QUEER CHURCH.
BY REV. S. W. DUFFIELD.
OF course Queer Church is on Queer Street, in the town of Manoa. And all good boys and girls who study geography know just where Manoa ought to be.
The Rev. Mr. Thingumbob is the minister, and among the principal attendants are Mr. So-and-So, Mr. What’s-his-Name, Mr. Jigmaree, Mr. You-Know-Who, Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Tom Collins, the Misses Glubberson, Mr. What-d’ye-Callum, that distinguished foreign family the Van Danks, Mr. William Patterson, Mrs. Partington, and Mr. Gradgrind. You have possibly heard of some of these persons before. Besides, there is quite a congregation, and there is also a very big number of little people, aged all the way from five to fifteen.
Where there are so many of them it naturally follows that they have a large number of things their own way. But probably my story would not have been written if a little girl called True Gravelines hadn’t come to town. “True” is short for Gertrude, which was her name.
True had been taken from the Orphan Asylum by Mrs. Potiphar. And because she loved the little lady, Mrs. Potiphar had her taught and trained as her own daughter, and even Mrs. Grundy said that she was charming, and the Glubberson girls—who were old maids and not handsome—allowed that she would make a fine woman.
Finally True came across the story of “Goody-Two-Shoes,” which that great big child of an Oliver Goldsmith told so sweetly, and she had some new ideas. One of them was that she would like to make some changes in Queer Church.
So she got all the boys and girls together after school and proposed her plan. Now True was tall for her age, with dark eyes, and beautiful rich brown hair. And she wore lovely dresses, andsuchkid slippers, andsucha splendid real gold chain with a true and genuine watch that ticked and kept time. So of course she had matters a good deal in her own hands.
The “chatter meeting” (as she called it) was held in the summer-house that cost ten thousand dollars, and that stood among Mrs. Potiphar’s roses in the side garden back of the lawn. And it resolved to send a committee to wait on Mr. Thingumbob—for Queer Church was the only church in Manoa, and they all went there on Sundays.
They weren’t a bit afraid of him—not they! He had lots of boys and girls of his own, and one of them had such rosy cheeks that he looked as though the angel had forgotten to bring him to the front door and had stuck him in the apple-tree, whence, when he was ready to be picked, his father had taken him down.
To be sure True was the head of the delegation, and it started off, twenty strong, on Saturday morning. How the people at the Manse opened their eyes as the troop came in, just as grave as you please, and asking to be shown up to the study. Well, so did the minister when he saw them. He laid down his pen and he said: “How do you do, gentlemen and ladies! Pray be seated!” So they all sat down wherever they could, and waited for True to begin.
“Mr. Thingumbob,” she said, “why can’t we be somebodies in church, too?”
“I don’t know, my dear. Aren’t you somebodies now?”
“O-dear-bless-me-no,” says True, all in a breath.
“Well, what would you like to do?” asked Mr. Thingumbob.
“Why, we’d just like to have one week all to ourselves in the church, and one Sunday all to ourselves, to have sermons, and sing hymns, and all such things.”
The pastor looked very queer—just like his church. Nowthathad in it everything to make a church pleasant—but it was all for big people. Said he “True, I guess I’ll try it. You stay here with me and let the rest of these youngsters go.”
So the black-eyed ten-year-older stayed and talked and planned, and then how they laughed, and then they talked some more and laughed some more, and then it was dinner-time. And away went True.
On Sunday morning in that beautiful autumn weather, Mr. Thingumbob—who did pretty much ashepleased too told the church about it. All that week the children were to have it their own way. Nobody was to do anything but the children. As a special favor to himself he wanted to havethemdo just as they pleased all that week and next Sunday, and he’d be responsible.
When I first heard the story I thought the children and he must have loved each a great deal, for him to make such an offer. And I guess they did.
Let’s see. Monday was his reception evening and he wanted nobody to come but the children. So they all came, and played big people, and asked about his health and how he enjoyed his summer vacation, and talked of business, and said their children (doll-children you know) had the measles and the whooping-cough, and what luck they had in shooting (with a bow-gun) and how they hoped he’d call soon and all that. Such a time! How funny it did seem, too.
And then there was Tuesday evening, and Mr. Thingumbob had a literary circle who met in the church parlor. So all the children went, and all the big people were to have stayed away—butIknow some whopeeked. And Mr. Thingumbob told them about the little boy, Tom Chatterton, up in St. Mary Radcliffe church, and the boxes with the old papers, and how this small chap wrote poetry and how he pretended to copy it from the old papers, and how great learned men went to words over it and some said ‘He did’ and some said ‘He didn’t’ and some called him a ‘forger’ and some called him a ‘genius,’ and how he got tired of it all, and how he took a drink of arsenic and water and died when he was hardly grown to be a man.—For that was just what the big folks expected to talk about.
And then there was Wednesday evening, and that was Prayer-meeting. And the big grown-up people all stayed away and the little folks all came. How they did sing! And what a pleasant talk they hadthatnight too—about the little Boy that heard the doctors and asked them questions until his mother thought he had run away and got lost. And Mr. Thingumbob sat right down in the middle of them and they got all around him and he was the only big man there was there.
And then there was Thursday night—when the church people used to go to their Mission Chapel and help the poor people to sing and pray and find out how they did and what they wanted. So they all went together—all the larger children of Queer church, that is—and saw the mission people. And True Gravelines felt so badly for a poor little girl that she gave her her warm gloves. And Tommy What’s-his-name let another fellow have his brand-new jack-knife because he hadn’t got any at all of his own. And there wasn’t one of them that didn’t give the Mission people pennies, or promise things to them, like the big folks.
And on Friday afternoon they had a sewing-society and the girls came and sewed—dear, dear, what sewing it was!—and they brought lunch along and the boys came to tea, and it was just like a pic-nic. And Mr. Thingumbob was there too. And afterwards they played “Hy-Spy” in the church up-stairs, down the aisles and in the galleries and back of the organ—and True Gravelines, for real and certain, hid under the pulpit! And then they set back all the chairs in the Sunday-school room and played “Fox and Geese” and “Thread the Needle” and ever so many other things that I don’t know the names of—only Idoknow that they were bound to act all the while like gentlemen and ladies, and they surely did.
And then came Saturday and they forgot all about being big men and women, and went off to play and let Mr. Thingumbob alone so he couldwritehis sermon. But he said he didn’t want to write his sermon, he wanted totalkit, and he asked True what he should talk about. And she told him she wanted to hear about the little girl that was sick and died and that Some One took by the hand and made her well. So he said he would, and he promised to use real short weenty-teenty words—“Because” said True, “there’s some that’s only little bits of things andtheywon’t understand.”
And then Sunday came. And all the big people took back seats. And all the little people went in to play big people, and opened their bibles and their hymn-books, and stood up, and sat down, and sang, and leaned their heads forward in prayer-time, and did just what they saw their papas and mammas do. And one boy, Peter Gradgrind, he went to sleep, because he said that was the way his father did. And Mr. Thingumbob laughed when he heard that.
And that was a real short service. It was all there, every bit of it. But the sermon was only a quarter of an hour long and all the rest was in the same proportion.
When it came time for Sunday school they all went. And the biggest one in each class taught the others. And by this time they had all got to be so good that they were trying to be big folks in earnest. And there was Tom Collins Jr. for Superintendent andhetried his best. And True played the tunes on the cabinet organ. And you never did see how well it all went!
Weren’t they tired when night came! But out they came again—that is the bigger ones did—and then Mr. Thingumbob talked to them about growing to be men and women. It was a little sermon in short words, but I don’t think they will forget it—for it was about a Boy who did what his father and mother wanted him to do, who learned his father’s business and worked to help the family along, who always did good to others, who tried to be a boy and yet to do like grown-up folks all the while. And by this time all the boys and girls knew how it seemed to play at big people, and make calls, and hear sermons, and do good.
Then, they all went to bed and slept like tops.
And they talk there to this day about it. And isn’t it funny?—the Queer Church people actually have fixed some of the seats in front low enough for the little folks, and they are very proud to see them sitting there like small men and women. And every now and then Queer Church has a sermon in short words, and a prayer-meeting where the children swarm on Mr. Thingumbob’s chair, and a sewing-club of little girls—O, and ever so many strange nice things for children, that came of that week of playing at big people.
And when you ask the folks there “What does Mrs. Grundy say?” and “How does Mr. Gradgrind take it?” what do you think they answer?
Why, they just say “We don’t care. We want the children to grow up to love the church and to love things that are good.”
Wouldn’t you like to go to Queer Church and make a week of it?