Oh, those two terrible years! The best I can say for them or the worst is this, that outside the school and at home was heaven; inside was hell. This young professor had the German idea of stern, vigorous control; in which he was supported by the parish rector. He whipped boys vigorously, and possibly for the type of youth under him this was just the thing. They were unquestionably a tough, thick-bottomed lot, and they made my life a nightmare into the bargain. It seems to me now as I look back on it that I learned nothing at all, not even catechism. The school rooms were always being prowled over by the rector and various nuns and sisters superior, whose sole concern seemed to be that we should learn our catechism and be “graduated,” at twelve years of age, whether we knew anything or not. Think of it! I am not grossly lying or exaggerating about the Catholic Church and its methods. I am telling you what I felt, saw, endured.
During these two years, as it seems to me, I never learned anything about anything. There was a “Bible history” there which entertained me so much that I read in it constantly, to the neglect of nearly everything else; and some of the boys brought “Diamond Dick” or its that day equivalent, and these we read under the seats, I among others, though I liked my “Bible history” and my geography (such as it was) better. On several occasions I had my hands severely marked by a ruler, wielded by the Herr Professor Falk—great red welts put across both my palms, because I whispered or laughed or did not pay attention. And once he pulled my ear so hard that I cried. He had a “habit” (shall I call it) of striking disorderly boys across the cheek so hard and so fiercely that their faces blazed for an hour; or of seizing them, laying them over a bench and beating them with a short rawhide whip. Once I saw a boy whom he intended so to whip turn on him, strike him across the face, and run and jump out the window to the ground, say seven feet below. To me, at that time, with my viewpoint on life, it was dreadful. My heart used to beat so I thought I would faint, and I lived in constant dread lest I be seized and handled in the same way. Whenever we met him or the Catholic priest or any other dignitary connected with the school or church we were supposed (compelled is the right word) to take off our hats. And if it was a priest we had to say, in German, “praised be Jesus Christ,” to which he would reply “Amen.” When school was over, at four P. M., I would creep away, haunted by the thought that on the morrow I would have to return.
Next to the school was the Church, and this also had been more or less of a torture to me, though not quite so much so. Here the Reverend Anton Dudenhausen (I am not inventing his name) was supreme, and here I made my first confession (no real sins at all, really—fibbing to my mother was the worst), and received my first communion. It was not a very striking church, but then with its gilt altars, the candles, the stained glass windows, the statues and stations of the cross, it seemed quite wonderful—only I was always afraid of it all! It seemed alien to the soul of me.
Entering it this day I found it just the same, not quite as large as I had fancied but still of good size as such churches go.
I recalled now with a kind of half pleasure, half pain, all the important functions that went on in this church, the celebrations of Easter, Christmas (the whole Christ-child manger fable set forth life size and surrounded by candles), Palm Sunday, Good (or Black) Friday, when everything in the church was draped in black, the forty days of Lent, and the masses, high or low, sung on every great saint’s day or when bishops or missionaries (the latter to billysunday us) or other dignitaries came to visit us. My father was always much wrought up about these things when he was at home and the church always seemed to blaze with banners, candles and crowds of acolytes in red and white or visiting priests in white and gold. I always felt as though heaven must be an amazing and difficult place to reach if so much fuss over the mere trying for it here was necessary.
Then, in addition, there were the collections, communions, church fairs, picnics, raffles—a long line of amazing events, the chief importance of which was, as it seemed to me, the getting of money for the church. Certainly the Catholics know how to keep their communicants busy, and even worried. My recollection of school and church life here is one confused jumble of masses, funerals, processions lessons in catechism, the fierce beating of recalcitrant pupils, instructions preparatory to my first confession and communion, the meeting of huge dull sodalities or church societies with endless banners and emblems—(the men a poor type of workingmen)—and then marching off somewhere to funerals, picnics and the like out of the school or church yard.
Inside (and these were partly what I was coming to see today) were the confessional, where I once told my sins to the Reverend Anton, and the altar rail and the altar, where once I had been received in Holy Communion and was confirmed by the Bishop, sitting on a high throne and arrayed in golden canonicals of the church. I can see him now—a pale, severe German, with a fine nose and hard blue eyes. I can feel his cool fingers anointing my forehead. Think of the influence of such formulas and all gorgeous flummery on the average mind! Is it any wonder that so many succumb permanently to theories and isms so gloriously arrayed? The wonder to me is that any child should ever be able to throw off the oppressive weight—the binding chains thus riveted on him.
Today, because it was so near September, they were cleaning the schoolrooms and preparing them for a new batch of victims. Think of the dull functioning of dogma, century after century, age after age. How many millions and billions have been led—shunted along dogmatic runways from the dark into the dark again. They do not fell them with an axe as at the stockyards, nor open their veins with a knife as befalls the squealing swine, but they fell and bleed them just the same. I am not ranting against Catholicism alone. As much may be said of Mohammedanism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Brahmanism, Buddhism—the Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist yokes. It is possible that for the latter it may be said that the chains are not so difficult to break. I don’t know. But here they come, endless billions; and at the gates dogma, ignorance, vice, cruelty seize them and clamp this or that band about their brains or their feet. Then hobbled, or hamstrung, they are turned loose, to think, to grow if possible. As well ask of a eunuch to procreate, or of an ox to charge. The incentive to discover is gone.
Says the dogmatist, “See, this is the manner of it. If you dare to think otherwise, you are damned. Your soul will grill in hell—and here is the nature of that hell.”
Poor life! I wonder that ever an Athens came to pass or a Rome arose, to have so glorious a fall!