“We are Americans, I want you to know. Have you a President?”
He looks wistfully at us, to brighten soon and ask: “Do you mean your God? My mother is goddess this year. Aunt Robet takes her place when she is away visiting.”
I study out the whole problem. This wayside sitting-room is a courthouse, a saloon—the latter purified—and a church in one. I am quite converted and wish ours at home would become the same, but Charley, who is still by my side, impatiently waiting to get my full attention, remarks, jokingly: “Little folks should keep out of the parlors!”
“Parlor? How do you know this is the parlor? I am sure I walked some distance to get here,” I reply evasively.
“But this palace occupies some distance; you will have to look farther for a church, if there is one at all. Wait until you are better acquainted, but to-night we will attend the masque,” meditatively.
“Masque? What can you imagine to be that home dissipation in this cold and pure, and pure as cold city; certainly less advanced, I hope, less perverted section of the earth. But that it is Sunday I would accompany you to investigate for missionary purposes,” I reply devoutly.
“Well, it will last a week; there is no hurry,” as he leaves me free to muse. So utterly definite in dissimilarity are all things here—arts, amusements, devotions, etc. I do not expect to encounter social dangers in similar guise, but must guard as conscientiously from evil under new guise. Show Off, our attending friend, does make so remarkable blunders in his attempt to apply our cultured phrases, I quite despair to get out of him by question what I wish to know. I reflect deeply, what can their church be? Can it be in happy unison, as is this human social church—to wit, parlor?
Presently I recollect that here is but one city, one people. Allowing one church to be feasible, what about different races, who have different forms of devotion that to them take the place of religion or its comparative manifestation, though religion itself is solely an act of the heart.
I imagine present before me this heterogeneous crowd. A Catholic crosses himself, a Shaker shakes, a dervish howls; Buddhists, Mahometans, and Confucians appear. Closing my eyes I wonder, could they not, one and all, do their several forms in the same building? The same “free for all” church in the same “free for all” country. Trading and walking together with mutual respect, why not worship also?
I look around and see Charley coming back. He stops short at my expression. “What are you now conjuring up?” he asks. I told, “a church, where all kinds of people worship in one building.”