Perhaps it would be better to lay all the troubles and the tangles down in the Hand that overrules it all, and say, in peace and restfulness, "He knoweth the end from the beginning."
CHAPTER XIII.
"CROSS PURPOSES."
When people start out with the express design of having a good time, irrespective of other people's plans or feelings—in short, with a general forgetfulness of the existence of others—they are very likely to find at the close of the day that a failure has been made.
It did not take the entire day to convince Eurie Mitchell that Chautauqua was not the synonym for absolute, unalloyed pleasure. You will remember that she detached herself from her party in the early morning, and set out to find pleasure, or, as she phrased it, "fun." She imagined them to be interchangeable terms. She had not meant to be deserted, but had hoped to secure Ruth for her companion, she not having the excuse of wishing to report the meetings to call her to them. Failing in her, in case she should have a fit of obstinacy, and choose to attend the meetings, Eurie counted fully upon Flossy as an ally. Much to her surprise, and no little to her chagrin, Flossy proved decidedly the more determined of the two. No amount of coaxing—and Eurie even descended to the employment of that weapon—had the least effect. To be sure, Flossy presented no more powerful argument than that it did not look well to come to the meeting and then not attend it. But she carried her point and left the young searcher for fun with a clear field.
Now fun rarely comes for the searching; it is more likely to spring upon one unawares. So, though Eurie walked up and down, and stared about her, and lost herself in the labyrinths of the intersecting paths, and tore her dress in a thicket, and caught her foot in a bog, to the great detriment of shoe and temper, she still found not what she was searching for. Several times she came in sight of the stand; once or twice in sound of the speaker's voice; but having so determinately carried her point in the morning, she did not choose to abandon her position and appear among the listeners, though sorely tempted to do so. She wandered into several side tents in hope of finding something to distract her attention; but she only found that which provoked her.
In one of them a young lady and gentleman were bending eagerly over a book and talking earnestly. They were interesting looking people, and she hovered near, hoping that she had at last found the "children" who would "play" with her—a remembrance of one of her nursery stories coming to her just then, and a ludicrous sense of her resemblance to the truant boy who spent the long, bright day in the woods searching for one not too busy to play.
But these two were discussing nothing of more importance than the lesson for the coming Sabbath; and though she hovered in their vicinity for some time, she caught only stray words—names of places in the far away Judean land, that seemed to her like a name in the Arabian Nights; or an eager dissertation on the different views of eminent commentators on this or that knotty point; and so engrossed were they in their work that they bestowed on her only the slightest passing glance, and then bent over their books.
She went away in disgust. At the next tent half a dozen ladies were sitting. She halted there. Here at last were some people who, like herself, were bored with this everlasting meeting, and had escaped to have a bit of gossip. Who knew but she might creep into the circle and find pleasant acquaintances? So she drew nearer and listened a moment to catch the subject under discussion. She heard the voice of prayer; and a nearer peep showed her that every head was bowed on the seat in front, and one of the ladies, in a low voice, was asking for enlightenment on the lesson for the coming Sabbath!
"What wonderful lesson can it be that is so fearfully important?" she muttered, as she plunged recklessly into the mud and made her way in all haste up the hill without attempting any more tents. "Who ever heard such an ado made about a Sunday-school lesson? These people all act as though there was nothing of any consequence anywhere but Sunday-schools. I guess it is the first time that such a furor was ever gotten up over teaching a dozen verses to a parcel of children. I wonder if the people at home ever make such a uproar about the lesson? I know some teachers who own up, on the way to church, that they don't know where the lesson is. This must be a peculiar one. I wonder how I shall contrive to discover where it is? The girls won't know, of course. With all their boasted going to meeting they know no more about lessons than I do myself. I would really like to find out. I mean to ask the next person I meet. It will be in accordance with the fashion of the place. Think of my walking down Broadway of a sunny morning and stopping a stranger with the query, 'Will you tell me where the lesson is, please?'" And at this point Eurie burst into a laugh over the absurdity of the picture she had conjured.