The little boy thought this a fine joke to play on them, to set them all "jabbering" so.
After that there was a great deal of fighting, and, in the language of Allan"s summary, "G.o.d loved all the good people so he gave them lots of wives and cattle and sheep and he let them go out and kill all the other people they wanted to which was their enemies." But the little boy found the butcheries rather monotonous.
Occasionally there was something graphic enough to excite, as where the heads of Ahab"s seventy children were put into a basket and exposed in two heaps at the city"s gate; but for the most part it made him sleepy.
True, when it came to getting the Children of Israel out of Egypt, as Cousin Bill J. observed, "Things brisked up considerable."
The plan of first hardening Pharaoh"s heart, then scaring him by a pestilence, then again hardening his heart for another calamity, quite won the little boy"s admiration for its ingenuity, and even Cousin Bill J.
would at times betray that he was impressed. Feverishly they followed the miracles done to Egypt; the plague of frogs, of lice, of flies, of boils and blains on man and beast; the plague of hail and lightning, of locusts, and the three days of darkness. Then came the Lord"s final triumph, which was to kill all the first-born in the land of Egypt, "from the first-born of Pharaoh, that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts."
Again the little boy"s heart ached as he thought pityingly of the first-born of all white rabbits, but there was too much of excitement to dwell long upon that humble tragedy. There was the manner in which the Israelites identified themselves, by marking their doors with a sprig of hyssop dipped in the blood of a male lamb without blemish. Vividly did he see the good G.o.d gliding cautiously from door to door, looking for the mark of blood, and pa.s.sing the lucky doors where it was seen to be truly of a male lamb without blemish. He thought it must have taken a lot of lambs to mark up all the doors!
Then came that master-stroke of enterprise, when G.o.d directed Moses to "speak now in the ears of the people and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels of gold," so that they might "spoil" the Egyptians. Cousin Bill J.
chuckled when he read this, declaring it to be "a regular Jew trick"; but Clytie rebuked him quickly, reminding him that they were G.o.d"s own words, spoken in His own holy voice.
"Well, it was mighty thoughtful in G.o.d," insisted Cousin Bill J., but Clytie said, however that was, it served Pharaoh right for getting his heart hardened so often.
The little boy, not perceiving the exact significance of "spoil" in this connection, wondered if Cousin Bill J. would spoil if some one borrowed his gold horse and ran off with it.
Then came that exciting day when the Lord said, "I will get me honour upon Pharaoh and all his host," which He did by drowning them thoroughly in the Red Sea. The little boy thought he would have liked to be there in a boat--a good safe boat that would not tip over; also that he would much like to have a rod such as Aaron had, that would turn into a serpent. It would be a fine thing to take to school some morning. But Cousin Bill J.
thought it doubtful if one could be procured; though he had seen h.e.l.ler pour five colours of wine out of a bottle which, when broken, proved to have a live guinea-pig in it. This seemed to the little boy more wonderful than Aaron"s rod, though he felt it would not reflect honour upon G.o.d to say so.
Another evening they spent before Sinai, Cousin Bill J. reading the verses in a severe and loud tone when the voice of the Lord was sounding. Duly impressed was the little boy with the terrors of the divine presence, a thing so awful that the people must not go up into the mount nor even touch its border--lest "the Lord break forth upon them: There shall not a hand touch it but he shall surely be stoned or shot through; whether it be beast or man it shall not live." Clytie said the goodness of G.o.d was shown herein. An evil G.o.d would not have warned them, and many worthy but ignorant people would have been blasted.
Then He came down in thunder and smoke and lightning and earthquakes--which Cousin Bill J. read in tones that enabled Bernal to feel every possible joy of terror; came to tell them that He was a very jealous G.o.d and that they must not worship any of the other G.o.ds. He commanded that "thou shalt not revile the G.o.ds," also that they should "make no mention of the names of other G.o.ds," which Cousin Bill J. said was as fair as you could ask.
When they reached the directions for sacrificing, the little boy was doubly alert--in the event that he should ever determine to be washed in the blood of the lamb and have to do his own killing.
"Then," read Cousin Bill J., in a voice meant to convey the augustness of Deity, "thou shalt kill the ram and take of his blood and put it upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron and upon the tip of the right ear of his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot." So you didn"t have to wash all over in the blood. He agreed with Clytie, who remarked that no one could ever have found out how to do it right unless G.o.d had told. The G.o.d-given directions that ensued for making the water of separation from "the ashes of a red heifer" he did not find edifying; but some verses after that seemed more practicable.
"And thou shalt take of the ram," continued the reader in majestic cadence, "the fat and the rump and the fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys and the fat that is upon them--"
Here was detail with a satisfying minuteness; and all this was for "a wave-offering" to be waved before the Lord--which was indeed an interesting thought.
"If G.o.d was so careful of His children in these small matters," said Clytie; "no wonder they believed He would care for them in graver matters, and no wonder they looked forward so eagerly to the coming of His Son, whom He promised should be sent to save them from His wrath."
Through G.o.d"s succeeding minute directions for the building and upholstery of His tabernacle, "with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet, with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them,"
the interest of the little boys rather languished; likewise through His regulations about such dry matters as slavery, divorce, and polygamy. His directions for killing witches and for stoning the ox that gores a man or woman had more of colour in them. But there was no real interest until the good G.o.d promised His children to bring them in unto the Amorites and the Hitt.i.tes and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, to "cut them off." It was not uninteresting to know that G.o.d put Moses in a cleft of the rock and covered it with His hand when He pa.s.sed by, thus permitting Moses a partial view of the divine person. But the actual fighting of battles was thereafter the chief source of interest. For G.o.d was a mighty G.o.d of battles, never weary of the glories of slaughter. When it was plain that He could make a handful of two thousand Israelites slay two hundred thousand Midianites, in a moment, as one might say, the wisdom of coming to the Feet, being born again, and washing in the blood ceased to be debatable. It would seem very silly, indeed, to neglect any precaution that would insure the favour of this G.o.d, who slew cities full of men and women and little children off-hand.
The little boy thought Milo Barrus would begin to spell a certain word with the very biggest "G" he could make, if any one were to bring these matters to his notice.
As to Allan, who made abstracts of the winter"s study, Clytemnestra and her transcendent relative agreed that he would one day be a power in the land. Off to Florida each week they sent his writing to Grandfather Delcher, who was proud of it, in spite of his heart going out chiefly to the littler boy.
"So this is all I know now about G.o.d," ran the conclusion, "except that He loved us so that He gave His only Son to be crucified so that He could forgive our sins as soon as He saw His Son nailed up on the cross, and those that believed it could be with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and those that didn"t believe it, like the Jews and heathens, would have to be in h.e.l.l for ever and ever Amen. This proves His great love for us and that He is the true G.o.d. So this is all I have learned this winter about G.o.d, who is a spirit infinite eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom and power holiness justice goodness and truth, and the word of G.o.d is contained in the scriptures of the old and new testament which is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. In my next I will take up the meek and lowly Jesus and show you how much I have learned about him."
They had been unable to persuade the littler boy into this species of composition, his mind dwelling too much on the first-born of white rabbits and such, but to show that his winter was not wholly lost, he submitted a secular composition, which ran:
"BIRDS
"The Animl kindom is devided into birds and reguler animls. Our teacher says we had ougt to obsurv so I obsurv there is three kinds of birds Jingle birds Squeek birds and Clatter birds. Jingle birds has fat rusty stumacks. I have not the trouble to obsurv any more kinds."
CHAPTER IX
ON SURVIVING THE IDOLS WE BUILD
It is the way of life to be forever building new idols in place of the old. Into the fabric of these the most of us put so much of ourselves that a little of us dies each time a cherished image crumbles from age or is shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud electric with doubt. This is why we fade and wither as the leaf. Could we but sweep aside the wreck without dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten from that other tree in Eden, for the defence of which is set the angel with the flaming sword.
But this may not be. Fatuously we stake our souls on each new creation--deeming that _here_, in sooth, is one that shall endure beyond the end of time. To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken.
And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and, learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some last idol triumphantly surviving us. For--and this is the third lesson from that tree of Truth--we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our idols, but the divinity of their creator. And it would seem that this is quite as it should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful dust. Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself--but this is mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper.
To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers--as if we were not meant to fail in our idols forever! Being, then, not come to this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a better one.
Not all one"s idols are shattered in a day. This were a catastrophe that might wrench even youth"s divine credulity.
Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins of this idol, he brought a st.u.r.dy faith to bear, building in its place something unseen and unheard of any save himself--an idol discernible only by him, but none the less real for that.
The Imp with the hammer being no respecter of dignities, the idol of the Front Room fell next, increasing the heap of ruins that was gathering about his feet. Tragically came a day one spring, a cold, cloudy, rational day, it seemed, when the Front Room went down; for the little boy saw all its sanct.i.ties violated, its mysteries laid bare. And the Front Room became a mere front room. Its shutters were opened and its windows raised to let in light and common fresh air; its carpet was on the line outside to be scourged of dust; the black, formidable furniture was out on the wide porch to be re-varnished, like any common furniture, plainly needing it; the vases of dyed gra.s.s might be handled without risk; and the dark spirit that had seemed to be in and over all was vanished.
Even the majestic Ark of the Covenant, which the sinful Uzza once died for so much as touching reverently, was now seen to be an ordinary stove for the burning of anthracite coal, to be rattled profanely and polished for an extra quarter by Sherman Tranquillity Tyler after he had finished whitewashing the cellar. Fearlessly the little boy, grown somewhat bigger now, walked among the debris of this idol, stamping the floor, sounding the walls, detecting cracks in the ceiling, spots on the wall-paper and cobwebs in the corners. Yet serene amid the ruins towered his valiant spirit, conscious under the catastrophe of its power to build other and yet stauncher idols.
Thus was it one day to stretch itself with new power amid the base ruins of Cousin Bill J., though the time was mercifully deferred--that his soul might gain strength in worship to put away even that which it worshipped when the day of new truth dawned.
When Cousin Bill J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the little boy suspected no motive. He saw these works only as the outward signs of an inward grace that must be ever increasing. So it came that his amazement was above that of all other persons when, at Spring"s first breath of honeyed fragrance, Cousin Bill J. went to be the husband of Miss Alvira Abney. He had not failed to observe that Miss Alvira sang alto, in the choir, out of the same book from which Cousin Bill J.
produced his exquisite tenor. But he had reasoned nothing from this, beyond, perhaps, the thought that Miss Alvira made a poor figure beside her magnificent companion, even if her bonnet was always the gayest bonnet in church, trembling through every season with the blossoms of some ageless springtime. For the rest, Miss Alvira"s face and hair and eyes seemed to be all one colour, very pale, and her hands were long and thin, with far too many bones in them for human hands, the little boy thought.
Yet when he learned that the woman was not without merit in the sight of his clear-eyed hero, he, too, gave her his favour. At the marriage he felt in his heart a certain high, pure joy that must have been akin to that in the bride"s own heart, for their faces seemed to speak much alike.
Tensely the little boy listened to the words that united these two, understanding perfectly from questions that his hero endowed the woman at his side with all his worldly goods. Even a less practicable person than Miss Alvira would have acquired distinction in this light--being endowed with the gold horse, to say nothing of the carven cigar-holder or the precious jewel in the scarlet cravat. Probably now she would be able to throw her thumbs out of joint, too!
But to the little boy chiefly the thing meant that Cousin Bill J. would stay close at hand, to be a joy forever in his sight and lend importance to the town of Edom. For his hero was to go and live in the neat rooms of Miss Alvira over her millinery and dressmaking shop, and never return to the scenes of his early prowess.
After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school of a morning, would watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel out on the sidewalk the high gla.s.s case in which Miss Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered bonnets.
And slowly it came to life in his understanding that between the not irksome task of wheeling out this case in the morning and wheeling it back at night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man of his parts deserved. He was free at last to sit about in the stores of the village, or to enthrone himself publicly before them in clement weather, at which time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter whatsoever, could be had for the asking. Nor would he be invincibly reticent upon the subject of those early exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County marvelling at his strength.
At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this. Later he came to rejoice in the very circ.u.mstance that had brought him pain. If his hero could not be all his, at least the world would have to blink even as he had blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences--yes, and smart under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm.
It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow poison is not infrequently the fate of an idol.
Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the little boy could have said "that was the first time Cousin Bill J. began to seem different." Yet there came a moment when all was changed--a time of question, doubt, conviction; a terrible hour, in short, when, face to face with his hero, he suffered the deep hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J.
He could remember that first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings--with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night. And what"s worse, he"s been seen with that eldest--"
Here the caller"s eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at the small listener, whereupon Clytie had urged him to run along and play like a good boy. He pondered at length that which he had overheard and then he went to Miss Alvira"s wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, reached by turning up the alley from Main Street. He split a large pile of kindling for her. He would have been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira proved to be lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring him, when she saw him from her back window, where she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford"s pink waist, she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him five cents and tried to kiss him. Of course, he never went back again. If _that_ was the kind she was she could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph Overton or Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made to feel that he had been Doing Good, and be spoken of all the time as "our Hero."
As for Cousin Bill J., of _course_ he was a loafer! Who wouldn"t be if he had the chance? But it was false and cruel to say that he was a healthy loafer. When Cousin Bill J. was healthy he had been able to fell an ox with one blow of his fist.
Nor was he disturbed seriously by rumours that his hero was a "come-outer"; that instead of attending church with Miss Alvira he could be heard at the barbershop of a Sabbath morning, agreeing with Milo Barrus that G.o.d might have made the world in six days and rested on the seventh; but he couldn"t have made the whale swallow Jonah, because it was against reason and nature; and, if you found one part of the Bible wasn"t so, how could you tell the rest of it wasn"t a lot of grandmother"s tales?
Nor did he feel anything but sympathy for a helpless man imposed upon when he heard Mrs. Squire c.u.mpston say to Clytie, "Do you know that lazy brute has her worked to a mere shadow; she just sits in that shop all day long and lets tears fall every minute or so on her work. She spoiled five-eighths of a yard of three-inch lavender satin ribbon that way, that was going on to Mrs. Beasley"s second-mourning bonnet. And she"s had to cut him down to twenty-five cents a day for spending-money, and order the stores not to trust him one cent on her account."