5. Papa’s Young Protégé

This clergyman’s family were poor. There were too many of them to thrive on their father’s meager salary; and the legend about them candidly admitted that the kids were all too lazy to work. As a sample of their poverty, one story had it that sixteen-year-old Jim was sent downtown to find his brother Bill, aged eighteen; and, finding him sitting on a curbstone in a long row of other loafers, said, “Bill, Pop wants you should hurry home. He’s gotta go to a funeral, and he wants the shirt.”

For the relief of these unprosperous people, the members of the Monroeville congregation once planned a “surprise party” for them. This benevolent conspiracy involved an invitation to the entire family of the parsonage for evening dinner at one of their parishioners’ homes. And while they were absent, the membership of the congregation invaded the deserted parsonage, bringing with them large supplies of food. Then, having filled the kitchen and dining room with their gifts, they turned out all the lights and sat down, most of them on the floor, to wait.

It was to be, as I have said, a “surprise party”; and, as a surprise, it was a complete success. On the way home, the minister’s entire household had got itself into a rip-snorting quarrel, with no holds barred, and punches permitted below the belt.

The silent, waiting surprisers could hear them coming down the street, long before Pop clumsily inserted the big iron key in the front-door lock. It was quite too late for the stunned congregation to escape by the back door. They sat transfixed, and waited while their minister who, at the moment, was in the middle of an address that fully expressed his disapproval of all his children and his wife and his job and the town he lived in and all the people in it: They waited, I say, while he drew down the hall hanging lamp, scratched a match on the seat of his pants, and had his surprise.

Sometimes—not very often—my good mama would (as the current saying goes) blow her top. It might occur on washday when she was very tired and easily annoyed. It never lasted long; but while it lasted, there was a good deal of it, and one could only imagine what inclement weather the poor sailors frequently encounter on the sea.

On these occasions, my papa, if at home, would drag his old hickory rocking chair into the little alcove that jutted from our front parlor, and softly sing a hymn remembered from his childhood. I recall only one stanza. Perhaps there was only one.

My days are glid-ing swift-ly by,
     And I, a pilgrim, stran-ger,
Would not de-tain them as they fly,
     These hours of toil and dan-ger.

How dearly did this kindhearted old man love peace! Often and often he recited the text, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace.” He would be greatly distressed, I fear, if he were with us now.