The bright angels of letters never appear in answer to prayer; they come out of nowhere and knock at unwatched gates. But the wailing of jeremiads before the high altar is not calculated to soften the hearts of the gods who hand down genius from the skies. It is related that a clerk in the patent office asked to be assigned to a post in some other department on the ground that practically everything had been invented and he wanted to change before he lost his job. That was in 1833.
Courage, comrade! The songs have not all been written nor the tales all told.
THE CHURCH FOR HONEST SINNERS
THE young man who greeted me cheerfully in the lobby of the hotel in Warburton, my native town, and handed me a card setting forth the hours of services at St. John’s Church, evidently assumed that I was a commercial traveller. I was in no wise offended by his mistake, as I sincerely admire the heralds of prosperity and sit with them at meat whenever possible. I am a neurologist by profession, but write occasionally, and was engaged just then in gathering material for a magazine article on occupational diseases. A friend in the Department of Labor had suggested Warburton as a likely hunting-ground, as children employed there in a match-factory were constantly being poisoned, and a paint-factory also was working dire injury to its employees.
“I’m afraid,” I replied to the engaging young representative of St. John’s Men’s League, “that my religious views wouldn’t be tolerated at St. John’s. But I thank you, just the same.”
I had been baptized in St. John’s and remembered it well from my youth. On my way up-town from the station I had noted its handsome new edifice of impeccable Gothic.
“We have the best music in town, and our minister is a live wire. He knows how to preach to men—he’s cut big slices out of the other churches.”
“Gives the anxious sinner a clean bill of health, does he?”
“Well, most of the leading citizens go there now,” he answered, politely ignoring my uncalled-for irony. “Men who never went to church before; the men who do things in Warburton. Our minister’s the best preacher in the diocese. His subject this morning is ‘The Prodigal Son.’”
I felt guiltily that the topic might have been chosen providentially to mark my return, and it occurred to me that this might be a good chance to see Warburton in its best bib and tucker. However, having planned to spend the morning in the slum which the town had acquired with its prosperity, I hardened my heart against the young solicitor, in spite of his unobtrusive and courteous manner of extending the invitation.