5. Papa’s Young Protégé

In that same cemetery I once quite unintentionally lost a whole procession of out-of-town people. In Akron, Ohio, there is an old cemetery, far out in the country when it was established, but more recently encircled by the rapidly growing city. Akron is a hilly place, and this cemetery is an ideal spot to get lost in unless you are familiar with its winding roads. Customarily the undertaker sent a car for me, so I had never paid very close attention to the geography of that burial ground. On this particular occasion, an interment was to be made here by people living some fifty miles away. I was to have the committal service at the grave, and I had phoned my friend the undertaker that I would drive my own car as I had another errand to do immediately afterward.

Someone from the undertaker’s establishment met me at the gate and piloted me to the grave. The out-of-town people had already arrived. After the committal service was over, and I had said good-bye to my new friends from a distance, I climbed into my car and drove away. As I proceeded, it began to occur to me that I couldn’t recognize anything but the half-dozen cars I saw in my mirror.

Around and around we went, over little hills and through unfamiliar valleys, my pursuers relentlessly keeping up. I indecorously gave my engine more gas and so did the hapless strangers who had a right to believe that I could be trusted to lead them out of their predicament.

Now, to my horror, we began racing through tortuous roads which I recognized! Surely we had been this way before; maybe a couple of times before! Then, to my immeasurable relief, my pursuers left me. I had taken a right turn and they had gone straight ahead. So I turned around quickly and followed them. Eventually they found an exit. If the strangers hadn’t become suspicious of my leadership, we might all be driving around in that cemetery yet. I never met any of these people afterward: I never wanted to, though they had impressed me as being well worth a further acquaintance.

Late in my papa’s life, one of his old cronies told him a story that amused him very much, apropos of the odd situations which occasionally turn up in the course of a clergyman’s life.

There was to be a home funeral service for an elderly person whose church, at the time, was without a minister. A retired clergyman, living in a city some distance away, had promised to come and officiate; but, at the last minute, when the house was full and running over with relatives and friends, a telegram was received, stating that the minister had missed the only available train that would get him there in time.

One of the neighbors remembered that a young clergyman, of another denomination, had just moved into the community; so somebody was dispatched to request his immediate attention to the predicament. The young man cheerfully consented and presently arrived, out of breath but full of importance, to find the house packed and waiting to get on with it.

Without pausing to make inquiries about the deceased, not even knowing whether the departed was a man or a woman, the young man launched upon a beautiful discourse about Death and the Life to Come; but after he had referred to “our transformed loved one,” and “the departed spirit,” so redundantly that he had begun to feel the urgent need of some more personal pronouns, he edged toward a woman seated within reach of a whisper, and asked, behind his hand, “Brother or sister?” And she replied, “Cousin.”

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