I knew that meant wrestling with one of the traveling angels, and held my tongue, but the natural temper in my blood was not so easily controlled. I flopped down in the chair, laid my head upon the window sill and yielded to tears. I was far along in my middle years then, but never to the end did I get accustomed to the stubbornness of William's faith. I always wanted to do something literal and effective myself in the emergency. I seemed to be made so that I couldn't look to God for help until I had worn myself out.
While I sat there, in a sort of tearful rage with William and the horse, there was a sound of wheels at the front gate. I arose, hastily wiping my eyes, and was just in time to face William's smiling countenance in the parlor doorway.
"Mary, Sister Spindle is not well, and Brother Spindle has driven by to offer us seats in his carriage."
Brother Spindle was the only man in the community who owned a carriage and horses. I flung my arms around William's neck and whispered:
"Forgive me, William, I never can get used to it that the Lord is illogically and incredibly good to you. But I am glad to tag along after you in His mercies."
He had a gentle way of enjoying these triumphs over me. He would cast the blue beam of his eye humorously over me, and then kiss me as if I was still young and beautiful.
Never in all our married life did he get the best of me in an argument. His arguing faculty was not highly developed. It was easier to silence him than to stir him into opposing speech. But whenever he entered the sacred parsonage parlor and closed the door after him, I always knew he would have the best of me one way or another when he came out.
But it was not this faith in prayer that confused me most, it was the answers that William, and others like him, received to their prayers. We never went to any church where there was not at least one man or woman who knew, actually knew, how to reach his or her empty hands up to God and get them filled. And they were always people of rare dignity in the community, although some of them bordered on the simplicity of childhood mentally.
I recall in this connection Sister Carleton. She was a very old woman who seemed to have settled down to be mostly below her waist. Her shoulders were thin, her bosom flat, but she widened out in the hips amazingly. Her face was the most beautifully wrinkled countenance I ever beheld. Every line seemed to enhance some celestial quality in her expression. And she had the dim look of the very old after they begin to recede spiritually from the ruthlessness of mere realities. She had palsy and used to sit in the Amen Corner of the church at Eureka, gently, incessantly wagging her lovely old head beneath a little black horseshoe bonnet that was tied under her chin with long black ribbons. Sabbath after Sabbath, year after year she was always to be seen there, sweetly abstracted like an old saint in a dream. She had one thought, one purpose left in life. This was to live to see all of her "boys saved." These were three middle-aged men, all of whom had been wild in their youth. Her one connection now with the church was expressed, not by any personal interest in the preacher or his sermons, but in this thought for her children. Some time during every experience meeting we always knew that Sister Carleton would rise trembling to her feet, steady herself with both hands on the bench in front of her, look about her vaguely and ask the prayers of "all Christian people" that her boys might repent and be saved from their sins. They were already excellent and prosperous citizens and remarkable for their devotion to her, but she was not the woman to mince matters. They had not been converted, therefore she prayed for them as if they were still dead in their trespasses and sins.
The first year of William's ministry in this place the two younger sons were converted and joined the church, but the oldest still "held out," as the saying was. In fact, he stayed out of the church literally, never coming to any service.