"You've none to keep as I can particular see. I have never seen you drink anything stronger than beer when you've been with me. You seem to go along with me, to see me and the others act a fool. Sometimes you impress me as being a strange person.... I wonder. Now I wonder...."
"Where is a church that would be likely to appeal to you and myself?"
"Up on Herald Street is one that I think will appeal to you. You're serious. Me—I'm quite unfit for any; but I'll take you up there, and sit through one of Hodder's sermons if you care to go. My people are members of that church, and it is a progressive one."
"We will attend services there—Sunday morning."
Wyeth became a regular visitor.
The following Sunday, the pastor appraised the congregation of the fact, that on the following Sunday, they would have with them the Reverend W. Jacobs, the energetic young man who was doing such great work for the training of wayward children. And this takes our story into a matter of grave human interest.
Coincident with better educational facilities, and the more careful training of the children, time had brought a change that was slowly but surely being felt by these black people in the south. It has already been stated, that the Baptist church required little literary training in order to preach; but, in this church, it is quite different, and no man would be tolerated as a minister, who had not a great amount of theological, as well as literary training.
Henry Hugh Hodder was a man, not only prepared in the lines of theology and literature, but was fully supplied with practical knowledge as well. He had, at the time Sidney Wyeth became acquainted with him, gathered to his church, a majority of Attalia's best black people. His popularity was, moreover, on the increase, and his church was filled regularly with a class of people who listened, studied and applied to their welfare, what he said each Sunday in the pulpit.
His church stood on a corner to the edge of the black belt, and near a fashionable white neighborhood. And it had, at the time it was constructed, caused considerable agitation. When Sidney and Spoon came to the door, prayer was being offered, and when it was over, they entered, taking seats near the door.
It was a nicely ventilated church, with large colored windows, arranged to allow air to pass in without coming directly upon the congregation. At the front, a small rostrum rose to the level of the rear, and contained, in addition to the altar, only four chairs. Sidney was told afterwards, that, due to a practice always followed in other churches, particularly the Baptist, of allowing journeymen preachers to put themselves before the congregation uninvited, Hodder had removed the chairs in order to discourage such practice.