University of Virginia Library

XX
My Little Town

Vividly at times my memory restores to me the sensation of the eternal Sabbath. Beyond the stained-glass windows, the sunshine is sifted over daisied graves. Perhaps, for all one knows, the grown-up angels are letting the little ones sport over those graves at this very minute, even though it is Sunday, for there are no parishes in heaven to say no to naughtiness. My mother is held home from the sanctuary that morning. The three of us sit a-row in the front pew. Above us our father thunders forth his sermon, to which we give but scant attention, that roar in his voice being part of the programme of this one day in seven. Against my own shoulder drowses my little sister's head. On my other side, my little brother conceals his yawns by receiving them into a little brown paw, and then, as it were, softly sliding them into his pocket, as if his hand had other business there. But I, I sit erect and unwinking, for I am the minister's eldest, and the Parish is at my back.

While the younger ones nodded, while the infant angels played hide-and-seek out in the graveyard sunshine, of what was I thinking? This: of the minister's daughter who had lived in that Parish before me. A great girl of five she had been when she used, having waited until her father was engrossed in his sermon, to slip from that very front pew in which I sat, to steal up into the chancel, and there, all silently but with impish grimace and antics, would she hold the horrified gaze of the Parish so fascinated that her father would at length be diverted from his eloquence, and forthwith, swooping from the pulpit all in a swirl of wrathful surplice, would bear his small daughter into the vestry room and lock her there before resuming his sermon. She was very naughty, but oh, what larks, what larks! So I thought then, and still to-day I am querying whether that little girl— inevitably though she must, under steady parochial pressure, have been subdued to a womanhood of decency and decorum—does not to-day in middle life rejoice that once upon a time, at five, she had her little fling in her father's chancel!

But we were children of no such independent pattern; and so on every Sabbath we presented to the Parish's criticism unwrig

gling infant backs, little ramrods of religion, while our thoughts went flying off on impish business of their own; and, as the years flowed by, on and up to man's estate we tramped, always thrusting forward in sight of the Parish, fashionable, urban, critical, our shabby best foot, skittish though that foot might be. Holding well together, on we went, running the gantlet of many parishes, until at last we trudged us into Littleville. We supposed my little town would be a parish too, but it is not.

Cozily remote and forgotten among its blue hills, Littleville has preserved a primitive hospitality, so that, battered nomads of much clerical adventuring, we sank gratefully into its little rectory. There was perhaps a reason for our sincerity of welcome, for if we had had our parishes, so, too, had Littleville had its parsons. It belongs to that class of far-away, wee congregations whither they send old ministers outwearied, to be alone with old age and memories beside the empty, echoing churches reminiscent of the days when farmers attended service. And if among these venerable shepherds there have fallen to Littleville's lot some whose scholarly old wits had gone a bit doddering, so that they believed and preached whimsical doc

trine, or could no longer trace without assistance the labyrinth of the liturgy, or others, younger, who had proved ministerial shipwrecks because they were burdened by some fatal handicap in child or wife,—if such have come to Littleville, Littleville has been very kindly. My little town has accepted its hay-crop as the rain has willed, and its ministers as the bishop has sent them. Its views on both visitations are produced in a spirit of comment rather than criticism; its conduct toward both is that of adaptation rather than argument.

For instance, there was that bachelor-rector who preferred the society of beasts to that of his parishioners in the rectory, and to that of his fellow saints in the new Jerusalem. During his incumbency a setting-hen occupied the fireplace in the spare room, and a dog sat on a chair at his celibate table, and crouched before the pulpit during service. Littleville did not protest; rather, of a weekday, the female members from time to time descended upon the unhappy man in his retirement, and with broom and mop-pail cleaned him up most thoroughly; and of a Sunday the whole body of the congregation listened unwinking while their rector's brandished fist demanded from their stolid faces

eternal salvation for his Rover,— listened with those inscrutable eyes I have come to respect: for I know that while Littleville never argued with their parson the point of kennels in the skies, they will turn this theological morsel under their tongues down at the hardware store unto the third and fourth generation.

Then there was the vicar whose poor boy was scarred in a way that Littleville, sympathetic but always delightedly circumstantial, has painted upon my imagination. When, during this rectorate, rival sectarians would point to the goodly ruddiness of some Baptist or Methodist scion, the Littleville Anglicans would loyally argue that Seth Lawson over at Hyde's Crossing had a little girl who had four thumbs, and Seth was just a plain man, and no minister.

Tradition tells also of a parson who trod the mazes of the ritual so uncertainly that he was just as likely to jump backwards as forwards in the psalter. With inimitable delicacy Littleville would stand holding its prayer-books at attention, ready to jump with him, whichever way he went. However, certain women have confided to me how fearful they were, on their wedding-day, lest this retrograde movement might occur during the solemnization of matrimony.

Thus it came about, I fancy, that Littleville received us with relief as well as warmth, for our theology was so simple and sound that hardly could the agnostic barber find fault with it; a family studiously normal, we showed

"Never mole, harelip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious;"—

and we proved able to conduct service with sonorous equilibrium.

Here we have been accepted and courteously entreated. Here we have not had to live up to any parochial pretensions, for my little town does not play bridge or give dinner-parties. Here in my little town we need not rise betimes to perform miracles of domestic service on the sly in order to be free to attend on the lordly city parishioner possessed of maidservants and manservants. Rather we may wear our gingham pinafores on the front porch, and pop our peas under the very nose of the senior warden, and very probably with his assistance, if he perchance slouch down beside us, blue-overalled and genial.

Littleville, always leisurely, took its time about getting acquainted with us. It hurtled us through no round of teas, it did not put us through the paces of a parish reception. Rather it came and hammered together our

broken furniture, decayed by much moving, it stole in at the back door to help us when we were sick, it let us know it missed us when we went worldward, visiting. Of such as it had, it made us gifts,—a yellow pumpkin vaulting our back fence, potatoes rattling into our cellar-bins unannounced while we were still abed, golden maple syrup flowing for us at the time when tin pails gleam all up and down the street, and the sap-vats bubble and steam pungently; or perhaps the gift is the reward of the gunning season, as when a vestryman-huntsman, as we stand about the social door after church, darts aside into the coalbin and thence presents a newspaper package streaked with pink; peeped at to please his beaming eye, it exhibits a brace of skinned squirrels, which we bear cozily homeward from divine service.

There is in the mere aspect of Littleville a latent friendliness perceptible to all eyes that give more than a touring-car glance. Over our hilly streets slumbers eternal leisure. Whatever it is, Littleville always has time to talk about it. When anything happens we all go running out of our front doors to discuss it, but otherwise our streets are very still: rows of farmhouses planted side by side for sociability, while behind each stretch

its acres of stony pasture and half-shorn woodland. At night, silence and darkness settle upon us early. By nine even the hotel has gone to bed, so that it would with difficulty be summoned forth in protesting pajamas if a late traveler should clamor at the door. Of a starless night you may look forth at eight and see no glimmer of light or life all up and down the street. When we come to church of a winter evening, we carry lanterns as we plod a drifted path in high-girt skirts and generous goloshes. One's sleep is sometimes startled by a flare of light that streams from wall to wall and passes, as some mysterious late lantern-bearer goes by, leaving the night again all blackness, pierced sometimes by the crazy laughter of an owl, or beaten upon by the insistent clamor of frogs.

Those who live by Littleville's quiet streets have had time to have their little ways. For example, they still have "comp'ny" in Littleville. In other places they no longer have comp'ny, no longer sacrifice for unprotesting hours and days and weeks all domestic peace and privacy to the exigencies of an intrusive guest. Comp'ny, imminent, instant, or past, is discussed in bated whispers at back doors. Assistance and sympathy are proffered as in a run of fever. As for the comp'ny itself, it

knows its privileges and never resigns its prerogatives. However efficient at home, when a-visiting, it can sit on the barnyard bars in its best store suit and without an emotion of conscience watch its host milk twenty cows, or within doors it can fold its housewifely hands upon its waistline, regard without compunction a lap for once apronless, and rock and chatter hour after hour while its hostess pants and perspires to feed it. But Littleville has one revenge: one day, it, too, can put on its best and drive off, and itself be somebody's comp'ny.

Comp'ny by definition comes from abroad, invading our peaceful citadel from some hillside farm or neighboring village; within our own bulwarks we are all too neighborly for any such alien stiffness. Our streets are cheery with greeting. Among the younger fry, "Hello " is the universal term of accost. "Hello!" some youngster yodels to me from across the street, "hello," supplemented by the frank employment of my baptismal name, sign and seal of my adoption. We are careless of the little formalities of Miss and Mr. here, just as our gentlemen are careless of their hat-raising. Why should Littleville man endanger head and health from false deference to his hearty, workaday comrade,

woman? From the older men, surely, twinkle and grin are greeting enough without any up-quirking of rheumatic elbows; and as for the younger men, I have a fondness for their method of raising the right index finger to the hat-brim, with a smile that points in the same direction.

Although we are without formality, certain conventions always belong to a call. The popular hours are two and six, with the tacit exemption of Saturday evening, for then we might inconsiderately intercept the gentleman of the house en route from his steaming wash-tub in the kitchen to his ice-bound bedroom. We have our set forms of greeting and departure. A hostess must always meet a caller with a hearty, "Well, you're quite a stranger." A caller must always remain a cordial two hours, and rising to leave must invariably say, "Well, I'm making a visit, not a call"; to which the hostess responds, "Why, what's your hurry?" Conversation must hold itself subject to interruption, must be prepared to arrest itself in the midst of the most lurid recital in order that all may fly to the window if man or beast or both pass by.

As to that conversation itself, we really do not care for feverish animation. We allow

ourselves long pauses while we creak our rockers, pleasantly torpid. Should our emptiness become too acute, there is always one subject that can fill it. We always have the sick. We report to each other anxiously that So-and-So is having "a poor spell," a condition that, if obstinate, will result in the poor man or woman's "doctoring," a perilous substitute for home treatment. We have our hereditary nostrums of combinations quainter than Shakespeare's cauldron, and home-made brews of herbs that sound almost Chaucerian. There is suggestion still more remote in "hemlock tea." I am not certain of its ingredients, but its effect is to produce a state of affairs known as a "hemlock sweat." A "hemlock sweat" is the last resort before sending for the doctor, and it generally brings him.

If our interest in our diseases should ever flag, we have, of course, always, our neighbors. In Littleville, gossip has become an art, in so far as it possesses the perfection of pungency without taint of malice, like the chat of an inquisitive Good Samaritan. When Littleville talks about its neighbors, I listen in reverence before a penetration I have never seen anywhere else. Littleville has not gone abroad to study human nature; it has stayed at home, and watched every flicker of its neighbor's

eyelash, has marked each step taken from toddling infancy to toddling old age, has listened to every word uttered from babyhood to senility. Oh, Littleville knows its own; and knowing its own, knows other folk too. Newcomer though I am, I should venture no pretense in the face of that slumbering twinkle in Littleville's eyes,—Littleville, sharp of tongue and genial in deeds.

This grace of Littleville charity, charity, keen-eyed yet tender, can be, I suppose, the possession of stationary people only; of people who have been babies together, have wedded and worked, been born and been buried together, whose parents and grandparents also are unforgotten, whose dead lie on white-dotted hillsides in every one's knowledge. The thought of this bond of permanence, of memories, has its wistfulness for us others. You can never be very hard on the woman, however fallen, who was once the little Sallie to share her cooky with you at recess; and, however his poor grizzled head be addled now with drink and failure, a man is still the little Joey whose bare feet trod with yours the stubble of forbidden midnight orchards.

All the world looks askance at a gypsy, and we are gypsies, we clericals; yet never gypsies

more involuntary, more home-loving at heart. We are pilgrims, never dropping, as we sojourn in parish after parish, the pilgrim cloak of an affable reserve. Back to the edges of my memory, we ourselves have been always the Ministry. Sundays in that straight front pew, week-days in that well-watched rectory, always the Ministry, never ourselves. But here at last in my little town, is that straight cloak of ministerial decorum slipping from us? May we set down our scrip and staff? At last do we dare to be ourselves, neighbors with neighbors? Do we dare to be part of a place? Perhaps.

Already in brief years I have acquired a little of that admitted intimacy with a community that comes only through knowing some bit of its history for one's self and not on hearsay; for I have observed the course of several of our thrifty Littleville courtships whereby our youngsters in their later teens set themselves sturdily beneath the yoke of matrimony, promptly bringing forth a procession of babes, as promptly led to baptism. Also I have stood with the rest in our little graveyard when some old neighbor has been laid to rest. I share with the rest the memory of kind old hands grown motionless, and chirrupy old voices now stilled; so that some of

these graves, turning slowly from raw soil to kindlier green, are mine, the stranger's.

Because those newer graves are mine, I may linger in more assured friendliness among the older ones, for to me these brief white-portaled streets of this other Littleville are kindly too; so that I like to go a-calling here also, letting my fancy knock at these low green mounds beneath the mat of periwinkle, above which sometimes flash the blue wings of birds or of sailing butterfly, while just beyond the fence the bobolinks go singing above the clover-fields. Country graveyards are pleasant places; at least ours has no gloom of tangled undergrowth and dank cypress shadow, for we are a house-wifely company, and we like all things well swept and shipshape, even cemeteries.

Even the tragedies the marbles tell are softened now. There are many little gravestones in our cemetery, recording little lives long ago cut short. Many of them belong to that winter I have heard about, a winter long before antitoxin or even disinfectants, when one Sunday in Littleville twenty children lay dead. It was sad then, but to-day to the tune of soaring bobolinks I must be thinking how gayly the little ones put on their winglets all together, and, a white flock, went trooping

off, shepherded by angels. In a village graveyard where the dead lie so cozily close to home, in a graveyard so blue above and green below, one has to remember how many things are sadder than death.

I come back from reverie as the 'bus bell goes tinkling by, beyond the white-arched gate, and I rise to gaze to see who has come to us from the world, for the 'bus comes from the train, and the train comes from far away, where the world runs its whirligig, far from Littleville.

The 'bus connects us with life. When one arrives at home, usually at nightfall, there always is the old 'bus man at the train step, peering up and stretching out both welcoming arms to receive our packages and bags. When he has stowed all away, in he climbs rheumatically, and off we trundle, rattling and wheezing along, for driver and horses and 'bus are all in the last stages of decrepitude. The lantern hung between the shafts plays out its straight jet of light, but within it is so dark that I cannot guess our whereabouts until we draw up at the hotel. The hotel-keeper comes out in his shirt-sleeves to receive the fat agents we have brought him, and, peering hospitably into the dark recesses, gives me welcome too. Off and on we rumble, and as

we draw rein at the post-office, the postmaster, shouldering the mail-bag, spies me and extends his hearty handshake; from the newspaper office near by, where the editor is working, comes a hazarded greeting, to which I respond cheerily from my dark hole, and become forthwith one of to-morrow's items.

On and up the hill. I can just discern the white belfry against the blue-black sky. Beyond the church is the rectory, and there a lantern on the step and a ruddy door flung wide. I have drawn up, returning, to rectory doors before, but somehow in Littleville it is different; to-morrow, on Sunday, Littleville will be glad I have come back, and will say so, at church, for in Littleville Sunday is different, too.

Here there is never the Sabbath stiffness of my childhood. Here the front pew does not straighten my spine intolerably. Rather I turn half about, run a careless arm along the pew-rail, and chat huskily with my rear neighbor until church begins, and even in service I may nod encouragement to the choir if they happen to be brought to confusion in the Te Deum, or in the very sermon I may peep under some little flowered straw hat and get a delighted grin in response. When service is over

I shall be a long time getting to the door, having so many hands I want to shake, for we do not call my little town, Parish; we call it home.