Emmy Lou's Road to Grace: Being a Little Pilgrim's Progress

by Howard Roger Garis

  VII

  PINK TICKETS FOR TEXTS

  THE walls of St. Simeon's conservatism had fallen. St. Simeon's, withits arches above, its pews below, their latched doors, as it were,symbolic, the Old Dispensation depicted in the window above its entrancedoors, and St. Paul, the apostle of the personal revelation, smitten tohis knees by light from Heaven, the figure of the window above itschancel. Modern progressiveness, the battering-ram in the hands ofWillie Glidden, come up through the Sunday school himself but yesterday,had assailed the defenses of an older generation successfully.

  Or so Uncle Charlie seemed to think as he repeated the news brought fromSunday school by Aunt Louise and Emmy Lou. "Dr. Angell came into theSunday school room this morning and offered a rector's prize for pinktickets earned for texts? Each child receiving a pink ticket for everySunday throughout the year to be thus rewarded? Willie Glidden hasgoaded him to this."

  Mr. Glidden had goaded the rector of St. Simeon's to other things whichEmmy Lou, nearing nine years, had heard discussed at home.

  "Popular heads to my sermons for the newspapers and the bulletin board?"it was reported that Dr. Angell had said indignantly. "Who but Gliddenwants notices in the papers or a bulletin board either? For forty yearsI have sedulously refrained from being popular, and I'll not begin itnow."

  But he came to it, popular heads being furnished by him weekly, in adazed pother at finding himself doing it, but still doing it.

  "Prizes to encourage the Sunday school?" so report said his comment wasto this last proposition. "Pay the children of my church for doing theirduty?"

  But the report also said that he calmed down on grasping that theproposition centered about texts.

  When Dr. Angell met the little people of his flock in the company oftheir elders he addressed them much after the same fashion. "A big girl,now!" or "Quite a little man!" he would say. "Old enough to be coming tochurch every Sunday and profiting by service and sermon."

  "Sermon," said he, on occasion to a little boy who said he didn't likesermons. "The sooner you realize and profit by the knowledge that lifeis one unending sermon, sirrah, the better for you."

  Dr. Angell had gathered his own sermons into a book, as Aunt Cordeliatold proudly to strangers, a stout volume bound in cloth, with a goldensun in a nimbus of rays stamped on the cover, entitled "Rays from theSun of Righteousness."

  And now, his attention caught and held by the word "text," since fromhis viewpoint to every sermon its text, and possibly to every text itssermon, he was offering a rector's prize for a year's quiver of pinktickets, these being the visible show of as many correctly recitedtexts.

  "Will you have Emmy Lou try?" Aunt Louise said to Aunt Cordelia. "We inthe Sunday school feel we should do all we can to support Mr. Glidden."

  But Aunt Cordelia needed no urging from Aunt Louise. She did not feelthat respect for the institutions introduced at St. Simeon's by Mr.Glidden that Aunt Louise felt, and did not hesitate to say so. Butanything inaugurated by the rector of her church she did respect.

  "If Dr. Angell is offering the prize, certainly Emmy Lou will try. Arector's, not a Willie Glidden prize, is a different thing. It will besomething for her to esteem and value all her life. I am sorry it is fortexts." Evidently the word had the same associations for Aunt Cordeliathat it had for Dr. Angell. "I have trouble enough as it is in makingher want to stay to church."

  Aunt Louise explained. "The prizes are for the weekly texts heading theSunday school lessons. They have no connection with church or thesermon."

  "Well, maybe not," Aunt Cordelia conceded, "but if she is going to takea prize from Dr. Angell for texts, and I shall see to it that she does,it is no more than she ought to be willing to do, to listen cheerfullyto his sermons. I have been too lenient in excusing her from church."

  On this same Sunday afternoon Emmy Lou went around to talk the matterover with Hattie, and found Sadie there.

  Emmy Lou and Hattie had been estranged, their first misunderstanding,Emmy Lou, with St. Simeon's back of her, having taken one stand, andHattie another.

  Emmy Lou spoke of kneeling at her church to pray and standing to singand Hattie corrected her. "Who ever beard of such a thing? You meanstand to pray and sit down to sing."

  Emmy Lou didn't mean anything of the kind and said so.

  Hattie faced her down. "Don't I go to church? Doesn't Sadie go?" turningto this person as referee. "Don't we know?"

  Sadie was obliged to qualify her support. "We don't _stand_ to pray, welean our foreheads on the next pew."

  Emmy Lou refused to be coerced. "I don't stand to pray, or lean forwardeither. I kneel down."

  "Then," said Hattie, "it must be because you are what my father calls abigoted Episcopalian, that you don't. Everybody else stands up or leansforward."

  Emmy Lou had faced the chancel of her church for four years. "St. Pauldoesn't. He's kneeling above our chancel."

  "Then he must be a bigoted Episcopalian too," said Hattie with feeling,and went home.

  But today Hattie and Sadie, if anything, were envious of Emmy Lou'sopportunity. A rector's prize!

  Hattie, to be sure, with the books of the Bible in her memory as wereDavid's pebbles in his scrip, once had felled the giant, Contest, andwon the banner for the girls over the boys at her Sunday school. Forwhich act of prowess her teacher had rewarded her with a little goldpin.

  And Sadie had a workbox, a little affair complete, scissors, thimble,and all, a recognition of faithfulness at large, from her Sunday schoolteacher, the same delivered to her by the superintendent before theassembled Sunday school. And as she pointed out, the calling of her nameand the walk up and down the aisle to receive the gift were no smallpart of the reward.

  It did stagger them both that Emmy Lou should have to stay to church."Still," argued Hattie, "it will be worth it, a rector's prize. Thoughwhy you don't say preacher!"

  "Or minister," said Sadie.

  "My brother once got a silver dollar for a prize that wasn't a dollar atall but a watch made to look like a dollar," said Hattie.

  "But not from church," Sadie reminded her.

  "No, from the President Dollar Watch Company for guessing the picturesof the presidents. But still it was a prize."

  Sadie could supplement this. "My mamma heard of a little girl who soldtickets for a picnic and won a locket on a chain."

  Emmy Lou went home cheered. Aunt Cordelia had put the emphasis on thetexts whereas Hattie and Sadie had put it on the prize.

  "A silver dollar that wasn't a dollar but a watch, and a locket on achain," said Uncle Charlie, overhearing her tell about it. "Well, well!"

  A rector's prize should indeed be something worth the working for.Fifty-two pink tickets standing for fifty-two correctly recited texts,and attendance at church for fifty-two Sundays!

  For Aunt Cordelia was as good as her word. The next Sunday she and UncleCharlie on their road to St. Simeon's met Emmy Lou returning from Sundayschool. Hitherto on these weekly encounters it was a toss-up whether sheshould be allowed to proceed, or must return to church.

  With Emmy Lou, face and eyes uplifted to Aunt Cordelia, mutelyinterceding for herself, while Uncle Charlie articulately interceded forher, it was a stand-off whether or not she should be required to go. Andwhen the worst happened and she must turn about and accompany AuntCordelia, the propinquity of Uncle Charlie in the pew beside her hadhelped her through. Until recently he had slipped smoothly roundedpeppermints banded in red from his vest pocket to her, or, the supplyrunning low, passed her his pencil and an envelope to amuse herself. Butshe was a big girl now and Aunt Cordelia no longer permitted theseindulgences.

  "Sermons in pencils too, perhaps, Cordelia," Uncle Charlie pleaded, "andgood in peppermints."

  But in vain. "Charlie!" Aunt Cordelia but remonstrated, shocked.

  Nor was Emmy Lou to be excused today. Aunt Cordelia, plump and comelyin her furs and ample cloak and seemly bonnet, and Uncle Charlie in histop-coat, gray trousers, silk hat, and natty cane, brought up
short onmeeting her. Not that she, in a chinchilla coat suitable for the biggirl she was, and a gray plush hat, with her hair tied with scarletribbons, had much hope herself.

  "I see you have your pink ticket in your hand, a good beginning," saidAunt Cordelia. "I'm glad you walked to meet us. You can do so everySunday; the change and relaxation will do you good. Now, Charlie, not aword. From now on, while she is trying for Dr. Angell's prize, she willgo back with us to church."

  Emmy Lou found herself there within a very few minutes, theparallelograms of pews about her filled with the assembled congregation,she in her place between Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie.

  And at home, where she now would be had Aunt Cordelia relented, what?Her children doomed to sit in a wooden row against the baseboard untilshe arrived to release them. The new book, for Emmy Lou is reading now,left where one begins to divine that the white cat in reality is abeautiful lady. Also at home on Aunt Cordelia's table that Sundayinstitution never forgotten by Uncle Charlie, the box of candy, fromwhose serried layers Emmy Lou may take one piece in Aunt Cordelia'sabsence. Furthermore at home the realm of the kitchen with its rites ofSunday preparation, Aunt M'randy its priestess, and delectable odors andsavory steam arising from its altar, the cooking-stove.

  And in the stead for Emmy Lou a morning spent in church. Still she cansettle down and think of the prize which as reward for all thisfaithfulness will be hers. Think of Hattie's gold pin, and Sadie'swork-basket, of the silver dollar which in reality was a watch, and thelocket on the chain.

  Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou, and, brought to herself, she stands up.Aunt Cordelia finds the place and hands her a prayer book. Church hasbegun.

  Amid form without meaning, and symbol without clue, the mind of Emmy Louwanders again, this time to that puzzle, the adult, no less impenetrableto the mind of nine than the shrouded mystery of ancient Egypt to theadult. For adults, Aunt Cordelia for one, here beside her in the pew,love to go to church. The proof? That they of their own volition, sincethe adult acts of himself, are here.

  Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou. She and Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlieand the congregation of St. Simeon's, Hattie to the contrary, kneeldown.

  But the mind continues to wander. The adult is here because it wants tobe here, whereas Emmy Lou is here because Aunt Cordelia says she mustbe. Her eyes, too, will travel ahead on the prayer book page to theamen. What amen? Any and all, since amens wherever occurring signify theend of the especial thing of the moment, whether said, sung or prayed.The thought sustaining one being that, amen succeeding amen, the finaland valedictory one is bound to come in time.

  "Get up for the Venite," whispers Aunt Cordelia, and Emmy Lou who haslost herself on her knees gets up, pink with the defection. Not that theVenite has any significance to her which brings her to her feet, butthat to find herself in the wrong situation at church, or anywhere, isembarrassing.

  This pitfall of ritual is called the service, though it might be worsesince the more service the less sermon. As nearly as Emmy Lou can graspit, at Hattie's church, beyond a sparse standing up to pray, andsitting down to sing, it is all sermon.

  Aunt Cordelia has to speak to her by and by again: "Get up for theJubilate," Emmy Lou having lost herself during the second lesson.

  And yet? And yet? Can it be there is more in this business of churchthan an Emmy Lou suspects? The congregation now going down on its kneesfor that matter called the Litany, a tear presently splashes on theglove of Aunt Cordelia kneeling beside Emmy Lou, her head bowed abovethe big, cross-emblazoned prayer book that she always uses.

  Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise wear white gloves or gray or brown as thecase may be, and feathers and flowers, and their dresses are varied andcheery. But Aunt Cordelia still wears black in memory of Emmy Lou'smother who went away when Emmy Lou was four. The tear falling on herblack glove and sliding off to the book makes a stain tinged withpurple from the kid.

  Then Emmy Lou remembers this is the anniversary of the day her motherwent forever, and understands why the prayer book in Aunt Cordelia'shand is open at the flyleaf bearing the name of its first owner, EmilyPope McLaurin.

  Are we nearer our dead at church? And being nearer, are we comforted?For when Aunt Cordelia arises from her knees her face is happy.

  "The four hundred and ninety-fourth hymn," she whispers. "Find theplace." Then in refutation of Hattie, "Stand up."

  And Emmy Lou, finding the hymn for herself, stands up and with AuntCordelia and Uncle Charlie and the congregation, sings heartily:

  "The Church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord----"

  While the service thus drags its length along, the hymn which Emmy Louboth can find for herself and can sing heartily being the only oasis inthe desert of her morning, there is worse ahead. Between two uprisingpeaks of the amens, one of which is reached with the close of the hymn,lies that valley of dry bones called the sermon.

  Dr. Angell is beginning it now. "'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and alight unto my path.'"

  This seems a reasonably clear and definite statement even to Emmy Lou,not quite nine and slow to follow. But no.

  "The Psalmist was given to imagery, which is to say, was an Oriental,"begins Dr. Angell. And so one goes down with him into the valley of drybones.

  The mind wanders anew. How can it help wandering? Albert Eddie Dawkinsis across the church in a side pew with his big sister, Sarah. She hasdecided that he shall try for a rector's prize too. He is low in hismind about it, and said so to Emmy Lou coming out of Sunday school thismorning.

  Joe Kiffin made a proposition to him that he could not accept, Joe beingthe big boy who drove the wagon and delivered for the Dawkins grocery.

  "He said he would take me and another boy this morning to a place wherewe can get all the honey locusts we want. A place where the ground iscovered with 'em. But we both had to come to Sunday school and stay tochurch, and Joe says we can't expect him to take us in the afternoonwhen it's the only afternoon he's got. You know honey locusts?"

  Emmy Lou was compelled to admit that she did not.

  "Well," a little anxiously, "I don't either. But if I and the other boycould have gone with Joe, I'd have found out."

  "With one pink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to beachieved for texts."]

  The other boy was at church too. By turning her head the least bit EmmyLou could see him. His name was Logan. But he wasn't trying for a prize.He said they might make him stay to church--"they" meaning the grownpersons in the pew with him--but they couldn't make him try for pinktickets, or walk up an aisle to get a prize he mightn't want anyway.

  Mightn't Logan want it? Was there any chance that Emmy Lou would notwant hers? Fifty-two--no, fifty-one--Sundays now to come, and with onepink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to be achieved for texts.

  Dr. Angell is ending his sermon. ". . . and so it comes that the words ofthe Psalmist occurring in the liturgy of our service, are a lamp untoour feet, and a light unto our path." And he and his congregation comeup out of the valley of dry bones.

  And yet? And yet? Emmy Lou's eyes, fixed on Dr. Angell, are registeringon the retina of her mind for all time a figure which for her shall bea type, dominant in its attitude of beneficent authority, handsoutspread above its people, rumpled hair white, beard white, robeswhite, a shaft of light from a common window into heaven shared with himby St. Paul, the bigoted Episcopalian, searching him out where hestands.

  As void of meaning to her, these gettings up and these sittings down,these venites, jubilates, and amens, as the purpose of Dr. Angell in hischancel. Yet who shall say at what moment Emmy Lou in her pew,struggling along in the darkness though she is, shall sense the symbolof the one, and behold in the other the office and the appointment?

  And the adult who is here of self-actuated volition? The Aunt Cordeliaever in her place in the family pew? Emmy Lou's eyes turn to thisperson, and behold, her face is touched as by a light, too, and her eyesare shining.

  "Get up," she whispers as she herself arises, "i
t is the benediction."

  Uncle Charlie is jocular on the way home. "And what did you think of thesermon?" he asks Emmy Lou.

  She does not know that he is jocular, nor that she too, unwittingly, isthe same in her reply. "I thought I understood the text until Dr. Angellbegan to explain it, and then I lost it."

  Fifty-one more Sundays, fifty-one more sermons, fifty-one more textsbetween Emmy Lou and her reward! The next Sunday and there would befifty, and the next forty-nine!

  As the weeks went by Emmy Lou discussed the prize with Aunt Cordelia,and incidentally with Uncle Charlie who overheard the conversations.

  "When Albert Eddie's mamma won a prize for catechism in England whereshe lived when she was little, it was tea to take home to her mother,and a flannel petticoat for her grandma, and she cried."

  And again. "Sadie says it's an awful thing when your name is called, toget up and walk up the aisle, but Hattie says that you don't mind it somuch if you keep thinking about the prize."

  * * * * *

  Papa came down once a month from his home city a hundred miles away, tostay over Sunday and see Emmy Lou. "I was going to propose," he said onone of these visits, "that the next time, you and Aunt Cordelia andUncle Charlie get on the train and come up to visit me. But it's no use,I see."

  "Not until I get my prize," said Emmy Lou. "I have forty-one pinktickets in Aunt Cordelia's bureau drawer, and today will makeforty-two."

  "I am almost sorry I let her try," Aunt Cordelia told her brother-in-lawand Uncle Charlie. "She begins to study the text for the next Sunday assoon as she gets home on this."

  Aunt Louise, as the allotted Sunday drew near, brought home news of atiff between Dr. Angell and Mr. Glidden.

  "Mr. Glidden told Dr. Angell today that he had been looking over aprinted list of Sunday school prizes sent to superintendents, and hadnoticed some excellent suggestions. Dr. Angell was ruffled and said, 'IfI'm fool enough to come to prizes, bribes for duty, I'm neverthelessstill capable of providing them.' I'm afraid he is getting old."

  "Old," retorted Uncle Charlie. "It's being goaded by Willie Glidden.Drive even a saint too far and he will show his manhood."

  "Hattie's is a little pin," remarked Emmy Lou, even irrelevantly, "andSadie's is a workbox, and that other little girl's was a locket on achain."

  The morning of the fifty-third Sunday came. "I don't know which she isthe more, proud, or alarmed, at thought of walking up the aisle thismorning for her prize," said Aunt Cordelia after Emmy Lou left thebreakfast table. "There are only three children who have come throughsuccessfully in the whole Sunday school, Charlie. A little girl namedPuggy Western, according to Emmy Lou, she herself, and Albert EddieDawkins. Two of the three are thanks to Sarah and myself, if I do sayit."

  * * * * *

  The moment was come. The Sunday school--Bible Class, Big Room, andInfant Class--was assembled. Mr. Glidden, with Dr. Angell beside him,had arisen.

  "One at a time, Puggy Western, Emily Louise McLaurin, and Albert EdwardDawkins come forward and receive their prizes."

  Puggy Western went up first, in a brand-new hat and coat for theoccasion, and came back.

  Emily Louise McLaurin went up next in a next-to-new coat and hat anddress, and came back.

  Albert Edward Dawkins, in a new suit and his first high collar, went upand came back. A hymn, and Sunday school was over, and all ages andsizes crowded around the three to see their similar rewards.

  * * * * *

  When Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie on their road to church met EmmyLou this morning, her eyes, like her late accumulation of tickets, werepink. She to whom tears came hard and seldom had been crying.

  "And how about the prize?" asked Uncle Charlie.

  Emmy Lou, tears stoutly held back, handed it to him. He looked it over,opened it, read her name in inscription within, then lifted his gaze toher.

  "Well, I'll be doggoned!"

  "Charlie!" from Aunt Cordelia.

  "I surely will. The same to the other two?"

  Emmy Lou nodded. There are times when one cannot trust oneself to speak.

  And when Uncle Charlie handed back the volume stoutly bound in cloth,stamped with a golden sun in a nimbus of rays, and bearing for title,"Rays From the Sun of Righteousness," the nimbus surrounded, not agolden sun, but a silver dollar held in place by Uncle Charlie's thumb.

  "A dollar that is only a dollar, and not a watch," he explainedregretfully. "But somewhere in the week ahead we may be able to overtakea locket on a chain." Then to Aunt Cordelia, "I'll decide it thismorning, Cordelia. Emmy Lou is excused for today from anything furtherin the nature of sermons."

  The next Sunday Albert Eddie Dawkins was absent from Sunday school. Hehad run off, so his sister Maud explained, and could not be found.

  Emmy Lou heard more about it later on from Albert Eddie himself. Shealso found out what a honey locust is, though she had had to wait a yearto do so.

  "I told Joe Kiffen if he'd take us to that honey locust place now, thathe said he would last year, I'd stay away from Sunday school. And hedid. And here's one for you."

  Emmy Lou took the pod and bit into it. As solace and recompense shecould have wished for something more delectable.