“Don’t believe what?” asked Mrs. Carter.
“Virgin birth,” said my sister. “I think it’s foolish.”
Unfortunately, she made this observation at a time when the whole Sunday school was quiet save for the mumbling of the catechism in various classes, and her thin little voice reached every corner of the room. And instantly there was a horrified silence, broken after a moment by someone who said: “It’s that blasphemous little Asbury girl.” Mrs. Carter was stunned; the effect upon her was the same as if God had walked in the door and announced that Buddha, or Zoroaster, and not Jesus Christ, was His son. She stared for a moment at this brash child who had defied religion and, in effect, denounced the Holy Book.
“Mary!” she said terribly. “Do you realize what you have done?”
My sister’s conception of virgin birth, or of any sort of birth, was decidedly hazy. She thought Virgin Birth meant that Christ had been born in a stable, and she knew perfectly well that no nice child would be born in such a place. Anyhow, she had heard so much about it that she had become quite bored by it, and she felt it incumbent upon her to deny it. But from Mrs. Carter’s attitude she knew that she had said a terrible thing; at first she thought of recanting, but she looked about and felt of herself, and when she did not see any avenging angels entering and could find no sign that she had been stricken, she stuck to her guns.
“Well,” she said, “I just don’t believe it.”
“Mary!” said Mrs. Carter. “Go home and pray!”
So my sister went home, but I do not think that she prayed. Mrs. Carter and the Preacher called that afternoon and told my father and mother what had been said and done that day in God’s house, and there was a considerable to-do about it, both Mrs. Carter and the Preacher dropping to their knees and praying, and insisting, that my sister pray also for forgiveness. But my father and mother took the attitude that since my sister did not know what she was talking about, she probably had not sinned to any great extent. But it was a good many years before she again had courage to express a doubt as to the Virgin Birth. And if she goes to Heaven she will probably find that Mrs. Carter and the Preacher have instructed St. Peter to catechize her about it, and not to admit her until she has atoned fully for her heinous offense at the age of ten.
3
Some of our families in which there was an unfortunate excess of girls permitted them to have callers on Sunday afternoon, but such affairs were conducted in a prim and prissy manner. Holiness was the motif. The boy, if he had been a good lad all week and had done nothing to affront God or the Preacher, was dressed in his Sunday suit, and the young lady wore the frock that was kept in reserve for weddings, funerals and baptizings, and those cannibalistic exercises called the Lord’s Supper. And it was definitely understood that if a boy called on a girl on a Sunday, he was courting her, and intended to propose marriage. They could not talk; they must converse, and their conversation must be on subjects both inspiring and uplifting. These bons mots that are now known as wise cracks were frowned upon, and a repetition of them resulted in the young gentleman being shown the door.