In Our Town

by William Allen White

"To the Christian world Easter symbolises a Divine tragedy. The coming of Easter, as it is set forth in the Great Book, is a most powerful story; it is the story of one of the deepest passions that may move the human heart—the passion of father-love.

"Once there lived in the desert a man and his little child—a very little boy, who sometimes was a bad little boy, and who did not do as he was told. On a day when the father was away about his business the child, playing, wandered out on the desert and was lost. From home the desert beckoned the little boy; it seemed fair and fine to adventure in. When the boy had been gone for many hours the father returned and could not find him, and knew that the child was lost. But the father knew the desert; he knew how it lured men on; he knew its parching thirst; he knew its thorns and brambles, and its choking dust and the heat that beats one down.

"And when he saw that the boy was lost his heart was aflame with anguish; he could all but feel the desert fire in the little boy's blood, the cactus barbs in the bleeding little feet, and the great lonesomeness of the desert in the little boy's heart; and as from afar the man heard a wailing little voice in his ears calling, 'Father, father!' like a lost sheep. But it was only a seeming, and the house where the little boy had played was silent.

"Then the father went to the desert, and neither the desert fire murmuring at his brow, nor the sand that filled his mouth, nor the stones and prickles that cut his feet, nor the wild beasts that lurked upon the hillsides, could keep out of his ears the bleat of that little child's voice crying 'Father, father!' When the night fell, still and cold and numbing, the father pressed on, calling to the child in his agony; for he thought it was such a little boy, such a poor, lonesome, terror-stricken little boy out in the desert, lost and in pain, crying for help, with no one to hear.

"And wandering so, the father died, with his heart full of unspeakable woe. But they found the wayward child in the light of another day. And he never knew what his father suffered, nor why his father died, nor did he understand it all till he had grown to a man's stature, and then he knew; and he tried to live his days as his father had lived, and to lay down his life, if need be, for his friend.

"This is the Easter story that should come to every heart. The Christ that came into the desert of this weary life, and walked here foot-sore, heart-broken and athirst, came here for the love that was in His heart. Who put it there—whether the God that gave Shakespeare his brain and Wagner his harmonies, gave Christ His heart—or whether it was the God that paints the lily and moves the mountains in their labours—it matters not. It is one God, the Author and First Cause of all things. It is His heart that moves our own hearts to all their aspirations, to all the benevolence that the wicked world knows; it is His mind that is made manifest in our marvels of civilisation; it is His vast, unknowable plan that is moving the nations of the earth.

"Whether it be spirit or law or tendency or person—what matter?—it is our Father, who went to the desert to find His sheep."

All day Saturday, in order to square himself with the printers who set up his sermon, and to rehabilitate himself in the graces of the others about the office who knew of his weakness, Mehronay turned in the gayest lot of copy that he had ever written. There was an "assessment call of the Widowers' Protective Association to pay the sad wedding loss of Brother P. R. Cullom, of the Bee Hive," whose wedding was announced in the society column; there was a card of thanks from Ben Pore to those who had come with their sympathy and glue to nurse his wooden Indian which had blown down and broken the night before, and resolutions of respect for the same departed brother, in most mocking language, from the Red Men's Lodge. There was an item saying seven different varieties of Joneses and three kinds of Hugheses were in town from Lebo—the Welsh settlement; there was a call for the uniformed rank of head waiters to meet in regalia at Mrs. Larrabee's reception, signed by the three men in town who were known to have evening clothes, and there was a meeting of the anti-kin society announced to discuss the length of time Alphabetical Morrison's new son-in-law should be allowed to visit the Morrisons before the neighbours could ask when he was going to leave. But when the paper was out Mehronay got a dozen copies from the press and sent them away in wrappers which he addressed, and the piece his blue pencil marked was none of these.

For many days after Mehronay wrote his Easter sermon the gentle, low, beelike hum that he kept up while he was at work followed the tunes of gospel hymns, or hymns of an older fashion. We always knew when to expect what he called a "piece" from Mehronay—which meant an article into which he put more than ordinary endeavour—for his bee-song would grow louder, with now and then an intelligible word in it, and if it was to be an exceptional piece Mehronay would whistle. When he began writing the music would die down, but when he was well under sail on his "piece," the steam of his swelling emotions would set his chin to going like the lid of a kettle, and he would drone and jibber the words as he wrote them—half audibly, humming and sputtering in the pauses while he thought. Scores of times we have seen the dear old fellow sitting at his desk when a "piece" was in the pot, and have gathered the men around back of his chair to watch him simmer. When it was finished he would whirl about in his chair, as he gathered up the sheets of paper and shook them together, and say: "I've writ a piece here—a damn good piece!" And then, as he put the copy on the hook and got his hat, he would tell us in most profane language what it was all about—quoting the best sentences and chuckling to himself as he went out onto the street.

As the spring filled out and became summer we noticed that Mehronay was singing fewer gospel hymns and rather more sentimental songs than usual. And then the horrible report came to the office that Mehronay had been seen by one of the printers walking by night after bed-time under the State Street elms with a woman. Also his items began to indicate a closer knowledge of what was going on in society than Mehronay naturally could have. In the fall we learned through the girls in the Bee Hive that he had bought a white shirt and a pair of celluloid cuffs. This rumour set the office afire with curiosity, but no one dared to tease Mehronay. For no one knew who she was.