Around The Tea-Table Part 9

It may fade the carpet, but it will pour suns.h.i.+ne into the hearts of a million readers. If Thomas Carlyle chose to call around an ink-spattered table Goethe, and Schiller, and Jean Paul Frederick Richter, and dissect the shams of the world with a plain goose-quill, so be it. The horns of an ox's head are not more certainly a part of the ox than Thomas Carlyle's study and all its appointments are a part of Thomas Carlyle.

The gazelle will have soft fur, and the lion a s.h.a.ggy hide, and the sanctum sanctorum is the student's cuticle.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

BEHAVIOR AT CHURCH.

Around the door of country meeting-houses it has always been the custom for the people to gather before and after church for social intercourse and the shaking of hands. Perhaps because we, ourselves, were born in the country and had never got over it, the custom pleases us. In the cities we arrive the last moment before service and go away the first moment after. We act as though the church were a rail-car, into which we go when the time for starting arrives, and we get out again as soon as the depot of the Doxology is reached. We protest against this business way of doing things. Shake hands when the benediction is p.r.o.nounced with those who sat before and those who sat behind you. Meet the people in the aisle, and give them Christian salutation. Postponement of the dining hour for fifteen minutes will damage neither you nor the dinner. That is the moment to say a comforting word to the man or woman in trouble. The sermon was preached to the people in general; it is your place to apply it to the individual heart.

The church aisle may be made the road to heaven. Many a man who was unaffected by what the minister said has been captured for G.o.d by the Christian word of an unpretending layman on the way out.

You may call it personal magnetism, or natural cordiality, but there are some Christians who have such an ardent way of shaking hands after meeting that it amounts to a benediction. Such greeting is not made with the left hand. The left hand is good for a great many things, for instance to hold a fork or twist a curl, but it was never made to shake hands with, unless you have lost the use of the right. Nor is it done by the tips of the fingers laid loosely in the palm of another. Nor is it done with a glove on. Gloves are good to keep out the cold and make one look well, but have them so they can easily be removed, as they should be, for they are non-conductors of Christian magnetism. Make bare the hand. Place it in the palm of your friend. Clench the fingers across the back part of the hand you grip. Then let all the animation of your heart rush to the shoulder, and from there to the elbow, and then through the fore arm and through the wrist, till your friend gets the whole charge of gospel electricity.

In Paul's time he told the Christians to greet each other with a holy kiss.

We are glad the custom has been dropped, for there are many good people who would not want to kiss us, as we would not want to kiss them. Very attractive persons would find the supply greater than the demand. But let us have a subst.i.tute suited to our age and land. Let it be good, hearty, enthusiastic, Christian hand-shaking.

Governor Wiseman, our grave friend at tea, broke in upon us at this moment and said: I am not fond of indiscriminate hand-shaking, and so am not especially troubled by the lack of cordiality on the part of church-goers.

But I am sometimes very much annoyed on Sabbaths with the habit of some good people in church. It may be foolish in me; but when the wind blows from the east, it takes but little to disturb me.

There are some of the best Christian people who do not know how to carry themselves in religious a.s.semblage. They never laugh. They never applaud.

They never hiss. Yet, notwithstanding, are disturbers of public wors.h.i.+p.

There is, for instance, the coughing brigade. If any individual right ought to be maintained at all hazards, it is the right of coughing. There are times when you must cough. There is an irresistible tickling in the throat which demands audible demonstration. It is moved, seconded and unanimously carried that those who have irritated windpipes be heard. But there are ways with hand or handkerchief of breaking the repercussion. A smothered cough is dignified and acceptable if you have nothing better to offer. But how many audiences have had their peace sacrificed by unrestrained expulsion of air through the glottis! After a sudden change in the weather, there is a fearful charge made by the coughing brigade. They open their mouths wide, and make the arches ring with the racket. They begin with a faint "Ahem!" and gradually rise and fall through all the scale of dissonance, as much as to say: "Hear, all ye good people! I have a cold! I have a bad cold! I have an awful bad cold! Hear how it racks me, tears me, torments me. It seems as if my diaphragm must be split. I took this awful bad cold the other night. I added to it last Sunday. Hear how it goes off!

There it is again. Oh dear me! If I only had 'Brown's troches,' or the syrup of squills, or a mustard plaster, or a woolen stocking turned wrong side out around my neck!" Brethren and sisters who took cold by sitting in the same draught join the clamor, and it is glottis to glottis, and laryngitis to laryngitis, and a chorus of sc.r.a.pings and explosions which make the service hideous for a preacher of sensitive nerves.

We have seen people under the pulpit coughing with their mouth so far open we have been tempted to jump into it. There are some persons who have a convenient ecclesiastical cough. It does not trouble them ordinarily; but when in church you get them thoroughly cornered with some practical truth, they smother the end of the sentences with a favorite paroxysm. There is a man in our church who is apt to be taken with one of these fits just as the contribution box comes to him, and cannot seem to get his breath again till he hears the pennies rattling in the box behind him. Cough by all means, but put on the brakes when you come to the down grade, or send the racket through at least one fold of your pocket-handkerchief.

Governor Wiseman went on further to say that the habits of the pulpit sometimes annoyed him as much as the habits of the pew. The Governor said: I cannot bear the "preliminaries" of religious service.

By common consent the exercises in the churches going before the sermon are called "preliminaries." The dictionary says that a "preliminary" is that which precedes the main business. We do not think the sermon ought to be considered the main business. When a pastor at the beginning of the first prayer says "O G.o.d!" he has entered upon the most important duty of the service. We would not depreciate the sermon, but we plead for more attention to the "preliminaries." If a minister cannot get the attention of the people for prayer or Bible reading, it is his own fault. Much of the interest of a service depends upon how it is launched.

The "preliminaries" are, for the most part, the time in which people in church examine their neighbors' clothes. Milliners and tailors get the advantage of the first three-quarters of an hour. The "preliminaries" are the time to scrutinize the fresco, and look round to see who is there, and get yourself generally fixed.

This idea is fostered by home elocutionary professors who would have the minister take the earlier exercises of the occasion to get his voice in tune. You must not speak out at first. It is to be a private interview between you and heaven. The people will listen to the low grumble, and think it must be very good if they could only hear it. As for ourselves, we refuse to put down our head in public prayer until we find out whether or not we are going to be able to hear. Though you preach like an angel, you will not say anything more important than that letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, or that Psalm of David which you have just now read to the backs of the heads of the congregation. Laymen and ministers, speak out!

The opening exercises were not inst.i.tuted to clear your voice, but to save souls. If need be, squeeze a lemon and eat "Brown's troches" for the sake of your voice before you go to church; but once there, make your first sentence resonant and mighty for G.o.d. An hour and a half is short time anyhow to get five hundred or five thousand people ready for heaven. It is thought cla.s.sic and elegant to have a delicate utterance, and that loud tones are vulgar. But we never heard of people being converted by anything they could not hear. It is said that on the Mount of Olives Christ opened His mouth and taught them, by which we conclude He spake out distinctly.

G.o.d has given most Christians plenty of lungs, but they are too lazy to use them. There are in the churches old people hard of hearing who, if the exercises be not clear and emphatic, get no advantage save that of looking at the blessed minister.

People say in apology for their inaudible tones: "It is not the thunder that kills, but the lightning." True enough; but I think that G.o.d thinks well of the thunder or He would not use so much of it. First of all, make the people hear the prayer and the chapter. If you want to hold up at all, let it be on the sermon and the notices. Let the pulpit and all the pews feel that there are no "preliminaries."

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

MASCULINE AND FEMININE.

There are men who suppose they have all the annoyances. They say it is the store that ruffles the disposition; but if they could only stay at home as do their wives, and sisters, and daughters, they would be, all the time, sweet and fair as a white pond lily. Let some of the masculine lecturers on placidity of temper try for one week the cares of the household and the family. Let the man sleep with a baby on one arm all night, and one ear open to the children with the whooping-cough in the adjoining apartment.

Let him see the tray of crockery and the cook fall down stairs, and nothing saved but the pieces. Let the pump give out on a wash-day, and the stove pipe, when too hot for handling, get dislocated. Let the pudding come out of the stove stiff as a poker. Let the gossiping gabbler of next door come in and tell all the disagreeable things that neighbors have been saying.

Let the lungs be worn out by staying indoors without fresh air, and the needle be threaded with nerves exhausted. After one week's household annoyances, he would conclude that Wall street is heaven and the clatter of the Stock Exchange rich as Beethoven's symphony.

We think Mary of Bethany a little to blame for not helping Martha get the dinner. If women sympathize with men in the troubles of store and field, let the men also sympathize with the women in the troubles of housekeeping.

Many a housewife has died of her annoyances. A bar of soap may become a murderous weapon. The poor cooking stove has sometimes been the slow fire on which the wife has been roasted. In the day when Latimer and Ridley are honored before the universe as the martyrs of the fire, we do not think the Lord will forget the long line of wives, mothers, daughters and sisters who have been the martyrs of the kitchen.

Accompanying masculine criticism of woman's temper goes the popular criticism of woman's dress.

A convention has recently been held in Vineland, attended by the women who are opposed to extravagance in dress. They propose, not only by formal resolution, but by personal example, to teach the world lessons of economy by wearing less adornment and dragging fewer yards of silk.

We wish them all success, although we would have more confidence in the movement if so many of the delegates had not worn bloomer dress. Moses makes war upon that style of apparel in Deuteronomy xxii. 5: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto man." Nevertheless we favor every effort to stop the extravagant use of dry goods and millinery.

We have, however, no sympathy with the implication that women are worse than men in this respect. Men wear all they can without interfering with their locomotion, but man is such an awkward creature he cannot find any place on his body to hang a great many fineries. He could not get round in Wall street with eight or ten flounces, and a big-handled parasol, and a mountain of back hair. Men wear less than women, not because they are more moral, but because they cannot stand it. As it is, many of our young men are padded to a superlative degree, and have corns and bunions on every separate toe from wearing shoes too tight.

Neither have we any sympathy with the implication that the present is worse than the past in matters of dress. Compare the fas.h.i.+on plates of the seventeenth century with the fas.h.i.+on plates of the nineteenth, and you decide in favor of our day. The women of Isaiah's time beat anything now.

Do we have the kangaroo fas.h.i.+on Isaiah speaks of--the daughters who walked with "stretched forth necks?" Talk of hoops! Isaiah speaks of women with "round tires like the moon." Do we have hot irons for curling our hair?

Isaiah speaks of "wimples and crisping pins." Do we sometimes wear gla.s.ses astride our nose, not because we are near-sighted, but for beautification?

Isaiah speaks of the "gla.s.ses, and the earrings, and the nose jewels." The dress of to-day is far more sensible than that of a hundred or a thousand years ago.

But the largest room in the world is room for improvement, and we would cheer on those who would attempt reformation either in male or female attire. Meanwhile, we rejoice that so many of the pearls, and emeralds, and amethysts, and diamonds of the world are coming in the possession of Christian women. Who knows but that the spirit of ancient consecration may some day come upon them, and it shall again be as it was in the time of Moses, that for the prosperity of the house of the Lord the women may bring their bracelets, and earrings, and tablets and jewels? The precious stones of earth will never have their proper place till they are set around the Pearl of Great Price.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

LITERARY FELONY.

We have recently seen many elaborate discussions as to whether plagiarism is virtuous or criminal--in other words, whether writers may steal. If a minister can find a sermon better than any one he can make, why not preach it? If an author can find a paragraph for his book better than any he can himself manufacture, why not appropriate it?

That sounds well. But why not go further and ask, if a woman find a set of furs better than she has in her wardrobe, why not take them? If a man find that his neighbor has a cow full Alderney, while he has in his own yard only a scrawny runt, why not drive home the Alderney? Theft is taking anything that does not belong to you, whether it be sheep, oxen, hats, coats or literary material.

Without attempting to point put the line that divides the lawful appropriation of another's ideas from the appropriation of another's phraseology, we have only to say that a literary man always knows when he is stealing. Whether found out or not, the process is belittling, and a man is through it blasted for this world and damaged for the next one. The a.s.s in the fable wanted to die because he was beaten so much, but after death they changed his hide into a drum-head, and thus he was beaten more than ever. So the plagiarist is so vile a cheat that there is not much chance for him, living or dead. A minister who hopes to do good with each burglary will no more be a successful amba.s.sador to men than a foreign minister despatched by our government to-day would succeed if he presented himself at the court of St. James with the credentials that he stole from the archives of those ill.u.s.trious ex-ministers, James Buchanan or Benjamin Franklin.

What every minister needs is a fresh message that day from the Lord. We would sell cheap all our parchments of licensure to preach. G.o.d gives his ministers a license every Sabbath and a new message. He sends none of us out so mentally poor that we have nothing to furnish but a cold hash of other people's sermons. Our haystack is large enough for all the sheep that come round it, and there is no need of our taking a single forkful from any other barrack. By all means use all the books you can get at, but devour them, chew them fine and digest them, till they become a part of the blood and bone of your own nature. There is no harm in delivering an oration or sermon belonging to some one else provided you so announce it. Quotation marks are cheap, and let us not be afraid to use them. Do you know why "quotation" marks are made up of four commas, two at the head of the paragraph adopted and two at the close of it? Those four commas mean that you should stop four times before you steal anything.

If there were no question of morals involved, plagiarism is nevertheless most perilous. There are a great many constables out for the arrest of such defrauders. That stolen paragraph that you think will never be recognized has been committed to memory by that old lady with green goggles in the front pew. That very same brilliant pa.s.sage you have just p.r.o.nounced was delivered by the clergyman who preached in that pulpit the Sabbath before: two thieves met in one hen-roost. All we know of Doctor Hayward of Queen Elizabeth's time is that he purloined from Tacitus. Be dishonest once in this respect, and when you do really say something original and good the world will cry out, "Yes, very fine! I always did like Joseph Addison!"

Sermons are successful not according to the head involved in them, but according to the heart implied, and no one can feel aright while preaching a literary dishonesty. Let us be content to wear our own coat, though the nap on it is not quite as well looking, to ride on our own horse, though he do not gallop as gracefully and will "break up" when others are pa.s.sing.

There is a work for us all to do, and G.o.d gives us just the best tools to do it. What folly to be hankering after our neighbor's chalk line and gimlet!

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.