University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.
JONAS TAKES AN APPEAL

JONAS had waited for the coming of the
quarterly meeting to carry his appeal to the
presiding elder. The quarterly meeting for the circuit
was held at the village of Brayville, and beds
were made upon the floor for the guests who crowded
the town. Every visiting Methodist had a right to entertainment,
and every resident Methodist opened his doors very wide,
for Western people are hospitable in a fashion and with a bountifulness
unknown on the eastern side of the mountains. Who
that has not known it, can ever understand the delightfulness of
a quarterly meeting? The meeting of old friends—the social
life—is all but heavenly. And then the singing of the old Methodist
hymns, such as

And that other solemnly-sweet refrain:
And who shall describe the joy of a Christian mother, when her
scapegrace son “laid down the arms of his rebellion” and was
“soundly converted”? Let those sneer who will, but such moral
miracles as are wrought in Methodist revivals are more wonderful
than any healing of the blind or raising of the dead
could be.

Jonas turned up, faithful to his promise, and called on the
“elder” at the place where he was staying, and asked for a private
interview. He found the old gentleman exercising his
sweet voice in singing,

When he concluded the verse he raised his half-closed eyes
and saw Jonas standing in the door.

“Mr. Persidin' Elder,” said Jonas, trying in vain to speak
with some seriousness and veneration, “I come to ax your
consent to marry one of your flock—the best lamb you've
got in the whole fold.”

“Bless you, Mr. Harrison,” said Father Williams, the old
elder, laughing, “bless you, I haven't any right to consent or
forbid. Ask the lady herself!”

“Ax the lady!” said Jonas. “Didn't I though! And didn't
Mr. Goshorn forbid the lady to marry me, under the pains and
penalties pervided; and didn't Mr. Hall set his seal to the forbiddin'
of Goshorn! An' I says to her, `I won't take nothin' less

than a elder or a bishop on this `ere vital question.' When I
want a sheep, I don't go to the underlin,' but to the boss; and
so I brought this appeal up to you on a writ of habeas corpus, or
whatever you may call it.”

The presiding elder laughed again, and looked closely at
Jonas. Then he stepped to the door and called in the circuit
preacher, Mr. Hall, and the class leader, Mr. Goshorn, both of
whom happened to be in the next room engaged in an excited
discussion with a brother who was a little touched with Millerism.

“What's this Mr. Harrison tells me about your forbidding the
banns in his case?”

“He's a New Light,” said Brother Hall, showing his abhorrence
in his face, “and it seemed to me that for a Methodist to
marry a New Light was a sin—a being yoked together unequally
with an unbeliever. You know, Father Williams, that New
Lights are Arians.”

The old man seemed more amused than ever. Turning to
Jonas, he asked him if he was an Arian.

“Not as I knows on, my venerable friend. I may have
caught the disease when I had the measles, or I may have been a
Arian in infancy, or I may be a Arian on my mother's side,
you know; but as I don't know who or what it may be, I a'n't in
no way accountable fer it—no more'n Brother Goshorn is to blame
fer his face bein' so humbly. But I take it Arian is one of them
air pleasant names you and the New Light preachers uses in
your Christian intercourse together to make one another mad.
I'm one of them as goes to heaven straight—never stoppin' to
throw no donicks at the Methodists, Presbyterians, nor no other
misguided children of men. They may ride in the packet, or go

[ILLUSTRATION]

BROTHER GOSHORN.

[Description: 555EAF. Page 246. In-line engraving of the head and shoulders of a bearded man in a top hat.] by flat-boat or keel-boat, ef they chooses. I go by the swiftsailin'
and palatial mail-boat New Light, and I don't run no
opposition line, nor bust my bilers tryin' to beat my neighbors
into the heavenly port.”

Brother Goshorn looked vexed. Brother Hall was scandalized
at the lightness of Jonas's conversation. But the old
presiding elder, with keen common-sense and an equally keen
sense of the ludicrous, could not look grave with all his effort
to keep from laughing.

“Are you an unbeliever?” he asked.

“I don't know what you call onbeliever. I believe in God
and Christ, and keep Sunday and the Fourth of July; but I don't
believe in all of Brother Goshorn's nonsense about wearing veils
and artificials.”

“Well,” said Brother Hall, “would you endeavor to induce
your wife to dress in a manner unbecoming a Methodist?”

“I wouldn't fer the world. If I git the article I want, I don't
keer what it's tied up in, calico or bombazine.”

“Couldn't you join the Methodist Church yourself, and keep
your wife company?” It was Brother Goshorn who spoke.

“Couldn't I? I suppose I could ef I didn't think no more
of religion than some other folks. I could jine the Methodist
Church, and have everybody say I jined to git my wife. That
may be serving God; but I can't see how. And then how long
would you keep me? The very fust time I fired off my blunder-buss
in class-meetin', and you heerd the buckshot and the
squirrel-shot and the slugs and all sorts of things a-rattlin'
around, you'd say I was makin' fun of the Gospel. I 'low they
a'n't no Methodist in me. I was cut out cur'us, you know, and
made up crooked.”

“Is there anything against Mr. Harrison, Brother Goshorn?”
asked the elder.

“He's a New Light,” said Mr. Goshorn, in a tone that signified
his belief that to be a New Light was enough.

“Is he honest and steady?”

“Never heard anything against him as a moralist.”

“Well, then, it's my opinion that any member of your class
would do better to marry a good, faithful, honest New Light
than to marry a hickory Methodist.”

Jonas got up like one demented, and ran out of the door and
across the street. In a moment he came back, bringing Cynthy
Ann in triumph.

“Now, say them words over again,” he said to the presiding
elder.

“Sister Cynthy Ann,” said the presiding elder, “you really
love Brother Harrison?”

“I—I don't know whether it's right to set our sinful hearts on
the things of this perishin' world. But I think more of him,
I'm afeard, than I had ort to. He's got as good a heart as I ever
seed. But Brother Goshorn thought I hadn't orter marry him,
seein' he is a onbeliever.”

“But I a'n't,” said Jonas; “I believe in the Bible, and in everything
in it, and in Cynthy Ann and her good Methodist religion
besides.”

“I think you can give up all your scruples and marry Mr.
Harrison, and love him and be happy,” said the presiding elder.
“Don't be afraid to be happy, my sister. You'll be happy in
good company in heaven, and you'd just as well get used to it
here.”

“I told you I'd find a man that had salt enough to keep
his religion sweet. And, Father Williams, you've got to marry
us, whenever Cynthy Ann's ready,” said Jonas with enthusiasm.

And for a moment the look of overstrained scrupulosity on
Cynthy Ann's face relaxed and a strange look of happiness came
into her eyes.

And the time was fixed then and there.

Brother Hall was astonished.

And Brother Goshorn drew down his face, and said that he
didn't know what was to become of good, old-fashioned Methodism
and the rules of the Discipline, if the presiding elders talked
in that sort of a way. The church was going to the dogs.