I was constantly under the influence of my mother’s people, who did what they could to overcome the pernicious influence of the Methodists; they prevailed upon me to visit them and attend their revivals and other religious meetings, and otherwise attempted to oversee and assure my eventual salvation. Some of my father’s people, too, had come up from the South, from Virginia and North Carolina and Mississippi, and had settled around Farmington. Many of them were excessively pious, although it is my recollection that they did not carry their love of God and man into the conduct of their temporal affairs; religion was not permitted to interfere with business. Between them and my mother’s people there was a constant, although not open, fight for my soul, and the souls of my sister and brothers. The bout appears to have been a draw.
2
We were a musical family. My elder brother and I played the harmonica, or French harp, as we called it then, and my sister performed capably upon the organ, the guitar and the mandolin. She was particularly adept upon the guitar, and enjoyed an enviable reputation for the way she whanged out the fandango pieces and the tune descriptive of the Battle of Sebastopol, which requires much banging and thumping and difficult fingering. My father was a fiddler. He did not know one note from another, but he could tuck his fiddle under his chin, tap the floor with his foot and play with great spirit such tunes as “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” “Billy in the Low Ground,” “Turkey in the Straw” and “The Arkansas Traveler.” But his muse was dumb if he could not pat his foot. I could also beat a snare drum passably, and later I learned to play the violin, the cornet and the alto horn, so that we had quite a family orchestra, and our house was frequently filled with music. Anyhow we played these instruments.
But not on Sunday. Our Preacher assured us that music on Sunday, except in church, was sinful and an affront to the Heavenly Father, and on Saturday night, after a final orgy of melody, my mother gathered up the guitars and mandolins, the fiddles, the drums and the harmonicas and all of the other musical instruments, even the jew’s-harp, and put them under lock and key until Monday morning. We could not even play a comb on Sunday, although on rare occasions, usually when the Preacher was there and gave permission and absolution from sinful consequences, I was permitted to bring out my big harmonica, from which I could produce the sonorous tones of an organ, and play church hymns such as “Rock of Ages” and “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” But I was forbidden to play “Turkey in the Straw” or “The Mocking Bird” with variations. The latter was my favorite tune, because by jiggling my hand over the harmonica I could produce a very effective trill which I fondly believed was as beautiful as the singing of a canary, but if I launched into such a tune on Sunday I had debauched the Sabbath, and my harmonica was taken from me. And frequently I myself was taken into the woodshed and taught a proper respect for the Lord’s Day.
Under no circumstances could we play the fiddle in our house on Sunday, because of all music, that which came from the fiddle was the most sinful. It was the Devil’s instrument. No fiddling on Sunday had been a cardinal rule of my father’s family since Colonial days in Virginia, and later in Mississippi and in North Carolina my grandmother had compelled her Negro slaves to put up their musical instruments from Saturday night to Monday morning. Eventually I took lessons from the music teacher in Farmington and learned to call the fiddle a violin, and as I grew older I played when I pleased, although not very successfully. But so long as the instrument remained a fiddle it was played in our house on Sunday on only one occasion. And then the performance was a neighborhood scandal, and only the fact that the instrument had been played by a Preacher saved us from getting into trouble with God and His representatives in Farmington.
This tweaking of the heavenly nose occurred during a District Conference, when the visiting preachers were parceled out among the faithful of the local Methodist church. Two came to us, one a young man filled with good works and a constant, fretful worry over the low estate of the human race, and the other an old man who had been a wicked sinner in his time and who had never been able to resist an occasional temptation to have a good time. He was a Virginian and an accomplished fiddler, but he could play nothing but dance music, which the darkies had taught him. The first Sunday they were at our house my father admitted that we had a fiddle, and the old Preacher demanded that it be brought out for him to perform upon. My father and mother were in terror all afternoon for fear that the neighbors would hear the wailing of the fiddle, although they prevailed upon the old man to use a mute and the music could hardly be heard outside the room. We were particularly afraid that a devout Sister, who lived next door to us and whose principal occupation was going to church, might hear it; if she had it would have been nothing short of a catastrophe, for the tale would have been all over town before nightfall. So we closed the windows and the doors, muted the fiddle and put the old Preacher in the parlor, where he fiddled until he had sinned enough. But even then several people passing along the street heard it, and I do not think that we ever quite lived it down. We could convince no one that the fiddle had been played by a Man of God. Everyone knew better; Men of God did not do such things.
3
Every Wednesday night we attended prayer meeting, and on Sundays we went to Sunday school and twice to church. And on Sunday afternoon, and on week days, there were the sessions of the various church organizations. We had grace before meat in our home, and when the Preacher came to dinner he delivered long-winded prayers on the universal theme of “gimme.” We did not have that emotional orgy called family prayer, but I did not escape it; I encountered it in many Farmington homes and in the houses of almost all of my relatives.
It was particularly oppressive in the home of an oppressively devout kinsman whom I called uncle. He was not actually my uncle; he was related to my father by marriage, and I do not believe there was any blood kinship, but I thought of him as uncle, and he had a certain measure of authority over me, so that to a considerable extent I was under his control and subject to his influence until I became intelligent enough to have an occasional thought of my own.
My uncle was an extraordinarily pious man, an official of our church and of our Sunday school, and a leader in every movement designed to entice the sinner from his wicked ways and lead him to the true religion of the Wesleyans. He was intent upon salvation for everyone, and let no opportunity pass to serve the Lord. He frowned upon laughter, and although he had a very charming family, there was little joy in his home; a laugh seemed to make him uncomfortable and start a train of dismal religious thought, and I gathered the impression that all mirth was a direct and studied affront to God.