University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
A PREACHER AND A SERMON.

SHE saw clearly enough in time to be a very
happy woman.

Perley Kelso, at least, was thinking so, when
she went the other day with young Mrs. Hayle
to hear one of her street sermons.

Sip had “set up for a preacher,” after all;
she hardly knew how; nobody knew exactly how;
it had come about, happened; taken rather the
form of a destiny than a plan.

The change had fallen upon her since Catty's
passing “out of sight.” She was apt to speak of
Catty so. She was not dead nor lost. She listened
still and spoke. She only could not see
her.

“But she talks,” said Sip under her breath, —
“she talks to me. There 's things she 'd have me
say. That was how I first went to the meetings.
I 'd never cared about meetings. I 'd never been

religious nor good. But Catty had such things
to say! and when I saw the people's faces, lifted
up and listening, and when I talked and talked,
it all came to me one night like this. Do you
see? Like this. I was up to the Mission reading
a little hymn I know, and the lights were on the
people's faces, and in a minute it was like this.
God had things to say. I 'd been talking Catty's
words. God had words. I cannot tell you how
it was; but I stood right up and said them; and
ever since there 's been more than I could say.”

“What is there about the girl that can attract
so many people?” asked Mrs. Maverick Hayle,
standing on tiptoe beside Perley on the outer edge
of Sip's audience, and turning her wide eyes on it,
like a child at a menagerie. “There are old men
here, and old women. There 's everybody here.
The girl looks too young to instruct them.”

She must judge for herself what there was
about her, Miss Kelso said; it had been always
so; since she started her first neighborhood
meeting in the Irish woman's kitchen at the stone
house, she had found listeners enough; they were
too many for tenement accommodations after a
while, and so the thing grew.

Sometimes she used the chapel. Sometimes
she preferred a doorstep like this, and the open
air.

“I undertook to help her at the first,” said
Miss Kelso, smiling, “but I was only among them
at best; Sip is of them; she understands them
and they understand her; so I left her to her
work, and I keep to my own. Hush! Here she
is; can you see? Just over there on the upper
step.”

They were in a little court, a miserable place,
breaking out like a wart from one of the foulest
alleys in Five Falls; a place such as Sip was
more apt than not to choose for her “sermons.”
The little court was sheltered, however, and comparatively
quiet. There may have been fifty
people in it.

“Everybody,” as Mrs. Hayle said, — old Bijah,
with heavy crutches, sitting on a barrel, and
offering his services as prompter now and then,
out of a petition to the Legislature of the State
of Massachusetts; Dib Docket, grown into long
curls and a brass necklace; pretty little Irish
Maggie, with her thin cheek upon her hand;
Mr. Mell, frowningly attentive; the young watchman,

and his young wife in blue ribbons, making
a Scotch picture of herself up against the old
court pump; all Sip's friends, and strangers who
drifted in, from curiosity, or idleness, or that sheer
misery which has an instinct always for such
crowds.

Sip was used now to the Scotch picture, quite.
She had expected it, was ready for it. Dirk was
one of “other folks,” in spite of himself. She
had understood that from the first. She did not
mind it very much. She framed the picture
in with “God's words,” with a kind of solemn
joy. Dirk was happy. She liked to see it, know
it, while she talked. She was glad that Nynee
inclined to come with him so often to hear her.

Sip came out on the doorstep and stood for a
moment with her hands folded down before her,
and her keen eyes taking the measure of every
face, it seemed, in the little court.

There was nothing saintly about Sip. No
halo struck through the little court upon her
doorstep. Florence Nightingale or the Quaker
Dinah would not have liked her. She was just
a little rough, brown girl, bringing her hands
together at the knuckles and talking fast.

“But such a curious preacher!” said Mrs.
Maverick Hayle.

The little preacher had a wandering style, as
most such preachers have. Such a style can no
more be caught on the point of a pen than the
rustle of crisp leaves or the aroma of dropping
nuts. There was a syntax in Sip's brown face
and bent hands and poor dress and awkward
motions. There were correctness and perspicuity
about that old doorstep. The muddy little court
was an appeal, the square of sky above her head
a peroration. In that little court Sip was eloquent.
Here on the parlor sofa, in clean cuffs
and your slippers, she harangues you.

“Look here,” she was saying, “you men
and women, and you boys and girls, that have
come to hear me! You say that you are poor
and miserable. I 've heard you. You say you 're
worked and drove and slaved, and up early and
down late, and hurried and worried and fretted,
and too hot and too cold, and too cross and
too poor, to care about religion. I know. I 'm
worked and drove, and up and down, and hurried
and worried and fretted, and hot and cold,
and cross and poor myself. I know about that.

Religion will do for rich folks. That 's what you
say, — I know. I 've said it a many times myself.
Curse the rich folks and their religion! —
that 's what you say. I know. Have n't I said
it a many times myself?

“Now see here! O you men and women,
and you boys and girls, can't you see? It ain't a
rich folks' religion that I 've brought to talk to
you. Rich religion ain't for you and ain't for me.
We 're poor folks, and we want a poor folks' religion.
We must have a poor folks' religion or
none at all. We know that.

“Now listen to me! O you men and women,
and you girls and boys, listen to what I 've got to
tell you. The religion of Jesus Christ the Son of
God Almighty is the only poor folks' religion in
all the world. Folks have tried it many times.
They 've got up pious names and pious fights.
There have been wars and rumors of wars, and
living and dying, and books written, and money
spent, and blood shed for other religions, but
there 's never been any poor folks' religion
but that of Jesus Christ the Son of God Almighty.....

“O listen to me! You go on your wicked

ways, and you drink, and fight, and swear, and
you live in sinful shames, and you bring your
little children up to shameful sins, and when
Jesus Christ the Son of God Almighty does you
the favor to ask you for your wicked hearts, you
hold up your faces before him, and you say,
`We 're poor folks, Lord. We 're up early, and
we 're down late, and we 're droved and slaved,
and rich folks are hard on us. The mill-masters
drive their fine horses, Lord, and we walk and
work till we 're worn out. There 's a man with
a million dollars, Lord, and we have n't laid by
fifty yet against a rainy day!' Then you grow
learned and wise, and you shake your heads, and
you say, `Capital has all the ease, Lord, and
labor has all the rubs; and things ain't as they
should be; and it can't be expected of us to be
religious in such a state of affairs.' And you say,
`I 'm at work all day and nights, I 'm tired'; or,
`I 'm at work all the week, and of a Sunday I
must sleep; I can't be praying'; and so you say,
`I pray thee, Lord, have me excused!' and so
you go your wicked ways.

“O listen to me! This is what he says, `I
was up, and down, and drove, and slaved, and

hurried, myself,' he says, `I was too hot, and
too cold, and worried, and anxious, and I saw
rich folks take their ease, and I was poor like
you,' he says.

“O you men and women, and you boys and
girls, listen to him! Never you mind about me
any longer, listen to HIM!

“He won't be hard on you. Don't you suppose
he knows how the lives you live are hard enough
without that heaped against them? Don't you
suppose he knows how the world is all a tangle,
and how the great and the small, and the wise
and the foolish, and the fine and the miserable,
and the good and the bad, are all snarled in and
out about it? And does n't he know how long it
is unwinding, and how the small and the foolish
and the bad and the miserable places stick in his
hands? And don't you suppose he knows what
places they are to be born in and to die in, and
to inherit unto the third and fourth generations
of us, like the color of our hair, or the look about
our mouths?

“I tell you, he knows, he knows! I tell you,
he knows where the fault is, and where the knot
is, and who 's to blame, and who 's to suffer.

And I tell you he knows there 'll never be any
way but his way to unsnarl us all.

“Folks may make laws, but laws won't do it.
Kings and congresses may put their heads together,
but they 'll have their trouble for nothing.
Governments and churches may finger us over,
but we 'll only snarl the more.

“Rich and poor, big or little, there 's no way
under heaven for us to get out of our twist, but
Christ's way.

“O you men and women, and you girls and
boys, look in your own hearts and see what way
that is. That way is in the heart. I can't see it.
I can't touch it. I can't mark it and line it for
you. Look. Mind that you don't look at the
rich folks' ways! Mind that you don't stop to
say, It 's their way to do this, and that, and the
other, that they 'd never do nor think on. Perhaps
it is. But that 's none of your business,
when the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God
Almighty does you the favor to ask for you, and
your heart, and your ways, to gather 'em up into
his poor cut hands and hold them, and to bow
his poor hurt face down over them and bless
them!

“O you men and women, and you boys and
girls, Christ's way is a patient way, it is a pure
way, it is a way that cares more for another world
than for this one, and more to be holy than to
be happy, and more for other folks than for itself.
It 's a long way and a winding way, but it 's a
good way and a true way, and there 's comfort in
it, and there 's joy at the end of it, and there 's
Christ all over it, and I pray God to lead you in
it, every one, forever.

“Christ in heaven!” said Sip then, bending
her lighted, dark face, “thou hast been Christ
on earth. That helps us. That makes us brave
to hunt for thee. We are poor folks, Christ, and
we 've got a load of poor folks' sorrows, and of
poor folks' foolishness, and of poor folks' fears,
and of poor folks' wickedness, and we 've got nowheres
else to take it. Here it is. Lord Christ,
we seem to feel as if it belonged to thee. We
seem to feel as if we was thy folks. We seem to
know that thou dost understand us, someways,
better than the most of people. Be our Saviour,
Lord Christ, for thine own name's sake.”

Miss Kelso and Mrs. Hayle left the little

preacher still speaking God's words — and Catty's,
and stole away before the breaking up of her
audience. They walked in silence for a few
minutes up the street.

“They listened to her,” said Fly then, musingly.
“On the whole, I don't know that I wonder.
They looked as if they needed it.”

“There are few things that they do not need,”
said Perley, quietly. “We do not quite understand
that, I think, — we who never need. It is
a hungry world, Fly.”

“Yes?” said Fly, placidly perplexed; “I don't
know much about the world, Perley.”

Perley was silent. She was wondering what
good it would do — either the world or Fly — if
she did.

“Kenna Van Doozle was asking the other
day,” said Fly, suddenly, “whether you still went
about among these people at all hours of the day
and evening, as you used, alone. I should be so
timid, Perley! And then, do you always find it
quite proper?”

“I have no reason to feel afraid of my friends
in Five Falls at any hour,” said Miss Kelso, reservedly.
There seemed such a gulf between

her and this pretty, good-natured little lady.
Proper! Why try to pass the impassable? Fly
might stay where she was.

“And yet,” sighed Mrs. Maverick Hayle, “this
dreary work seems to suit you through and
through. That is what troubles me about it.”

Perley Kelso's healthy, happy face took the
quiver of a smile. The fine, rare face! The
womanly, wonderful face! Fly was right. It
was a “suited” face. It begged for nothing. It
was opulent and warm. Life brimmed over at it.

Stephen Garrick, on the opposite side of the
road, climbed the hill alone. It was a late November
day; a day of cleared heavens and bared
trees. Yet he looked about for bright maples,
and felt as if he walked under a sealed sky, and
in an unreal light of dying leaves.