Mother loved the Bible. How well she knew it! It was history, poetry, and all literature to her. How interesting she made the stories when telling them in her own words—the story of Ruth, of Queen Esther, of Joseph and his coat of many colours—how inseparably these are linked with Mother’s interpretations!
She loved music, too, but none of her family could carry a tune, except one brother who died in his youth. She would try so hard to sing, “Hush, My Dear, Lie Still and Slumber,” usually getting the first two lines pretty well, then would flounder around, unable to get the rest. In church she would start out bravely to sing the “Doxology,” or “By Cool Siloam’s Shady Rill,” or “There is a Land of Pure Delight,” but would falter and have to stop entirely before the end of the first stanza. I have seen her almost weep because she wanted so much to sing. At first we laughed at her—it seemed so funny, and so easy to catch a tune—but with her it was so serious a matter that I learned to pity her.
Unless Sister was watched throughout the church service, she would excite the risibilities of all around by her antics and imitation of the minister. Quick as a flash she would jump up on the seat, tiny mite that she was, and flourish her arms as the speaker was doing. Mrs. R——, the wife of a certain pastor who made very awkward gestures, used to say it was bad enough to see the gestures themselves, but to see them so perfectly reproduced was much too much; still she would laugh about it till the tears ran down her cheeks. Kate would imitate the twisting gait and fidgety manner of a sister of Father’s so well that a neighbour seeing her would say, “There goes your Aunt Lucinda, boiled down.”
I learned early to while away the long sermons by reading Sunday-school books, Mother remonstrating, but often ignoring the practice, for it lightened her duties—she was thus sure of one of us being quiet during services. If not reading, Arthur and I were bound to titter at Kate’s pranks.
“Who is this?” she would whisper, then pull down her face like old Aaron Wilson in the side pew, or again like Brother Schermerhorn, or saintly Sister Brown, or lugubrious Sister Stiles. She could look like any of them in a jiffy, and we would nearly explode, while she was tickled to get us in such an uncomfortable plight. Mother was often on pins and needles lest we laugh outright in church.
Sometimes it would please the minx to assume a demure, reverential air throughout the entire service. Then we almost went into spasms. She would turn the leaves of the Bible, rise, bow her head, and sing; would place a hymn-book behind her, as the good sister in front of us did, halfway through the sermon, to ease her back; would use her handkerchief in a grown-up way—all apparently unaware of her giggling brother and sister, except when she would turn upon us a pained, reproving glance—usually the last straw for the poor camels.
I kept up the habit of reading during services till the pastor mentioned it so pointedly in Sunday School that I had to stop. When the sermons interested me, I no longer cared to read. I recall three of our ministers who were liberally educated for pastors in small churches. One, in particular, a Scotch-Irishman, was an original thinker, emotional, with a tumultuous Carlylean eloquence. He preached remarkable sermons. Father and I followed his thought, I think, more closely than any one else in the congregation. He seemed to feel this, too, addressing us almost personally, sure of sympathetic attention. Many of his stolid hearers had no idea “what he was driving at.” Sometimes he would labour so to bring forth his thought that it was painful to watch him—it was as though his mind was laid bare. Carried away with the grandeur of a conception, he would wrestle with it, conquer it, and finally unfold it. His influence on my mental and religious nature (I was seventeen then) was unquestionable, but unsettling, seeming to increase the chaotic state of my mind; at least, it was during his “dynasty” that I became so unsettled—doubting and trying to think a way out of the inconsistencies I was continually coming upon.
But earlier wanderings in the old paths claim their share in this backward glance. Tenting at camp-meeting (Auburndale), perhaps four times in all—not four years in succession, for that would have been too great a boon—was a keen pleasure of our childhood. How we felt the deprivation of the blank years! What a homesick longing for our tent in the woods when the August days came round! The woods were perhaps five miles away. It seemed a long journey. What fun to see the wagon piled with bedding, furniture, and tinware; to see kettles dangling below; to hear the rattle as we sat a-top of the heterogeneous array! Then the ride along the sunny country road to the camp-grounds! I wonder if a part of my fascination for gypsy wagons and the life of the Romanys isn’t due to our own gypsying in the camp-meeting woods.
Mother usually shared a tent with a certain good sister, an old-fashioned fat countrywoman who was very devout and who made good cookies. We liked her best for the last quality.