Ah, well, they lived through it. It is surprising how many trials we do succeed in pushing through and coming out alive on the other side!
The cantata argued and frowned and sparred and grumbled its way into perfection. The large hall was engaged for two evenings, because a complete rehearsal at the hall was a necessity. The town was duly placarded, inviting the public to the unique entertainment gotten up by the energetic young people of the Penn Avenue Church. The usual number of street jokes floated through the air, about the "Penn Avenue Theatre," or the "religious opera," sent afloat by that large class of irreligious young men who inhabit every town and city, and who seem to know by instinct just what is appropriate to a religious body, and just what is not. When the church and the world start out to walk hand in hand, it is a curious thing that it is always the world that sees the inconsistencies, and laughs, and always the church that is blind.
The modern Queen Esther did hear of the trouble, and, unlike her great namesake, faltered and pouted and would have nothing to do with the affair, so at a late hour a new queen had to be hastily chosen, who marred the occasion by forgetting some of her parts; and this is only a hint of the sea of trials which encompassed the executive committee that evening. Still, as I said, they lived, and came to the hour when they sat down to count their gains. From this exercise they rose up sadder and wiser girls. The costumes had been so unique, and so rich, and were of such brilliant colors that, being available for the occasion only, many things had to be bought, and the bills sent to the treasurer. The purchases did not seem many nor heavy, as they were bought by different people, at different times, but they counted up so mercilessly when the figures were set in those inexorable rows! Then the charge for the hall was simply enormous. The poor committee looked at each other and said this a dozen times during the counting up; the idea of charging as much for the use of the hall for the rehearsal as they did for the regular evening! Who would have imagined such a thing! Then the bills of the piano lenders were more than they had supposed possible, and the printer's bill was another ruinous item. Will it not be easily credited by the great army of the initiated that nineteen dollars and two cents gave the sum of the net proceeds of all these weeks of outlay! Actually nineteen dollars and two cents! "There!" said the treasurer, tossing down her pencil with a determined air, "I shall not add that column again! I've begun at the top, and in the middle, and added the fives and the nines separately, and done everything I can think of, and it comes every time to that miserable little nineteen dollars and two cents! Let's take the nineteen dollars to pay for the shoe leather we've worn-out, and hand in the two cents to the library committee, and then go and drown ourselves."
They laughed, as girls will, at almost anything, if somebody will only lead off. But when they reached home they, every one of them, cried. Poor things! My heart aches for them. There is no class of workers more utterly to be pitied than those who struggle and toil, making bricks often times without straw, and who find at the close that, some way, the bricks seem not to have been worth the cost.
It was months afterward, winter indeed, before the library association gasped again. Then up rose the women, the respectable, middle-aged, matronly women. The library must be replenished, money must be raised. It would not do to set girls at it; girls always got into trouble, they were so sensitive, so quick to take offence, so lacking in self-control. They—the matrons—would do this thing speedily and quietly. They would have an oyster supper on a large scale, make preparation for a great many guests, furnish oysters in every possible style, and with them such coffee as only they could make, to say nothing of the inevitable cake and cream, and side dishes, for those who did not relish oysters. So they went to work, quietly, skillfully, expeditiously. Baking, broiling, frying, stewing! What tales could not the kitchens and pantries have told during those days! They got through to the weary end, not without heart-burnings and a few tears, and much pressure of lips lest they speak unadvisedly, and occasional home confidences not flattering to their fellow workers, and I protest that in this age of the world, with Satan so manifestly at the helm as he is, it is not possible to get up a church fair, festival, opera, or what not, without these, but the matrons were as they had promised to be, on the whole, discreet, forbearing, and silent; no open breaches came.
The evening of the supper came. Dark!—was it ever darker? Rain!—not a fitful dash with gleams of moonlight between. Just a steady, pelting, pitiless rain, mud at every crossing, pools of water at some. Warm—so warm that, to the average oyster eater, the very thought of one of those bivalves was disgusting. A few damp yet resolute people stood around in the corners of the great room, and steadily ate large dishes of oysters, double dishes, some of them, and the minister, the one who perhaps could afford it least, ushered in from the dark outer world, in the course of the evening, seven wet, hungry newsboys, and gave them such a supper as they will tell of twenty years hence, and paid the bills! Meantime the cooked oysters in huge quantities were sent out to the deserving poor, and the uncooked ones were forgotten and left in the warm room all night, and by morning were not fit for the deserving poor, or any other poor! In the early forenoon of the next day, while the rain was thus falling drearily, a few draggled and discouraged females wended their way homeward, laden with soup tureens, cooking utensils, and a loaf each of cake! And this was the outcome of Penn Avenue's third effort!
Now you are not to suppose that this church was poor. It was not wealthy in the sense that some city churches are, which need only to mention a want to have it supplied from a full treasury; but its members, the great majority of them, lived in comfortable, and some of them in elegant homes; none of them ever arranged for himself to have a supper brought in by his friends, and eaten by his friends, and paid for by his friends, in order to help him through with the current expenses of the year. Not one of them had ever been known to solicit articles for a fancy fair in order to help pair house rent, or even pew rent. All of them were in the habit of putting their hands in their pockets and furnishing the money with which to meet all these reasonable needs. Why, then, did they resort to such pitiable devices to replenish their church library? Is there any person who can give a satisfactory answer to that question?
I want also to be understood about those young ladies. They were by no means working for self-gratification; they were honest in their desire to raise money for the cause; neither were they of a more quarrelsome disposition than others of their age and position. The simple fact was, that the unusual surroundings, the endless rehearsals, the posing in characters strange to them, the curious costumes which made them feel unlike themselves, the need for haste, and undue exertion, the necessity for planning for so many contingencies, the sense of responsibility, the consciousness of criticism freely offered, the possibility of failure, all these strained heavily on young nerves unused to great strains, and produced the highly wrought condition of nervous irritability which made molehills loom up like mountains, and made the things that would on ordinary occasions have raised a merry laugh start the quick tears instead. I take the bold ground that misunderstandings, and heart-burnings, and coldnesses, sometimes far-reaching in their influences and results, are almost necessary accompaniments to work of this character; there are notable exceptions, but exceptions emphasize rules. Really now, how many church festivals, fairs, concerts, cantatas, Christmas dramas, and what not, have you watched closely from their inception to their close, without hearing of a jar which did more or less harm?
What does this prove? I am not proposing to prove anything by it, I am only stating certain facts. Also, I am advocating the cause of the Penn Avenue Church; it was like unto other churches.