“How is it possible that you can desire to go to that stuffy little room and meet a dozen illiterate men and women or, is it a mistaken sense of duty which impels you?”
This was her husband’s question regarding the suggestion of Ruth that they go to the weekly prayer-meeting. His tone was not unkind, but there was just a touch of raillery in it, which was at all times harder for Ruth to bear than positive coldness.
“You must be content to tolerate my tastes,” she said, “since you can not sympathize with them. Endurance is the most that I can expect.”
He laughed good-naturedly.
“Now, Ruth, dear, don’t be cross. I haven’t the least idea of being so, and I propose to humor your whims to the last degree. I will even escort you to that most uninviting room and call for you again, enduring, meantime, with what grace I can the sorrows of my country solitude. What more can you expect? But in return for such magnanimity you might enlighten my curiosity. Why do you go? How can I help being curious? In town, now, it was different. While I might even there question your choice of entertainments, at least you met people of culture, with whom you had certain ideas in common. But really and truly, my dear wife, I am at home in this region of country, so far as knowledge of the mental caliber of the people is concerned, and I assure you you will look in vain for a man or woman of brains. Outside of the minister—who is well enough, I suppose, though he is a perfect bore to me—there is a general and most alarming paucity of ideas. Besides which, there is no gas in the church, you know, and kerosene lamps are fearful at their best, and these, I judge, are at their worst. So, taking the subject in all its bearings, I think I am justified in asking what can be your motive?”
Is it any wonder that there were tears in Ruth’s eyes, as she turned them toward her husband? How explain to one who would not understand the meaning of her terms why she sought the little country prayer-meeting?
“Judge Burnham,” she said, speaking slowly, and trying to choose the words with care, “is it unknown to you that I profess to expect to meet there with the Lord Jesus Christ?”
“Oh, that indeed!” he said, and the lightness of his tone so jarred on her that she shivered. “I believe that is an article in your creed. I don’t discredit it in its intellectual and spiritual sense, but what does it prove? I suppose you meet him equally in this room, and I suppose the surroundings of this room are as conducive to communion with the Unseen Presence as are those of that forlorn little square box of a church. Isn’t that the most doleful building for a church that it was ever your misery to see? It is abominably ventilated; for that matter churches nearly always are. I wonder if there is any thing in church creeds that conscientiously holds people from observing the laws of health and comfort? I don’t believe there is an opera-house in the United States that would be tolerated for a season, if the question of light and heat and ventilation had been ignored in it as entirely as they are in churches.”
What was there to be said to such as he? Perhaps Ruth said the best thing under the circumstances. “Well, come, don’t let us discuss the subject further; there is the bell; please take me down to the poor little church, for I really want to go.”
“Certainly,” he said, rising promptly, and making ready with a good-natured air. He attended her to the very door and was on its threshold in waiting when the hour of prayer was over, and was gracious and attentive in the extreme during the rest of the evening, making no allusion to the prayer-meeting, after the first few mischievous and pointed questions as to the exercises, questions which tried Ruth’s nerves to the utmost, for the reason that the little meeting had been so utterly devoid of anything like life and earnestness that it was a trial rather than a help to her.