I left her on her knees, telling her beads before that little unbeautiful figure of plaster. She was explaining to the saint that it was I, not she, who had committed the crime. She implored the saint not to curse her or her children for my deed. I’m not at all sure she didn’t call me a devil. Another woman did, all because of a scapular.
I had learned about wearing scapulars, for a cousin of my mother married a descendant of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, and I grew up with their children. Of course they all wore scapulars, so beautifully embroidered that I used to advise them to wear them outside their clothes. And while this growing up together was going on I went to school with Clarence Horton.
Clarence was a son of our nearest neighbor, and at school he was famous for two reasons—he wore a little bag of assafœtida around his neck and he ate goose-eggs, hard-boiled goose-eggs. Because of the goose-eggs nobody cared to trade lunch with Clarence, and because of the assafœtida nobody would sit with him. However we might be enjoying ourselves, when Clarence joined us we went elsewhere.
During my service as a social worker I called at the flat of a woman who had been a Bellevue patient. Her baby was sick and she had not had an opportunity to go out and get the medicine ordered by the doctor, because he had cautioned her against taking the baby out and letting it take more cold. I offered to hold the baby while she ran to the corner drug-store and got the medicine.
The child was feverish and very fretful. Soon after taking it on my lap I noticed that it was tugging at a dirty string around its neck. To the string I found attached what I took to be a dirty little bag. Instantly there flashed into my mind memories of Clarence and his bag of assafœtida. Snapping the string I dropped the whole arrangement into the coal-bucket.
When the mother returned I explained to her that tying disinfectants around a baby’s neck really did not do any good. And I told her that I had taken it off the baby.
The woman was wild with terror. She snatched the baby from me; said I was a devil and her baby would surely die unless she could remove my “spell.” Grabbling in the coal-bucket she fished out the scapular, and in spite of all I could say or do out she went—taking the baby to a church.
That broke me all up. Respect for the faith of others had been hammered into me from my infancy up. We were never allowed to go to a negro camp-meeting, because my father feared that we might laugh or do something, even innocently, that would hurt the feelings of the worshippers.
Besides, I was brought up to respect Roman Catholics just as I was all other denominations. My father was graduated from Georgetown University before he entered William and Mary. And my brother nearest my own age went to a Catholic school before entering college.
No one can truthfully accuse me of animus against the Catholic Church or against the Irish. Besides my Carroll cousins, some of the best friends I ever had were Catholics and natives of Ireland. It was a United States senator, the owner and publisher of a notable newspaper, who gave me my “start” as a writer. He was a native of Ireland and a Catholic. He was one of the most intelligent persons I have ever known, and the kindliest of gentlemen.