Elsieville, a tale of yesterday

Contents

CHAPTER page

I. — Descriptive 9

II. — Argumentative 23

Chapter 1. Descriptive

The town of Elsieville is located between the foothills of the not far distant northern mountains which, towering skyward, sometimes look like an approaching thunder cloud; and over whose tops often, in the bright sunshine, fleecy vapors hover “like smoke arising from vast volcanoes.” The town is in a fertile valley inhabited by thrifty farmers who coax the soil to furnish them a livelihood, which, though not abundant, is sufficient for their real necessities. The village of but a few hundred inhabitants is largely dependent on the trade of the surrounding country. Elsieville half supported three churches, the Methodist, Baptist, and an ^^Orthodox” church, or what is now better known as the Congregational denomination. Though these three churches were strongly divided on doctrinal and denominational differences, there were never three in the same town more united in everything else. A most friendly disposition towards one another existed among their members, many united services were held between the three, and all seemed to work together for the common good, the welfare of religion, and the uplifting of the community. Such a spirit of church unity is sure in time to bear good fruit.

Running through the valley in which the village is located is a brook of limpid water, noted for its trout, of which many a mess was caught by wary fishers, who understood the art of angling for a fish so hard to be induced to bite, even at the most tempting bait. This stream was the outlet of a mountain-locked lake a few miles up the valley. This lake being noted for its fine fishing, the beauty of its scenery, and its pure health-giving air, was a resort for a number of city people in the summer season, who had discovered its charms, and kept well filled the small but comfortable hotel on its border. Elsieville is outside of the line of customary travel, and was but little known to the outside world. At the nearest railroad town, East Panlet, was located the only Roman Catholic church for many miles around, and Father O’Flaherty, its spiritual head, was often called on to perform the functions of his office for his parishoners in Elsieville. His two hundred and fifty pounds of rotundity, and his jolly fat face, was ever a welcome visitor in any house in Elsieville. Deacon Obed Bowles, a good old Orthodox churchman, kept the post office and the largest store in town, with the usual assortment of everything in the way of trade and barter to be found in a country store. No matter what the customer might want, if the Deacon didn’t have it he would try and convince him he had something just as good or better. Anything salable was just as good as cash to him, and barter was a large part of his trade. Many a time, would a snufftaking old woxnan send down and exchange a new laid egg for a penny’s worth of his best Macaboy, or, perhaps a drawing of Young Hyson tea.

One day a lady from the hotel at the lake, driving by, asked the driver to stop at the Deacon’s, as she wanted to get a few things there; and having made her purchases, she spied in the show-case a bottle of cologne

ELSIEVILLB which she purchased to give to Frank, the driver, for his wife, thinking it would please him to take something home to her, as they had but lately been married. Frank, on opening it, looked at the bottle dubiously a moment, and said:

‘‘Well, I guess the Deacon made a good sale this time, for he’s had that old bottle of cologne on hand for fifteen years to my knowledge.”

The advantages to be gained by a union of forces is seemingly recognized by all, except by religiously inclined communities. There are many hard-worked and poorly paid shepherds of the flock who are trying to build up a church under adverse circumstances, impossible to overcome. Many of them would do more good to the cause if they left the ministry and sought some other profession.

Without casting any reflection on the many young men who enter the ministry from a sense of their fitness for it, and a feeling of their having a divine call to it, it does seem as if some of them looked on the ministry as an easy way of getting a living. So it happens that their families, finding them too dull and unfit for a business career, have them educated for ministers. Then some poor, struggling church, in its innocence, gives them a “call” at a starvation stipend ; often making it a part of the bargain, that “he must get married soon” as they “don’t think a parson ought to be a single man.” But the last minister’s wife died of hard work, trying to keep body and soul together on the salary they paid him.

The Reverend Samuel Fite, pastor of the Orthodox church at Elsieville, was a young man about thirty years old, very thin, sallow-complexioned, and about as narrow-looking as he was narrow-minded in some things, which was not, however, so much his fault as that of his early training. But he was not so severe as he seemed, nor was he as austere as might be thought; in fact, he was rather a good sort of fellow after all, and likely to improve by experience and age. He had been reared in a “straight and narrow path” — ^too straight and narrow for his best development — ^by parents who were of the strictest and straightest-laced of their sect. From his earliest boyhood it had been instilled into his mind that he was born to eternal punishment on account of original sin, as were all the world; though he might be saved at last, if he was elected ; but he stood a far greater chance of going to a very undesirable place, than to eternal bliss in the great hereafter. He could have here no assurance just what would become of him until he stood before the Bar of Judgment. He was taught that it was wicked to laugh and have fun; "‘he should think of nothing but his latter end.’^ So with his mind stunted and warped, he entered a Theological Seminary, where was taught the most ascetic kind of religion. It was no wonder that his point of view was cramped, and his outlook on religious matters of rather a dyspeptic quality; neither was it strange, since a church will never rise above the level of its pastor, nor a Sunday school above its superintendent, nor a family above its head, that the Elsieville Orthodox church, in the religious standards set for it by the Rev.

Mr. Fite, was of the most narrow and old-school methods of thought and action. Elder Eliazar Husk, pastor of the Baptist church, had come to it when a young man. He had, as it were, “grown up with the church” and become a part of it. The Baptist society was, perhaps, the most progressive, as it was the oldest, and most well to do of the other two churches in the town. Their old frame church had burned some twenty years before, and the one built in its place, of solid stone, was a marvel of what can be done when willing hands and hearts are united in a common cause. There were in it stones that were quarried on the farms of almost every farmer for miles around, each of whom had gotten out of his rocky land large and small stones to suit his own fancy, and rough or smooth hewn them to suit individual tastes, and had drawn them to where the new church was being built as his or her contribution to the building. Though it would never have been selected as a model of architectural beauty, each stone in its exterior showed the individuality of its donor to such an extent, that the oldest inhabitant today can point out, “That there smooth stone came from Sally Timson’s farm. She was an old maid, and said she didn't let nothing go off her farm undressed to get in the new meeting-house, even if the Deacon had told her they wanted to build it of undressed stun."

Silas Bode had the name of being the meanest old farmer for miles around. He had gone into the family burying-ground, a little distance back of his bam, where his ancestors had been buried for generations before, according to the custom in those days, in the absence of any general burying-place ' in the neighborhood. Old Bode had taken the grave stone which marked the final resting-place of his first wife — it had fallen down and a piece was broken from the top in its fall — ^and had drawn it to the new church as his contribution to the building. The masons, with grim humor, had used it for a lintel over the front door, as it was just the right size, and there it is to this day, with the partly broken-off inscription running up and down instead of lengthwise the most prominent part of which is, ^‘Beloved wife of Silas Bode.” He married three wives before he was finally laid in the new church yard, behind the Baptist church. A pipe organ had been given to the ^'Baptist Society” by one of the summer boarders at the Lake Hotel who had much admired the quaint old church and Elder Husk, its pastor. He had become acquainted with its history, and was touched by the sacrifices made by the villagers in building the new one, in which almost everyone had a hand in more ways than one. At the time of which we write, as when it was first put in, the “Baptist organ” was the pride of the village, and many were the grand old anthems that had rolled out of its sonorous interior on a Sabbath day, as its contribution to the solemnity of the worship; and many had been the good old hymns of the church that had been sung to the rhythm of its tones as they led the people in music that rose like incense from off the altars of their hearts ; and who shall say it did not bring down on them a needed blessing?

“The Elder,” the minister of the Baptist church, was far over middle age, and loved by the whole community for his sterling qualities of heart and mind and also for his gentle and loving disposition. Nothing could ruffle his great good humor nor exceed his tact or his knowledge of human nature. There were never any quarrels in his church; he would laugh them away if any seemed likely to arise, and he could make peace among his people under almost any circumstances. He had come to the small boarding-house at the lake, some thirty years before, in search of health, his health having been somewhat impaired at the Seminary from which he had just graduated; and the Baptist church, at that time being without a pastor, had asked him to preach for them a number of times during the summer. So pleased were the people with him, that they finally asked him to remain and accept the pittance of a salary they were able to offer their pastor. The city youth was so charmed with the healthfulness of the country that he consented to stay with them for a year at least, and now, he had been their minister for over thirty years. He had not been there over a year before he fell in love with the charming daughter of a thrifty farmer, and married her shortly after. When the new stone church was built a parsonage was put up alongside of it, in which Elder Husk had lived ever since, with his wife and Bessie, the only child that had come to them. Though the Society had not increased greatly in numbers, the Elder and his wife had prospered somewhat, for some few legacies had been left to them by the death of relatives, so that at the time of which we write, they were considered quite well to do for the locality.

They had enough to make them feel that their old age would at least be free from want. Beauty, as the Elder’s daughter was called, was a general favorite in Elsieville, and in fact was the pet of the town. She was twenty-four years old, and no gathering of any moment, either social or religious, was considered complete, unless Bessie Husk had something to do with it. Her parents had been able to give her three years’ schooling at a Seminary in a large town, to which she had done full justice, and she was fully developed in her intellectual capacity and much more accomplished than most of the young ladies of the village. ‘‘Beauty” was a nickname given her by her parents when she was a child, and it had clung to her ever since; and while she was not what would be called a beautiful young woman, she had that loveliness of soul, grace of disposition, and winsomeness Oif manner that will make anyone who possesses it seem beautiful, even if nature has not endowed them with the wavy brown hair, liquid dark eyes, pearly white teeth, chiseled features and alabaster complexion, considered the mark of beauty. While Bessie Husk possessed some of these characteristics, she had qualities of mind and heart that were lasting, and made her more beautiful to her friends than any mere physical charms could ever have done.

In a small town like Elsieville, there are usually no strong dividing lines of personal opinions outside the church doors, however much difference of opinion may prevail inside them. ‘‘Our church and our seB’ do not, as a usual thing, divide the people into little exclusive cliques to which no outsider is welcome, as is often the case in larger communities, much to the detriment of churches as well as to society in general. In Elsieville each one was so dependent on the other that, irrespective of church distinction, all were on an equal social footing. So it is not surprising that Bessie Husk and the Rev.

ELvSIEVILLE

Samuel Fite often met in social and family gatherings and became well acquainted, though of different religious denominations ; and though they were so entirely different in characteristics and dispositions, they found that they had many things in common. Bessie was very frank and outspoken, but withal gentle and considerate of others’ feelings, while the minister was reserved and reticent, weighed every word he spoke, and was inclined to speak harshly, especially if his contentions were not agreed to by others.

The Rev. Samuel Fite was unmarried, and though not prepossessing in his exterior, many of the single ladies in the town had discussed him in their own minds as a possible husband ; as it was well known that he had come there with no entanglerrients in the way of a previous engagement. Such a thought, of course, had never entered the mind of Bessie Husk, or if it had, she had at once cast it aside, for she could not consider the possibility of a Baptist marrying anyone who was not a member of her church.

The little frame Methodist Church down by the river had stood there many years, and had the antiquated and barn-like exterior peculiar to such buildings in small.

remote country places. The Rev. John Lane, however, who had lately been sent to it by the Conference, was far from being antiquated or primitive; on the contrary he was what we now call .up to date in all things, and having a pleasing appearance, as well as being a good and forcible preacher, he was not only immensely popular with his own people, but with everyone else in the community. No one could possess more of the milk of human kindness than he did, and none could have more consideration for the frailties and weaknesses of mankind, and, at the same time, so strongly teach the necessity of their control. He had gained experience in much larger churches in large towns, and had been sent here by Conference at his own request, in the hope that a two years’ sojourn in this healthful town would completely restore his health, which, at the age of thirty-five, was visibly beginning to fail. Having some means left him by his father, he could afford to take the charge for the small salary it would pay him.

It is not necessary to depict in harrowing detail the struggles of three poor churches to pay their ministers enough to keep body and soul together. This has been written about often enough to become an old story. It is sufficient to say that the Elsieville churches were no better and no worse in this respect than many others. Around each church there hung many hallowed memories and associations that made each individual church dear to the hearts of its members. Was the history known of the sacrifices that had been made to support each of them, even as poorly as they had been supported, it would show a devotion to the cause of religion that should make many city church members blush with shame. Somehow or other, the Elsieville churches got along, and while the ministers were often pinched for a little ready cash the stores let them have what they wanted and never pressed them for payment. They never went hungry, for the farmers rarely came to town without something in the way of eatables for one or the other of them, sent in by the thoughtful housewife ; and never was a hog killed in the fall, but what some part of it found its way into a parson’s house. Never was a farmer’s cow sacrificed to the carnivorous propensity of its owner but what some one of the preachers was sure to have roast beef for dinner afterwards.

CHAPTER 11.

ARGUMENTATIVE.

The Rev. Mr. Fite was kept continually on tenterhooks by one of the leading members of his congregation; he never knew where Owen Bassett was going to break out in some originality that would shock the proprieties of himself or some one with whom he wished himself or the church to stand well. Owen was the village shoemaker, and cobbled the shoes and harness for the country people fof miles around in the same old shop in his back yard where his grandfather had done the same before him. Being a man of great originality of thought and of an infinite sense of the ridiculous, coupled with more than an ordinary country education, and also having an abundance of good nature, he was a sort of village oracle and general adviser, and in for any good work or assistance to others he could render. He enjoyed having a sociable time with his neighbors rather more than reading his Bible, though he was a thoroughly religious man and attended to his duties as such in the best manner the light given him would permit. Children were his delight. He was never happier than when in their company and talking to them, telling them stories, many of which were his own inventions, or listening to their confidences. Mothers used to declare that the children wore out their shoes purposely so that they could sit in Owen Bassett’s shop and talk to him while he mended them. Boys would thrust their heads in his shop with a, ‘‘Say, Owen, gimme a hunk of wax to chew, will ye ? Ma won’t give me a penny to buy no chewing-gum,” and Obed Bowles used to say that Owen bought more beeswax, rosin, and tar oil, than would make shoemakers’ wax enough to stick up the whole of Christendom. Owen Bassett was an Orthodox churchman and one of its shining lights, but he was what might be considered unorthodox in a great many qf his views on various nonessentials, or what might be called non-essential religious dogmas. He said right out in prayer meeting one time. He didn’t care what people believed; what they did, and what they was, made them Christians in his eyes; and didn’t the good book say, “By their works ye shall know them” ? Sometimes in speaking in meeting, when Owen would for instance lose a word, he would adopt any simile for it that came into his mind at the moment, and at such times the Rev. Samuel would shake in his shoes for fear Owen would shock the proprieties; though to give Owen due credit, he never did so to any alarming extent. But so very proper was the parson that he was in constant dread lest Owen should. Owen’s sense of humor was keen. So inclined was he to see the funny side of everything, that it pervaded everything he did or said. His most serious moments seemed to be so illuminated with this sense of humor that it gave an added force and interest to all he said. One time in prayer meeting, the subject of the doctrines was up for discussion.

‘'As for me,” said Owen, “I don’t care much for doctrines or theology; the Apostles’ creed contains all the doctrines a man needs to live and die by, and the more you fool with anything else, the less you know, and the deeper into the mire you get, and it don’t do you any good. As for me, I don’t take my theology or religion according to the Rev. Mr. So-and-So, or anybody else. Fve got the Bible to teach me and what that can’t do, nobody else can. People may talk about the different kind of isms in the world, none of them wouldn’t save

you, not even the kind of ism taught down in the ”

here Owen lost the word and the Rev. Samuel began to

quake, “ ^the hydropathic church and its water-cure

minister down the road,” Owen finally said.

The morning after the prayer meeting. Elder Husk dropped into Owen’s shop to get a pair of shoes he had left there to be patched, and had a good laugh with the shoemaker over his break at the meeting, about which he had been told by one of his people who had chanced to be at the Orthodox prayer meeting that evening. Owen and the Elder were apt to get intoi a good-natured discussion on religious matters whenever they met, and today Owen was in an argumentative mood and at once commenced about the only subject he and the Elder were divided on, the mode of baptism of the two churches.

‘'Now, Elder,” he said, “do you mean to tell me, if the Rev. Samuel Fite happened to be in your church and you were going to have Communion, that you wouldn’t ask him to stay and take it with you?”

“Well,” said Mr. Husk, “yours is not a supposable case, for I think Mr. Fite has too much good sense to happen into my church at communion time, any more than he would ask himself to come to your home to dinner when he knew you were going to have nothing but picked-up codfish and fried salt pork for the meal ; he would know he wouldn’t be wanted. Fried salt pork and picked-up codfish would be your family matter, just the same as it is our family matter to commune only with those who have been baptized our way, and I don’t believe the Rev. Mr. Anybody would go where he knew he was not wanted, or would not feel welcome, not because he is not as much a Christian as those in the Baptist church, but because at the particular time and owing to the peculiar usages of the church, he is not a member of the family. Churches have as much right to establish family lines and relations as any person or any combination of individuals. You church folks up town don’t seem to understand us Baptists down the road ; you seem to think us a parcel of bigots, and while we think immersion the only true way of baptism as taught in Holy Writ, and baptism of believers, what the Saviour taught, we only hold to that as a sort of family matter of our own, and we don’t pretend that other people who do not believe as we do are not Christians, we merely make it a condition of becoming a member of our family that they must conform to our practices ; and I don’t think anyone of good sense would want to force himself on us unless he did so ; nor indeed would he feel at home or comfortable with us otherwise.”

“Well, Elder,” replied Owen, “my views are, that it don’t make the least difference how a person is baptized, if he knows what he is doing; and if I was a minister, I’d baptize a person with a squirt-gun if he wanted it that way, as long as he realized the full significance and meaning of what he was doing.”

The Elder laughed. “I don’t think that way would ever become very popular.”

Always anxious to get some one cornered in an argument if he could, Owen asked the Elder : “Now if there was only the Baptist Church in this place, and a man was sick and going to die and wanted to join a church and take communion before he died, would you refuse to take him in because you couldn’t immerse him ?”

The Elder, seeing that Owen was trying to corner him, said : “There might be some member of my church that would answer that question by saying, no, they could only point him to the mercy of the Heavenly Father and hold out the hope that Infinite Love would do what human agency might nQt be willing to do, but I would baptize him in any way suitable to his condition, and administer communion to him, in the belief that it is a poor religion that sometimes cannot admit of the fact that circumstances may alter cases/’

Owen grasped the Elder’s hand in a hearty shake. “I am glad to see there is one man in whom hydropathic religion has not washed out the true Christian spirit.”

Just outside. Father O’Flaherty, the Catholic priest from East Panlet, was seen hitching his old piebald horse to Owen’s hitching-post. He had been sent for in a hurry to come over and shrive Jerry O’Brien, who was in his last extremity. While mowing the three-acre meadow on his farm near the village Jerry’s horse had run away and he had been throiwn under the machine and one foot and arm nearly severed. The Rev. Mr. Lane of the Methodist Church had been to see Jerry a number of times since the accident, and when it seemed evident that Jerry must die, he had sent to East Panlet for the Reverend Father to come and see the dying man, as the sufferer was a good Catholic, and he knew that it would be a great satisfaction to Jerry, if the good Father was with him in his last moments. When the priest arrived, the Methodist minister was in the room with Jerry who seemed partially to regain his reason at the sound of the Father’s voice, and the grateful and resigned look that came over his face more than repaid the minister for the effort he had made to have the priest with him in his last moments. Father O’Flaherty and the Rev. John Lane, though of such different religious beliefs, were the best of friends, and had many times been together at the bedside of sick and dying ones of the Roman Catholic faith.

The Methodist preacher left the priest alone with Jerry, as he knew he would desire to be, in the performance of the last rites of his church for the dying. Soon, the Father called the minister into the room again. Jerry, soothed and sustained by his faith, had fallen into a quiet and peaceful sleep, though the pallor on his face showed that his end must be near. The priest laid his hand gently on his friend’s shoulder.

“You see, my dear friend, how the influence of the paternal offices of our church can affect even this poor ignorant farm-hand. He now feels assured that, though he cannot make his own plea for mercy in heaven, he has a faithful frJend and priest to do it for him. Who shall say that our religion is not best adapted to the class it so largely reaches?’’

The Rev. John Lane looked into the loving, intelligent face of the holy Father, lighted up as it was now with an unusual fervor of religious zeal, and said:

'Tf in all priests we had the great heart of the Rev. Father O’Flaherty, I should say Amen to what you have said: for no one knows better than I, what a solace and comfort your presence has been in many a sick chamber and by many a deathbed.”

As Father O’Flaherty drove toward Owen Bassett’s shop, he thought to himself what a pity it was that all shades of religious belief could not find a common ground, when really there is so little that divides them and so many things in which they agree. From this it will be seen that the Rev. Father was used to indulging in speculations that in his church would be considered heterodox. It is sometimes a cause for conjecture if the great majority of preachers really believe all they preach; if in the make up of a large number of professing Christians, there is not, down deep in their minds, a large amount of what would be called unorthodoxy, which would cause considerable consternation among their brethren, if they should give utterance to their real belief and thought. Occasionally, some one from whom it is least expected, kicks out of the traces and says just what he thinks on this or that religious subject, doctrine, or belief, and his fellows stand aghast at his temerity, while he is subjected to disciplinary treatment by some one or another ecclesiastical body, whose members hold just as radical and unorthodox views on the same, or other more important subjects.