I cannot better illustrate what I am trying to explain than by relating what is, to me, one of the most precious and altogether satisfactory memories connected with our Springfield experiences.
Four months after our removal to the beautiful city, I received a formal request (everything up to that time had a smack of formality to my apprehension) that I would take charge of a young men’s Bible-class, the teacher of which had left the town. The application was startling, for not one of the young fellows had ever called on me, or evinced other consciousness of the insignificant fact of my existence than was implied in a grave salutation at the church-door and on the street. After consultation with my husband I accepted the position, and on the next Sabbath was duly inducted into office by the superintendent. That is, he took me to the door of the class-room and announced: “Mrs. Terhune, young gentlemen, who will conduct your class in the place of Mr. L., resigned.”
I walked up the room to face eight bearded men, the youngest twenty-two years of age, drawn up in line of battle at the far end. I bowed and said “Good-afternoon,” in taking the seat and table set for me in front of the line. They bowed in silence. I began the attack by disclaiming the idea of “teaching” them, concealing as best I could my consternation at finding men where I had looked for lads. I asked “the privilege of studying with them,” and thanked them for the compliment of the invitation to do this. Then I opened the Bible and delivered a familiar running lecture upon the lesson for the day. Not a question was asked by one of the dumb eight, and not a comment was made at the close of the “exercises” upon what had been said. I went through the miserable form of shaking hands with them all as we separated, and carried home a thoroughly discouraged spirit. By the following Sunday I hit upon the idea of calling upon each student to read a reference text, as it occurred in the course of the lecture, and I took care there should be plenty of them. That was the first crack in the ice. Encouraged by the sound of their own voices, the young fellows put a query or two, and I used these as nails upon which to hang observations not indicated in the “lesson-papers.” Next week there were sixteen in line. Before the first year was out there were forty, and they gave a dramatic entertainment in a neighboring hall, which netted a sum large enough to enlarge the class-room to double the original size. They decorated it with their own hands, and I was with them every evening thus employed.
Still, there was never a syllable to indicate that this was anything but a business venture. I love boys with my whole heart, and I had said this and more in their hearing, eliciting no response.
At the end of the second year, when there were fifty members in the class, one of the eldest of the number removed from Springfield to a distant city. One of the greatest surprises of my life was in the form of a letter I had the week after he had bidden me good-bye as coolly as if he had expected to see me next Sunday as usual.
He began by telling me how often he had wished he could express what those Sunday afternoons had been in his life. He “feared that I might have thought him unresponsive and ungrateful.”
“If indeed you ever troubled yourself to bestow more than a passing thought upon this one of the many to whom you have ministered,” he went on, “I don’t believe you ever noticed that I let nobody else take the seat next to you on the left? I used to go very early to make sure of it. I shall unite with the church here next Sunday. You have a right to know of a purpose, formed weeks ago, in that class-room—the most sacred spot to me on earth.”
He wrote to me of his marriage two years later, then of the coming of his first-born son. About once a year I heard from him, and that he was prospering in business and happy in his home. Ten years ago I had a paper containing a marked obituary-notice bearing his name.
The same story, with variations that do not affect the general purport of the class-history, might be repeated here. I hear of “my boys” from all parts of the world. All are gray-haired now who have not preceded their grateful leader to the Changeless Home.
There were sixty-six of them when I told them, one Sunday afternoon, five years after our first meeting, that Doctor Terhune had accepted a pressing call to a Brooklyn church, and that I must leave them. The news was absolutely unexpected, and a dead silence ensued. Then one fellow, who had been received into the church with ten others of our class, at the preceding communion season, arose in his place: