CHAPTER IX
How beautiful wuz the shore as we approached it, its scenery different from Jonesville scenery, but yet worth seein’––yes, indeed! Mountain and valley, rock and green velvet verdure, tall palm trees shadin’ kinder low houses, but still beautiful and attractive. And what beautiful colors greeted our weary eyes as we drew nigher. I thought of that gate of Jerusalem the Golden, all enamelled with emerald, amethyst, chalcedony, and pearl sot in gold. The golden brown earth made from melted lava, the feathery foliage of the palms that riz up beyend the dazzlin’ white beach, the crystal blue waters with myriad-hued fishes playing down in its crystal depths. Oh, how fair the seen as we approached nearer and see plainer and plainer the pictured beauty of the shore. Shinin’ green valley, emerald-topped mountain, amethyst sea; which wuz the most beautiful it wuz hard to say.
Evangeline Noble stood off by herself leanin’ on the rail of the deck as if she see through the beauty into the inner heart of things, and see in her mind’s eye all the work her own people, the missionaries, had done there. The thought that they had taken the natives like diamonds incrusted in dirt and cleansed them of the blackest of their habits. She see in the past natives burying their children alive, putting to death the mentally weak, worshipping horrible idols, killing and eating their enemies, etc., etc. But now, under the blessed light of the torch, that long procession of martyrs had held up, the former things wuz passin’ away, and she, too, wuz one of that blessed host of God’s helpers. She looked riz up and radiant as if she see way beyend the islands 106 of the sea and all she hoped to do for her Master on earth, and as if he wuz talking to her now, teaching her his will.
Nigher to us Elder Wessel wuz standing, and he sez, lifting up his eyes to heaven:
“Oh islands of the sea! where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.”
And Arvilly hearn him and snapped out, “I d’no as they’re so very vile till traders and other civilized folks teach ’em to drink and cheat and tear round.” His eyes lost in a minute that heavenly expression they had wore and sez he:
“Oh, islands of the sea! where every prospect pleases and eat each other up and etcetery.”
“Well, I d’no,” sez she, “but I’d ruther be killed to once by a club and eat up and be done with than to die by inches as wimmen do under our civilized American license laws. The savages kill their enemies, but the American savage kills the one that loves him best, and has to see her children turned into brutes and ruffians, under what is called a Christian dispensation. There hain’t no hypocrisy and Phariseeism in a good straight club death, and most likely whilst he wuz eatin’ me up he wouldn’t pose before foreign nations as a reformer and civilizer of the world.”
“Oh, Sister Arvilly,” sez he, “think of the hideous idols they worship! You can’t approve of that,” sez he.
But Arvilly, the ondanted, went on, “Well I never see or hearn of any savage idol to compare in hegiousness with the Whiskey Power that is built up and pampered and worshipped by Americans rich and poor, high and low, Church and State. Let any one make a move to tear that idol down from its altar, made of dead men’s bones, and see what a flutter there is in the camp, how new laws are made and old laws shoved aside, and new laws fixed over, and the highest and the lowest will lie and cringe and drag themselves on their knees in front of it to protect it and worship it. Don’t talk to me about your wood idols; they hain’t nothin’ to be compared to it. They stay where they’re put, they don’t 107 rare round and kill their worshippers as this Whiskey idol duz. I’d think enough sight more of some men high in authority if they would buy a good clean basswood idol and put it up in the Capitol at Washington, D. C., and kneel down before it three times a day, than to do what they are doin’; they wouldn’t do half the hurt and God knows it, and He would advise ’em that way if they ever got nigh enough to Him so’s He could speak to ’em at all.”