The Parkerstown Delegate (2 page)
Read The Parkerstown Delegate Online
Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
”Well, the delegates mostly left by the midnight train, and we all went down to the station and had another reception and sort of praise-meeting there. The strangers seemed a little astonished at the queer set of young people who were singing and talking about religion. I heard one man say he never came across any like them before, but I guess it didn’t do him any harm, for he threw away his cigar and went and had a long talk with the secretary Aren’t you tired now, Harley, and don’t you want me to stop?”
No, Harley was not tired one bit, and he had a great many questions to ask. They were answered patiently and carefully by one who had such an intense interest in the subject that it was a pleasure to her to explain even the driest detail.
“If you can be a society all by yourself why couldn’t I join?” asked Harley at last. “I should like to be a society. I couldn’t do anything of course, but it would be nice to say I belonged to something like other boys. You said there were two kinds of members, didn’t you? What are they? Tell me again. Why couldn’t I be one of that other kind?”
“Yes; we have two kinds of members,” answered Lois, unconsciously using the pronoun “we” in that connection for the first time, “active and associate, but the associate members are not much. They can’t even vote. It is just to get hold of people and make them feel that they belong, you know. A real member ought to be an active member, I should think. You see the associate members are not Christians. An associate member is a kind of a ‘half-way’ thing, anyway. Why couldn’t you be an active one?”
“Why, what would I have to do? I don’t ‘act’ any. I just have to lie here and ‘be,’” said the boy, with a quiver about his mouth.
“Oh, don’t, Harley dear!” cried Lois, with tears in her eyes. “Yes, you could be an active member. You could give yourself to Jesus and sign the active membership pledge and keep it just as well as I can, and you would find lots of little bits of work to do for Christ right here in your own room.”
Harley looked thoughtful and shook his head.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t be much of a Christian,” he said, “for you see, sometimes when my head aches so bad I’m cross. I have to be, and then it kind of gets the hurt out a little if I talk scolding to them, and make them give me my own way. But maybe I might. What did you say was the pledge again? I’d like to have it to think about a while. It would be nice to be a member of something. If I was ‘active’ we could have business meetings and I could vote, couldn’t I? That would be lots of fun. But it wouldn’t be right to think about that part of it unless I was really willing to sign my pledge and keep it, would it?”
“No;” Lois admitted that she did not think it would. “I’ll tell you what we can do, Harley” she said, “I can’t remember the whole pledge, but I’ll write out the part that I said off to you and you can think that over, and when I go home I will write to the place in Boston where they keep pledge-cards, and we’ll each have a pledge-card to keep. It will be nice, I think, if we are going to be a society. You will like that, won’t you?”
Harley showed his appreciation of it by the brightness of his eyes.
So the first half of the pledge was written out and placed under Harley’s pillow for further consideration. Lois said she must go home, and Harley followed her with wistful looks, then closed his eyes to think of all she had told him, and to sleep a little while with pleasant dreams of it.
It was three or four days before Lois found time to run up to see her little friend again. He had awaited her coming with great impatience, and now he drew the rumpled slip of paper from under his cushion and said as she entered the room:
“I think I can sign it, Lois. I’ve thought it all over and I’ll try to keep it. You see, that first sentence helped me a good deal. It says, ‘Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for strength! I thought I couldn’t be good all the time, but if I trust in Him to help me when I can’t, why then I’ve nothing else to do but be as good as I can and then He’ll do the rest. It isn’t like promising someone else, either, that wouldn’t understand when I was doing my best, and when the pain was so hard that I had to cry just a little. He’ll always know when I’m doing my best, and it’s Him I’ll have to promise and not anyone else. It doesn’t seem hard to do what He wants me to do, for that isn’t much now, but to lie still and be patient, and be willing to give up when I can’t have what I want. I think I can promise that. And then of course I can read the Bible a little while, and pray. I haven’t always done it. Sometimes I would think it wasn’t any use, and sometimes there was something I would want to do instead, like hearing a story or thinking about some plan I had made to amuse myself, and so I would forget to pray, but I guess I will join, Lois, if there isn’t anything else in the pledge to promise.”
Lois bent down and kissed the pure, white forehead and, looking into the eager earnest eyes, felt that she would have a true little Christian for her co-laborer in the Christian Endeavor Society.
“The pledge-cards have come, Harley” she said, as she took her seat by his bed. “Didn’t they come quickly? I ran right over with them because I thought you’d be in a hurry to see them. They came on the noon mail.”
Harley reached an eager hand for the card and read it slowly, his face growing sober as he read.
“What kind of meetings does it mean I must be ‘present at’?” he asked, “and what is a ‘consecration’ meeting?”
Lois explained carefully about the prayer meetings and the monthly consecration meeting at which the roll was called, and each member responded to his name by telling of his progress during the past month, or by repeating a verse from the Bible.
“Could you and I have prayer meetings here in my room, do you mean, Lois? And, Lois, who would pray?”
Lois had thought of these questions a little and had made up her mind to do her duty and try to begin a Christian Endeavor Society right here, but it was nevertheless with beating heart that she answered:
“Yes, I think we might, Harley, and I suppose if there was no one else here, you and I would have to pray.”
Harley considered this a moment, “Of course,” said he, “you could pray. Maybe I’d get so I could too, a little, but I don’t know how very well. Anyhow, I’d try if God wants me to do that.”
“Then we’ll be a society. Here’s a constitution, and I’ve subscribed for the Golden Rule. That’s the paper that’s all about Christian Endeavor Societies, and you shall have it to read every week. I had it sent to you so you would get it as soon as it came. I thought it would interest you.”
“Oh, thank you, Lois dear! How good you are to me! I shall not have any more stupid days now you’ve come home. The summer was so very long without you! How nice it will be to have a paper to read myself and all about our society!”
“And now when shall we have our first meeting?” asked Lois.
After much discussion it was decided to hold the meetings on Sunday afternoons at three o’clock.
“Because,” said Harley, “this would be something like going to church, and I have wanted to go to church for so long. Besides, I have great trouble with Sundays. They are quite long and there hasn’t been much I could do with them. Franklin reads to me a good deal, but he always takes a walk in the woods on Sundays, and I don’t think he quite enjoys reading the things that mother thinks fit Sunday best; so, if you please, I’d like it on Sunday afternoon.”
The paper arrived before the first Sunday meeting, and was eagerly devoured by its owner. He read to himself as long as they would allow him, and then every member of the family was pressed into service until he knew the matter of that week’s issue pretty thoroughly. He had a very clear idea of what a Christian Endeavor prayer meeting should be, and he had gained much information about the various committees and their workings.
“We can’t be, just us two, Lois,” he announced when she came in Sunday afternoon. “I’ve been reading about it, and if we are a society at all, we’ll have to go to work and get in some more. Besides, we need a president and secretary and ever so many committees. There’s the prayer meeting committee and the lookout. I guess we don’t need a social one yet, for we’ll be social enough, just us two. But the lookout committee seems to be the beginning of everything. We’ll have to have a business meeting. We don’t want to have that on Sunday, and we’d better have one right off Monday, and fix these things. Now begin. You’ll have to lead the meeting to-day because you know how, and you must tell me what to do all along. I’ve been reading up about these things. Did you know there is a subject already picked out for every week? I think we’d better take that, don’t you? It will be nice to think we are having the same kind of a meeting they are having everywhere else, and we can pretend there are more folks here, and pick out things for them to say and read.”
Lois began her first meeting with a trembling heart. It was hard for her to do such a thing even before this little boy. But she read a few verses and then knelt down by Harley’s bed and prayed: “Dear Jesus, wilt Thou bless this little society of two, and help us to know how to work for Thee as the other larger societies are doing? For Jesus’ sake. Amen.” And Harley followed without being asked, with:
“Dear Jesus, I thank Thee for sending me word about this society. Please help me to be a good member and keep my pledge, and show me how I can work. Amen!”
It was not a very long meeting, but it was a good one. The great army of Christian Endeavors over the land, if they had been permitted to look in upon the two with the open Bible between them, might perhaps not have felt much inspiration from the sight; but there nevertheless was, in that small meeting, the true Christian Endeavor spirit. They had claimed the promise that “where two or three of you shall gather in my name, I will be with them,” and God’s Spirit was indeed there.
“I have thought of Sallie Elder,” said Harley, when the solemn Christian Endeavor parting words, “The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another” had been repeated, and they had pronounced their first prayer meeting concluded. “Sallie Elder doesn’t know what to do with Sunday. She told me so the other day when she was over here. I guess we could get her in. I could send a note to her all about it. I should like to write it, and Pepper could take it to her. Do you think, Lois, that it would be wicked to put Pepper on the lookout committee? If he does part of the work he ought to belong, oughtn’t he? It wouldn’t be wrong, would it, Lois?”
Now Pepper was a very homely little dog, who lay curled in a heap at Harley’s feet during the meeting, fast asleep, and at the mention of his name he pricked up his ears, opened his bright little wistful eyes up at the two, and thumped his tail pleadingly as much as to say, “Do take me in; I’ll be a very good dog.”
It was finally decided that Pepper should be a sort of ex-officio member of the committee, and should be sent after Sallie Elder before the next prayer meeting.
Sallie accepted the invitation with delight and became an associate member immediately. Lois was glad at this addition; but when, next Sunday, Harley announced that his brother Franklin had asked for admittance to the society, or at least to the meetings, her heart beat fast, and there was consternation in her face. Admit Franklin Winters to their meetings! How could they! He was not a Christian. Indeed, he was known to have said many things which led one to think he did not much believe in the Bible. Lois had always liked him very much, but she was afraid of him. He might make fun of their meetings. But even as she thought that, her heart told her he would not do such a thing as that. Perhaps he only wished to come there to please his little brother. But who would pray if Franklin came? Surely she could not.
She had never prayed aloud before in her life until she went to Lewiston, and there only once or twice. It had been a little trial to think of having Sallie added to their number, but she had decided to bear that for the sake of the good they might be able to do, but now to have this young man come-oh! It would be dreadful. It would be an impossibility to pray, and yet what could she say to Harley? Moreover, it appeared that Franklin was waiting in the other room for admittance. Lois must answer quickly.
“Why, Harley” she said, and her voice trembled as she looked down and fumbled with some papers between the leaves of her Bible, “I am afraid your brother wouldn’t enjoy it. It’s just us, you know, and”—
“Oh, yes, he would!” broke in Harley. “I told him all about it, and he said, all of his own accord, that he wished we would let him come, and his eyes looked real ‘want to’ when he said it, and he asked ever so many questions about it; so he knows just what it is. He said he thought if Sallie came that he might, and that he’d like to ever so much.”
Before Lois had time to reply Franklin himself appeared at the door with Sallie, and his pleasant eyes were upon Lois’s face while he asked:
“You are going to let me come, too, aren’t you? Harley said he thought you would be glad to have an addition. I can’t do much, to be sure, but I think I might manage to conduct myself as honorably as Pepper here,” and he gave the dog a pat on the head, which was highly appreciated.
Franklin sat down then, and there was nothing for Lois to do but submit, although she would gladly have fled the house and her newly fledged Christian Endeavor Society and never come back any more. Harley was to lead the meeting, so she had nothing to do but await developments, but she sat with her eyes down and her whole body in a quiver. Harley asked her almost immediately to pray for the opening of the meeting. She knelt down with not a thought in her mind and scarcely a desire in her heart, except that she might be helped to get out of this trying situation, and the help came. “Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it, . . .Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.”
Surely those promises were fulfilled for her that day. She had not known what to say nor how to say anything indeed, but the young man who knelt across the room listening was amazed, and found himself wondering if it was really Lois Peters who was talking in that sweet voice, apparently to some One who stood close beside her, and in whom she seemed to have the utmost confidence. He seemed to feel that he was being prayed about too, although his name was not uttered, and for the first time in his life he believed that there was something in religion which he did not understand, a power that reached into the heart-life as nothing else could do. Harley felt the influence of that prayer too, as he took up the petition where Lois left off:
“Please, dear God, we thank Thee that we have some new members to our society. Help them to get to be active members pretty soon. Let Pepper be a good member, if he is only a dog. He can run around and do the errands I could do if I were like other boys. Amen.”
The little dog curled up on the bed beside his young master, opened his eyes and raised his head inquiringly at the mention of his name, but seeing Harley’s eyes closed, he rested his cold nose confidingly against Harley’s clasped hands and closed his own eyes until the Amen, when he gave a soft whine of satisfaction and settled down among the pillows again. Franklin’s eyes were wet with tears when he raised his face from his hands, and Lois’s face was grave, but little Sallie Elder sat immovable on the edge of her chair, with wide-open eyes, throughout the entire service, uncertain just what to call this strange performance to which she had been invited. It was not until Harley read slowly and carefully a story from the Bible that she began to be interested, and by and by when the reading was over and the meeting thrown open for remarks, she was persuaded into repeating her one Bible verse: “Suffer little children to come unto me?”
Franklin, too, had consented to read a verse if he were allowed to come, and not being very familiar with the Bible himself, Harley had selected it for him.
That was the beginning of the Parkerstown Christian Endeavor Society. It is not needful that you should know what was read or said at that meeting. There was nothing original or remarkable in it. You might think it very commonplace, but to those who were gathered there it seemed not so. They had caught the spirit of Christian Endeavor, and even Franklin felt that there was a power there, greater than any other which he knew. He promised to come again if they would let him, and even volunteered to become a temporary member of the lookout committee until some more worthy members should come in. He would that week agree to bring in at least two to the next meeting. Lois’s heart began to swell with the thought of a real society right there in Parkerstown, albeit she had scarcely gotten over her panic at the rapid development of her small scheme. It was something to be thought about and prayed over, this, actually planning to speak and pray before people like Franklin Winters, every week. She was not sure she would be able to do it, though she recognized that a power higher than her own had helped her that afternoon; but would He always help? Surely He had promised, but—she must get away by herself and think it over. Happy for Lois that she had learned lately to think such things over upon her knees. The Lord presides over decisions made there, and so it was with a less fearful heart that she came to the next meeting, having herself prevailed upon three young girls to come with her.
Harley had been made president. First, because they thought it would please him, but he proved such a good president, with so many wise and original little plans for the growth of the society, that they came to feel after all that they could not have chosen more wisely. For Harley read all he could get hold of, and he knew all about the great Christian Endeavor Society; he knew all its principles and the wisest ways of working; he knew more about it than all the rest of Parkerstown put together. Moreover, he had time to think and plan and, best of all, to pray, and to grow, in this thinking and planning and praying, daily like Jesus Christ. They all saw the change in his life, even patient as it had been heretofore. There was a wondrous beauty growing in that face that spoke of an inward peace, and a sweet wisdom that had touched the child-heart and caused it to open like a flower.
It came about very gradually, the addition to the society. First, Franklin brought two boys, farm hands from a neighbor’s house, and then little Sallie coaxed her older sister, and then all grew interested and the meetings became larger until it was hard to find chairs enough in the square white house by the roadside, and until Harley’s little bedroom off the sitting-room became too small to contain all the members.
“Father,” said Harley one evening, when he had been lying quite still for a long time with his eyes closed, so that they all began to step softly and talk in low tones, thinking him asleep, “I wish you would take me into the big south room to-morrow. I haven’t been in there in two years, I guess, and I want to see it. I have a plan. Perhaps you won’t like it, and if you don’t I will not coax; but, father, I should like to go in there and see it.”
”You shall go, my son,” said the father, who could not deny Harley anything in these days. “What is your plan, my boy?”
“Well, father, if you and mother don’t like it, I won’t make any fuss, but it’s something I think would be very nice. Do you think mother cares very much about that south room? I know it’s the parlor, and there’s all the best things in there, but she doesn’t use it much only on Christmas days, and not much then nowadays. It seems too bad to have it using itself up in the dark when it would be so nice for our society. I shouldn’t think it would hurt things very much—just once a week—would it? Or couldn’t I have it for my bedroom and you move the things in here and have this for the parlor? Do you think it is a very ridiculous plan, father? Because if you do, you and mother, why, I said I wouldn’t coax, but I’d like to have you think it over very hard before you say,” he said pleadingly.
And so, after much calculation and some changing of household plans, with a few tears mingled by father and mother, it is true—tears of love for their afflicted little boy—the plan was carried out, and the front parlor of the Winters’ household became the headquarters of the Parkerstown Christian Endeavor Society. It is true that the room had not been much used as a parlor, and that it afforded ample accommodation for the meetings of the society.
“In fact,” said father Winters, “we don’t need it and they do, and what Harley wants will please us better than anything else, anyway.”
There was much bustle of preparation after the decision was made. Franklin agreed to give as his part enough cane-seat chairs to accommodate the members. Someone sent a fine engraving of Father Endeavor Clark, Lois brought over a large copy of the United Society Pledge, neatly framed, to hang over Harley’s couch, and together she and Harley planned little decorations to make the room look home-like and yet “churchified,” as Harley said. A great monogram C. E., was made from evergreen and hung in the center of one wall, surrounded by the motto, “For Christ and the Church.” Another wall contained the motto, “One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” Harley made Lois describe the mottoes she had seen at the convention in Lewiston, and they made theirs as much like them as possible. When the motto, “For Christ and the Church,” was put up, Harley lay thinking long about it. He didn’t see how he could be working for the Church at all. But the end of his thoughts was that he wanted the new minister asked to attend the meetings. The minister was invited, and came with a glad heart. He had heard of this society with thankfulness, but had not thought it best to come until invited. Now he became one with the young people, and helped them along more than they knew. He grew to love the little president much as did everyone else, and came frequently to see him, finding that in this young disciple there was much of the spirit of Jesus, and that he might sit at his feet and gather inspiration and new love and faith from conversation with this sweet, trusting child.
The work of this society was carried on according to the most approved methods. No suggestion passed by unheeded. Everything, too, was talked over carefully with the minister, to see whether in their particular society such and such measures were expedient. Every member had a pledge-card. There were cards from the National Headquarters for the different committees to use in their work, and topic cards and everything else that could be thought of for when Harley expressed a wish for a simple little thing like that to work with, there were plenty to see that it was granted; and so it came about that there was not in all the State, a society better fitted out for work in all departments, than the one at Parkerstown.
Harley had one thing of which he was very proud. The minister brought it to him one day when he came to see him. It was a Christian Endeavor scarf-pin of solid gold; and how Harley loved that pin! He looked at it for hours at a time thinking what it meant; he held it in the rays of sunlight that lay across his bed; he wore it pinned on the breast of his dressing-gown with pleasure, and showed it to everyone that came to see him.
“It seems to shine brighter than any other gold thing,” he said one day. “I wonder what makes it. Is it because it is for Christ?”
The meetings were large in these days, and very solemn ones. A good many of the Parkerstown young people were beginning to find out what it is to belong to Jesus Christ, and many others were seeking Him. Even the new big room was full every Sunday afternoon, and the songs that filled the air and floated out to the street often drew in outsiders who were taking a little walk or who had nothing else to do. Lois had sacrificed her organ to the cause, though it was not a sacrifice, but given gladly, and Franklin had brought it over himself, so they had good rousing singing and plenty of it, and Harley would lie on his little couch by the desk and look at the organ with admiring eyes, feeling that it lent a dignity of the church to the modest room.
But there were days, and growing more frequent now, when the little couch by the light desk was empty, and the young president of this society was unable to be moved in to the meeting, but must lie in the darkened bedroom beyond, with the door closed, and suffer. At first they thought the meetings must be adjourned when Harley was not able to be there, because the noise would trouble him, and because they felt they could not do without him, until he begged so hard that all should go on as usual that it was tried as an experiment, in hushed voices, and without music. But Harley missed that at once and sent word for them to sing:
At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.
He said the singing rested him. So, after that they went on as usual, only when the president was not there, there was a more earnest feeling manifest in all the members, and much praying done that the dear boy might be relieved from his sufferings. Some who had not cared much about the meetings heretofore seemed strangely touched by the thought that the little, patient sufferer was lying there thinking of them and praying for them.
