"'Go to that Fair. Study its wonderful lessons with awe and reverence.
Go week days if you can, and if you can't, go Sundays. And you rich
people, who have art galleries of your own to wander through Sundays,
and gardens and greenhouses full of beauty and sweetness, and the
means to seek out loveliness through the world, and who don't need the
soul refreshment these things give--don't you by any Pharisaical law
deprive my poor of their part in the feast I have spread for both rich
and poor.'"
Sez Miss Cork, "I wouldn't dast to talk in that way, Arville. To add or
diminish one word of skripter is to bring an awful penalty."
"I hain't a-goin' to add or diminish," says Arville. "I hain't thought
on't. I am merely statin' what, in my opinion, would be the Lord's will
on the subject."
But right here the schoolmaster struck in. He is a very likely young
man--smart as a whip, and does well by the school, and makes a stiddy
practice of mindin' his own business and behavin'.
He is a great favorite and quite good-lookin', and some say that he and
Lophemia Pegrum are engaged; but it hain't known for certain.
He spoke up, and sez he, "There is one great thing to think of when we
talk on this matter. There is so much to be said on both sides of this
subject that it is almost impossible to shut your eyes to the advantages
and the disadvantages on both sides.
"But," sez he, "if this nation closes the Fair Sundays, it will be a
great object lesson to the youth of this nation and the world at large
of the sanctity and regard we have for our Puritan Sabbath--
"Of our determination to not have it turned into a day of amusement, as
it is in some European countries.
"It would be something like painting up the Ten Commandments and the
Lord's Prayer in gold letters on the blue sky above, so that all who run
may read, of the regard we have for the day of rest that God appointed.
The regard we have for things spiritual, onseen--our conflicts and
victories for conscience' sake--the priceless heritage for which our
Pilgrim Fathers braved the onknown sea and wilderness, and our
forefathers fought and bled for."
"They fit for Liberty!" sez Arville. She would have the last word. "And
this country, in the name of Religion, has whipped Quakers, and
Baptists, and hung witches--and no knowin' what it will do agin. And I
think," sez she, "that it would look better now both from the under and
upper side--both on earth and in Heaven--to close them murderous and
damnable saloons, that are drawin' men to visible and open ruin all
round us on every side, than to take such great pains to impress onseen
things onto strangers."
She would have the last word--she wuz bound to.
And the schoolmaster, bein' real polite, though he had a look as if he
wuzn't convinced, yet he bowed kinder genteel to Arvilly, as much as to
say, "I will not dispute any further with you." And then he got up and
went over and sot down by Lophemia Pegrum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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