Part 11 (2/2)

All for Sunday-schools. Three millions given out every Sunday! Does that seem possible! Brother Hart, I'm afraid you are mistaken. Didn't he say that was Dr. Hart's estimate, Ruthie? There is certainly a good chance for mine, if so many are needed every week. I shall have to go right to work at it. What if I _should_ write one, Ruth, and what if it should _take_, and all the millions of Sunday-schools want it at once! Just as likely as not. I am a genius. They never know it until afterward. I shall certainly put you in, Ruthie, in some form. So you are destined to immortality, remember.”

”I wish you wouldn't whisper so much,” whispered back Ruth. ”People are looking at us in an annoyed way. What is the matter with you, Marion? I never knew you to run on in such an absurd way. That is bad enough for Eurie!”

”I'm developing,” whispered Marion. ”It is the 'reflex influence of Chautauqua' that you hear so much about.”

Then she wrote this sentence from Dr. Walden's lips:

”Every author whose books go into the Sabbath-school is as much a teacher in that school as though he had cla.s.ses there. A good book is a book that will aid the teacher in his work of bringing souls to Christ.

I have known the earnest teaching of months to be defeated by one single volume of the wrong kind being placed in the hands of the scholar.”

Suddenly Marion sat upright, slipped her pencil and note-book into her pocket, and wrote no more. A sentence in that address had struck home.

This determination to enter the lists as a writer was not all talk. She had long ago decided to turn her talents in that direction as the easiest thing in the line of literature, whither her taste ran. She had read many of the standard Sunday-school books; read them with amused eyes and curling lips, and felt entirely conscious that she could match them in intellectual power and interest, and do nothing remarkable then.

But there rang before her this sentence:

”Every author whose books go into the Sabbath-school is as much a teacher in that school as though he had cla.s.ses there.” A teacher in the Sabbath-school! Actually a _teacher_. She had never intended that. She had no desire to be a hypocrite. She had no desire to lead astray.

_Could_ she write a book that young people ought to bring from the Sabbath-school with them, and have it say nothing about Christ and heaven and the Christian life? Surely she could not be a teacher without teaching of these things. _Must_ she teach them incidentally?

Was saying nothing about them speaking against them? Dr. Walden more than intimated this.

”After all,” she said, speaking to Ruth as the address closed, ”I don't think I shall commence my book yet.”

”Why?”

”Oh, because I am sacred.” Then, impatiently, after a moment's silence, during which they changed their seats, ”I'm disgusted with Chautauqua!

It is going to spoil me. I feel my ambition oozing out at the ends of my toes, instead of my fingers as I had designed. Everybody is so awfully solemn, and has so much to say about eternity, it seems we can't whisper to each other without starting something that doesn't even end in eternity. But, wasn't he logical and eloquent?”

”I don't know,” Ruth said, absently. And she wondered if Marion knew how true her words were. Ruth had heard scarcely a word of Dr. Walden's address since that last whisper, ”So you are destined to immortality, remember.” Words spoken in jest, and yet thrilling her through and through with a solemn meaning. She had always known and always believed this. She was no skeptic, yet her heart had never taken it in, with a great throb of anxiety, as it did at that moment. _Was_ she being led of the Spirit of G.o.d?

The two merely changed their positions and looked about them a little, and then prepared to give attention to the next entertainment, which was a story from Emily Huntington Miller. Marion was the only one who was in the least familiar with her, she being the only one who had felt that absorbing interest in juvenile literature that had led her to keep pace with the times.

”I'm disposed to listen to _her_ with all due respect and attention,”

she said, as she rearranged herself and got out her note-book. ”She is one of the few people who seem not to have bidden a solemn farewell to their common sense when they set out to entertain the children. I have read everything she ever wrote, and liked it, too. I set out to make an idol of her in my more juvenile days. I used to think that the height of my ambition would be attained if I could have a long look at her. I'm going to try it to-day, and see if it satisfies me; though we are such aspiring and unsatisfied creatures that I strongly suspect I shall go on reaching out for something else even after _this_ experience.”

Very little whispering was done after that for some time. Although Marion made light of her youthful dreams, there was a strong feeling of excitement and interest cl.u.s.tering around this first sight of the woman whose name she had known so long; and something in the fair, sweet face and cultured voice fascinated and held her, much as she had fancied in her earlier days would be the case. She frowned when she heard the request to reporters to ”lay aside their pencils.” She had meant to earn laurels by reporting this delicious bit of imagery, set in between the graver sermons and lectures; but, after all, it was a rest to give herself up to the uninterrupted enjoyment of taking in every word and tone--taking it in for her own private benefit. ”The Parish of Fair Haven.” How heartily she enjoyed it. The refined and delicate, and yet keen and intense satire underlying the whole quaint original story, was of just the nature to hold and captivate her. She was just in the mood to enjoy it, too. For was it not aimed at that cla.s.s of people who awakened her own keenest sense of satire--the so-called ”Christian world”? She did not belong to it, you know; in her own estimation was entirely without the pale of its sarcasm; stranded on a high and majestic rock of unbelief in everything, and in a condition to be amused at the follies of people who played at belief; and treated what they _played_ was solemn realities as if they were cradle stories or nicely woven fiction. There was no listener in all that crowd who so enjoyed the keen play of wit and the sharp home thrusts as did Marion Wilbur.

Ruth was a little undecided what to think; she did not belong to the cla.s.s who were hit, to be sure, but her father always gave largely to missions whenever the solicitor called on him: she had heard his name mentioned with respect as one of the most benevolent men of the day; she did not quite like the very low and matter-of-course place which Mrs.

Miller's view of the mission question gave him. According to the people of Fair Haven, to give one's thousands to the cause was the most commonplace thing in the world--not to do so was to be an inhuman wretch. Ruth didn't quite like it--in truth she was just enough within the circle of modern Christianity to feel herself slightly grazed by the satire.

”It is absurd,” she said to Marion as they went up the hill. ”What is the sense in a woman talking in that way? As if people, were they ever so good and benevolent, could get themselves up in that ridiculous manner! If we live in the world at all we have to have a little regard for propriety. I wonder if she thinks one's entire time and money should be devoted to the heathen?”

Marion answered her with spirit.

”Oh, don't try to apologize for the folly that is going on in this world in the name of religion! It can't be done, and sensible people only make fools of themselves if they attempt it. There is nothing plainer or more impossible to deny than that church-members give and work and pray for the heathen as though they were a miserable and abominable set of brutes, who ought to be exterminated from the face of the earth, but for whom some ridiculous fanatics called 'missionaries' had projected a wild scheme to do something; and _they_, forsooth, must be kept from starving somehow, even though they had been unmitigated fools; so the paltry collections are doled out, with sarcastic undertones about the 'waste of money,' and the sin of missionaries wearing clothes, and expecting to have things to eat after throwing themselves away. Don't talk to me! I've been to missionary societies; I know all about it. The whole system is one that is exactly calculated to make infidels. I believe Satan got it up, because he knew in just what an abominable way the dear Christians would go at it, and what a horrid farce they would make of it all.”

”It is a great pity you are not a Christian, Marion. I never come in contact with any one who understands their duty so thoroughly as you appear to, and I think you ought to be practicing.”

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