which has its counterpart in most American towns, each of which is two towns, one being certain well-defined and delimited areas where languages and Braces live amid conditions far removed from the American notion of what is endurable, and the other the ”better part of town,” sometimes smugly called ”the residence section,” where white Americans have homes.
Conover and Pastor Drury compared notes. They were of one mind as to the conditions which Conover had found, conditions not surprising to the minister, who knew more about Delafield than any of his own people suspected.
One afternoon they met J.W. on the street, and he led them into a candy store for hot chocolate.
As they sipped the chocolate they talked; J.W., as usual, saying whatever he happened to think of.
”Say, Mr. Conover,” he remarked, ”I notice in all your talk about the foreigner in America you haven't once referred to the idea of the melting pot. Don't you think that's just what America is? All these people coming here and getting Americanized and a.s.similated and all that?”
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