The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races

by Oscar Micheaux

Apparently he had succeeded, for, on the Sundays that followed, Sidney saw only those who were invited, facing the congregation.

Directly over the rostrum hung a small balcony, which contained the choir and a pipe organ. Following a song, the pastor came forward. He was a tall man, with width in proportion, perhaps two hundred and twenty pounds. Not unlike the average Negro of today, he was brown-skinned. His hair, a curly mass of blackness, was brushed back from a high forehead. His voice, as he opened the sermon, was deep and resonant. And for his text that day, he took "Does It Pay!"

Not since Sidney Wyeth had attended church and heard sermons, had he been so stirred by a discourse! Back into the ancient times; to the history of Judea and Caesar, he took the listener, and then subtly applied it to the life of today. Never had he heard one whose eloquence could so blend with everyday issues, and cause them to react as moral uplift. For he knew the black Oman's need. Pen cannot describe its effect upon Sidney Wyeth. It seemed, as the words of the pastor came to him, revealing a thousand moral truths, which he had felt, but could not express, that he had come from afar for a great thing, that sermon. It lifted him out of the chaos of the present, and brought him to appreciate what life, and the duty of existence really meant.

Having, in a sense, drifted away from the pious training he had received as a youth, Sidney Wyeth was suddenly jerked back to the past, and enjoyed the experience. On account of his progressive ideas, he had been accused, by some of his people, since his return to live among them, of being an unbeliever. He was often told that he was not a Christian; they meant, of course, that he was not a member of a church, which, to most colored people, is equivalent to disbelief. Sidney Wyeth saw the life, the instance of Christ as a moral lesson.

When the sermon closed, Wyeth had one desire, and fulfilled it, and that was to shake Henry Hugh Hodder's hand; moreover, to tell him, in the only way he knew how, what the sermon had been to him.

He did so, and was received very simply.

As he approached the rostrum, at the foot of which stood the pastor, shaking hands with many others who had come forward in the meantime, he was like one walking on air. He recalled the many sermons preached to satisfy the emotion of an ignorant mass, and which, in hundreds of instances, went wide of the mark, causing a large portion of the congregation to rise in their seats, and give utterance to emotional discordance, the same being often forgotten by the morrow.

Hodder was not only as he was just described, but he proved to Sidney Wyeth to be a practical, informed, and observing man as well. When he had received the card, he inquired of the country from whence Sidney came, and related briefly the notices he had followed, regarding its opening a few years previous.

At that moment, a large man, almost white—that is, he was white, although a colored man—was introduced to him as Mr. Herman. He proved to be the proprietor of the large barber shop on Plum Street, which had caught Sidney's attention the day he came. After Mr. Herman's introduction, he met many others prominent in Negro circles, including the president and cashier of the local Negro bank. And thus it came that Sidney Wyeth met these, the new Negro, and the leaders of a new dispensation.

Two hours after the services had closed, he passed a big church on Audubon Avenue; a church of the "old style religion" and, which most Negroes still like. It was then after two o'clock. Morning service was still in order—no, the sermon had closed, but collection hadn't. Out of curiosity, he entered. The pastor had, during this period, concentrated his arts on the collection table. He was just relating the instance of people who put their dollar over one eye, so closely, that it was liable to freeze to the eye and bring about utter blindness. "So now," he roared, brandishing his arms in a rally call, "We jes' need a few dollahs mo' to make the collection fo'ty-fo'. I'll put in a quata', who'll do the rest," whereupon the choir gave forth a mighty tune, that filled the church with a strain which made some feel like dancing.