The Chautauqua Girls At Home — Story, Setting & Ideas

CHAPTER I. TREADING ON NEW GROUND 7

CHAPTER II. FLOSSY "BEGINS" 30

CHAPTER III. BURDENS 49

CHAPTER IV. COL. BAKER'S SABBATH EVENING 72

CHAPTER V. NEW MUSIC 87

CHAPTER VI. DISTURBING ELEMENTS 102

CHAPTER VII. PRAYER-MEETING AND TABLEAUX 118

CHAPTER VIII. DR. DENNIS' STUDY 134

CHAPTER IX. A WHITE SUNDAY 150

CHAPTER X. THE RAINY EVENING 166

CHAPTER XI. THE NEXT THING 181

CHAPTER XII. SETTLING QUESTIONS 197

CHAPTER XIII. LOOKING FOR WORK 211

CHAPTER XIV. AN UNARMED SOLDIER 227

CHAPTER XV. MARION'S PLAN 243

CHAPTER XVI. THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE 258

CHAPTER XVII. THE DISCUSSION 275

CHAPTER XVIII. THE RESULT 291

CHAPTER XIX. KEEPING THE PROMISE 307

CHAPTER XX. HOW IT WAS DONE 322

CHAPTER XXI. RUTH AND HAROLD 337

CHAPTER XXII. REVIVAL 355

CHAPTER XXIII. THE STRANGE STORY 368

CHAPTER XXIV. LONELINESS 385

CHAPTER XXV. THE ADDED NAME 401

CHAPTER XXVI. LEARNERS 418

CHAPTER XXVII. FLOSSY'S PARTY 435

CHAPTER XXVIII. A PARTING GLANCE 451

THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME.

TREADING ON NEW GROUND.

THAT last Sabbath of August was a lovely day; it was the first Sabbath that our girls had spent at home since the revelation of Chautauqua. It seemed lovely to them. "The world looks as though it was made over new in the night," Eurie had said, as she threw open her blinds, and drew in whiffs of the sweet, soft air. And the church, whither these girls had so often betaken themselves on summer mornings, just like this one--how _could_ two or three weeks have changed it? They could not feel that it was the same building.

Hitherto it had been to them simply the First Church; grander, by several degrees, than any other church in the city, having the finest choir, and the finest organ, and the most elegant carpets, and making the grandest floral display of all the temples, as became the First Church, of course; but to-day, this glowing, glorious August day, it was something infinitely above and beyond all this; it was the visible temple of the invisible God, _their_ Saviour, and they were going up to worship--aye, really and truly to _worship_. They, in their different ways, according to their very different natures, felt this and were thrilled with it as their feet trod the aisles. People can feel a great many things, and not show them to the casual observer. Sitting in their respective pews, they looked in no sense different from the way they had looked on a hundred different Sabbaths before this.

Ruth Erskine, in the corner of her father's pew, attired, as she had often been before, in the most delicate and exquisite of summer silks, with exactly the right shade of necktie, gloves and sash, to set off the beauty of the dress, with the soft and delicate laces about her white throat, for which she was especially noted, looked not one whit different from the lady who sat there three weeks before. You wouldn't have known that her heart was singing for joy.

Flossy Shipley, aglow with elegance, as she always was, looked the same airy butterfly that had flitted in and out of that church on many a summer day before; and Marion, in her corner in the gallery, was simply the grave, somewhat weary-looking school-teacher at one of the wards--"a girl with infidel tendencies," that is all the great congregation knew about her; in fact, comparatively few of them knew even that.

Eurie Mitchell was the doctor's eldest daughter, and had in no sense improved as to her toilet--"a thing which could hardly be expected, since she had thrown away so much money on that wild scheme of living in the woods;" that was what some of the congregation thought about her.

Dr. Dennis saw all these girls, and looked gloomy over them; he was in the mood to need sympathetic hearers, to long to be in accord with his audience, and feel that they could sympathize with him in his reach after a higher type of religion. What could these four girls know about a higher type, when they had no religion at all, and had been spending two lawless weeks in looking at the subject, till their hearts were either attuned to ridicule or disgusted, according to their several temperaments? That was what the faces of our four girls said to him. Yet how they listened to his sermon.

"I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." These were the words on which he spoke; and the burden of his thought was that satisfaction was not to be sought for here; nothing less than the absolute _likeness_ should give absolute satisfaction; and this likeness was to be forever eagerly, earnestly, constantly, sought for, striven after, until some day would come that blessed awakening, and the picture would be found to be complete!

Was it the best sermon that had ever been preached? Was it the _only_ spiritual sermon that the First Church people had ever heard, or was it that four girls had been to Chautauqua, and there learned how to listen? Their cheeks glowed, and their eyes dilated over the wonderful thoughts that the subject presented, the endless possibility for climbing!

Marion Wilbur had been counted ambitious; she had longed for a chance to reach high; here was her chance; she felt it, and gloried in it; she meant to try. Every nerve quivered with the determination, and the satisfaction of realizing that she belonged to the great royal family. No more obscurity for her. She was a child of the King, and the kingdom was in view. A crown, aglow with jewels--nothing less must satisfy her now. The sermon over, the hymn sung, and amid the pealing of the organ, as it played the worshipers down the aisles, our four girls met.

They knew each other's determination. The next thing to do was to go to Sunday-school. But I suppose you have no idea how strangely they felt; how much it seemed to them as if they were children who had come to a party uninvited, and as if they must at this last minute hide their heads and run home. The very effort to go up to the Sunday-school room seemed too much a cross to undertake.

There were so many to stare, and look their amazement; there was no one to go with; nobody to think of such a thing as asking them to go. It would have been so much less awkward if they could have followed in the lead of one who had said, "Won't you come up and see our Sunday-school?"

The superintendent passed them as they stood irresolute; he bowed courteously, and no more thought of asking them to join him than though they had been birds of brilliant plumage flying by. Dr. Dennis passed them; _he_ said good-morning, not gladly, not even graciously; he dreaded those girls, and their undoubted influence. They had not the least idea how much mischief they had done him in the way of frittering away his influence heretofore. How should they know that he dreaded them? On the other hand how was he to know that they absolutely longed for him to take them by the hand, and say, "Come?" They looked at him curiously as he passed, and Eurie said:

"Doesn't it make your heart beat to think of going to him in his study, and having a private talk?"

"Dear me!" said Flossy, "I never shall think of such a thing. I couldn't do it any more than I could fly."

"There are harder things than that to do, I suspect; and it will come to a visit to his study if we are to unite with the church; don't you know that is what he always asks of those?"

And then these girls looked absolutely blank, for to two of them the thought of that duty had never occurred before; they did not understand it well enough to know that it was a privilege.

"Well," said Eurie, rallying first, of course, "are we to stand here gazing around us all day, because nobody knows enough to invite us to go up-stairs? It is clear that we are not to be invited. They are all come--all the Sabbath-school people; and, hark! why, they are singing."

"Dear me!" said Flossy; "then it is commenced; I hate to go in when it is commenced. How very unfortunate this is!"

"Serves us right," said Marion. "We ought to be in a condition to invite others, instead of waiting here to be invited. I'll tell you what, girls, if we ever get to feel that we _do_ belong, let's constitute ourselves a committee to see after timid strangers, like ourselves, and give them a _chance in_, at least."

"Well," said Ruth, speaking for the first time, "shall we go home and wait till next Sunday, and take a fair start, as Flossy says, it isn't pleasant to go in after the exercises have fairly opened?" As she said this, for the first time in her life Miss Ruth Erskine began to have a dim idea that possibly she might be a coward; this certainly sounded a little like it.

Each waited to get a bit of advice from the other. Both Marion and Eurie, it must be confessed, bold spirits that they were, so dreaded this ordeal, that each hoped the other would advise retreat as the wisest thing to be done next. It was Flossy who spoke:

"I am going up now; it won't be any easier next Sunday, and I want to begin."

"There!" said Eurie, "that is just what I needed to shame me into common sense. What a company of idiots we are! Marion, what would you think of a day-scholar who would stand shivering outside your doors for this length of time? Now come on, all of you;" and she led the way up-stairs.

How very awkward it was! It was during the opening prayer that they arrived, and they had to stand by the door and be peeped at by irreverent children; then they had to invite themselves to a vacant seat near the door. The superintendent came that way presently, and said:

"Good-morning, young ladies; so you have come in to visit our school? Glad to see you; it is a pleasant place, I think you will find."

"That is extremely doubtful," Eurie said, in undertone, as he passed on. How the children did stare!

"They are certainly unused to visitors," Ruth said, growing uncomfortable under such prolonged gazing. "What is the use of all this, girls? We might better be at home."

"If we had grown up here," Eurie said, bravely, "we should probably have our place by this time. It all comes of our graceful lives. But I must say they make it very easy for people to stay away. Why on earth don't they invite us to go into Bible classes? What right have they to take it for granted that we came out of pure curiosity?"

The business of the hour went on, and our girls were still left unmolested. As the newness wore somewhat away, the situation began to grow funny. They could see that the pastor and the superintendent were engaged in anxious conversation, to judge by the gravity of their faces; and as their eyes occasionally roved in that direction, it was natural to suppose they were discussing the unexpected visitors.

Could they have heard the anxious talk it would have been a solemn comment on their reputations.

"That Morris class is vacant again to-day," the superintendent was saying; "I don't know what we are to do with that class; no one is willing to undertake it."

The pastor looked toward his own large class waiting for him, and said, with a weary sigh:

"I believe I shall have to give up my class to some one and take that. I don't want to; it is a class which requires more nervous energy than I have at command at this hour of the day. But what is to be done with them to-day?"

"Would it do to ask one of the young ladies on the visitors' seat?"

And then the eyes of the two men turned toward the girls.

"They are afraid of us," whispered Eurie, her propensity to see the ludicrous side of things in no whit destroyed by her conversion. "Look at their troubled faces; they think that we are harbingers of mischief. Oh me! What a reputation to have! But I declare it is funny." Whereupon she laughed softly, but unmistakably.

It was at this moment that Dr. Dennis' eyes rested on her.

"Oh, they are only here for material to make sport of," he said, gloomily; "Miss Erskine might keep the boys quiet for awhile if she chose to do so, I suppose."

"Or Miss Wilbur. Some of the boys in that class are in school, in her ward; they say she has grand order."

Dr. Dennis' face grew stern.

"No," he said, "don't ask _her_; at least we will not put them in a way to learn error, if we can teach them nothing good. Miss Wilbur is an infidel. I don't know what is to be done with that class, as you say. Poor Morris, I am afraid, will never be able to take it again; and he was utterly discouraged with them, anyway. They get no good here that I can see; and they certainly do infinite mischief to the rest of the school."

"But at the same time I suppose we cannot send them away?"

"Oh, certainly not. Well, suppose you try if Miss Erskine will sit there, and try to awe them by her dignity for awhile. And this week we must see what can be done; she won't try it, though, I presume."

It ended in the superintendent coming toward them at last. He didn't like to be too personal in his request, so he took the general way of putting a question, resting in the belief that each would refuse, and that then he could press the task on Miss Erskine.

"We are short of teachers to-day; would one of you be willing to sit with that class at your right, and try to interest them a little? They are a sad set; very little can be done with them, but we have to try."

I shall have to confess that both Ruth and Marion were appalled. The one shrank as much as the other. If it had been a class in mathematics or philosophy Marion would have been confident of her powers; but she felt so very ignorant of the Bible. She had come in, hoping and expecting a chance to slip into a grand Bible class, where she might learn some of the inner truths of that glorious lesson that she had been trying to study. But to teach it! This seemed impossible. As for Ruth, no thought of such an experience had as yet come to her. They, therefore, maintained a dismayed silence. Eurie was frank.

"I can't teach," she said; "I don't understand it myself. I shouldn't have the least idea what to say to anyone about the Bible lesson." And then they all turned and stared in a maze of surprise and perplexity at little fair-haired Flossy.

"I would like to try," she said, simply; "I have thought about the lesson all the week; I am not sure that I can _teach_ anything, but I should like to talk the story over with them if they will let me."

There was nothing for it but to lead this exquisite bit of flesh and blood, in her dainty summer toilet, before that rough and rollicking class of boys, old enough, some of them, to be called young men, but without an idea as to the manner of conduct that should honor that name. It would be hard to tell which was the most amazed and embarrassed, the superintendent or the girls whom Flossy left looking after her. They were quite sobered now; they did not want Flossy to come to grief. A tender feeling that was new and sweet had sprung up in the heart of each of them toward her.

"That innocent little kitten knows no more what she has undertaken than if she were a dove," said Marion, dismay and discomfort struggling in her face. "Why, she might as well be Daniel in the den of lions."

"Well," said Eurie, speaking gravely, "he came out all right, you know." Then she hailed the passing superintendent:

"Mr. Stuart, isn't there a Bible class that we can go in? We didn't come to look on. We want to study the lesson."

"Oh, why, yes, certainly," Mr. Stuart said, stammering and looking unutterable astonishment. "Where would they like to go? There were two vacant seats in Mr. Pembrook's class, and one in Judge Elmore's."

Ruth instantly chose Judge Elmore's, and left Marion and Eurie to make their way to the vacant places in Mr. Pembrook's class.

The young ladies of the class moved along and made room for the new comers, and the teacher carefully told them what chapter and verse were being studied. They found their places, and Mr. Pembrook searched laboriously for his. He had lost the spot on his lesson leaf where he had read the last question, and he was all at sea.

"Let me see," he said, "where _were_ we?"

None of them seemed to know; at least they gave him no information. One of them tried to button a glove that was too small for her; one yawned behind her Bible, and the most utter indifference in regard to the lesson or the school seemed to prevail.

"Oh," said. Mr. Pembrook, "here is where we were. I was just reading the thirtieth verse: 'As he spake these words many believed on him.' Who spake them?"

"Jesus," one answered, speaking the word with a yawn.

"What did Jesus say next?"

The next young lady thus appealed to, hurriedly looked up the place in her Bible and read:

"'Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed.'"

"Well," said Mr. Pembrook, after a thoughtful pause, "there doesn't seem to be anything to say on that verse; it is all there. Will _you_ read the next verse?"

Now the "you" whom he timidly addressed was our Marion. She doesn't understand even now why her heart should have throbbed so strangely; and her voice trembled as she read aloud the simple words:

"'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"

"Free from what?" she asked abruptly.

The class stared. Clearly the art of asking questions was an unknown accomplishment in that class. Mr. Pembrook looked at her through his glasses; then he pushed his glasses up on his forehead. Finally he took them off, and rubbed them carefully with the skirt of his coat before he essayed to answer.

"Why, my dear young lady, I suppose it means free from sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to his people, you know, to Christian people."

"Are Christian people free from sin?"

There was no note of cavil in Marion's voice. Her eyes were earnest and serious; and she waited, as one waits in honest perplexity, to have a puzzle solved. But she was known as one who held dangerous, even infidel notions, and Mr. Pembrook, bewildered as to how to answer her, seemed to feel that probably a rebuke was what she needed.

"It is not for us to find fault with the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, my dear young lady. He spoke them, and they must mean what they say. We are to accept them in all sincerity and humility, remembering that what we know not now we shall know hereafter. That is the _Christian_ way to do."

And then he cleared his throat and asked the next young lady to read the next verse.

Two bright spots glowed on Marion's cheeks. She bent her head low over her Bible, and it was with difficulty that she kept a rush of tears from filling her eyes. Had she seemed to cavil at the words of her Lord when she simply longed with all her soul to understand? _Did_ the promise mean, You shall be free from sin? Had she a right to look forward to and hope for the time when sin should have no more dominion? Then that other sentence: "_Continue_ in my work." Just what did it mean? Could one who was searching it eagerly and prayerfully, and trying to abide by its directions, be said to be continuing in it?