I made a copy of the crazy sign. Here it is:
NO AUTOMOBILES ALLOWED
Our streets are privately owned, so we have the legal right to prohibit the use of automobiles within our corporation limits. Nor do we permit dancing, the use of any intoxicating drinks, card playing, the smoking or chewing of tobacco, or the playing of any musical instrument except the harp. Our laws and ordinances will be strictly enforced.
| Noah |  | |
| Jonah | ||
| Adam | Committee on Civil Affairs | |
| Moses | ||
| Goliath |
CHAPTER X
OUR MEETING WITH GOLIATH
There wasn’t so much sand here. More black dirt. We could see stuff growing in a field. Still, it wasn’t the best kind of soil—not for Illinois. And I had a hunch that Jonah and his gang had bought the land for a song. That is why they had settled here.
And what kind of people were they, I wondered, curious over the outfit, of which there seemed to be about thirty or forty families, all living in squatty, unpainted houses. Did the men and women alike have names out of the Bible? Had they dropped their own names to take up the Bible names? If so, was my conclusion, they must be a gang of religious nuts.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Religion is all right—good religion, I mean. Take Dad and Mother—they both belong to the Tutter Methodist church, and when Sunday comes around we all dress up, as we should, and trot down the street to listen to the preacher—only I don’t always stay to hear the preaching, though I’m always on hand for Sunday-school. That kind of religion is all right. It keeps a fellow honest and square in his own neighborhood. He’s a better citizen than the fellow who hasn’t any religion. Take my dad again—you don’t hear him cussing around like some of the ignorant dumb-bells who never see the inside of a church. I guess not.
But freak religion is a kind of side-show. It makes monkey-work out of stuff that God intended to be serious and sacred. Along comes some half-baked guy who thinks he’s a prophet, and getting a bunch of simple-minded people together he starts a “heaven on earth,” or some such bunk. And usually in the end he gets the people’s money! I had a second cousin who got stung that way. A “prophet” picked him up, with the story that the world was coming to an end that year, so my soft-headed relation, after paying for his ascension robe, kept just enough money to last a year and the “prophet” got the rest. That sort of reads as though in my mind all “prophets” are crooks. As a matter of fact you don’t find many of them doing business. And out of what few there are probably the majority really believe their own bunk. They’re just on the wrong track, that’s all. Kind of cuckoo, to use a plain word.
I read those names over again: Noah! I had heard of him, all right—he was the fellow who built the ark. Jonah! Every kid knows the story of Jonah and the whale. Adam! The fellow who ate the green-apple pie, of course. Moses! I wasn’t quite sure about him. Goliath! Oh, yes—David and Goliath! David was the little wart with the sling-shot and Goliath was the giant. Zing went the sling-shot and down went old blunderbuss. Hip-hip-hurray for David!