The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker RacesMicheaux, Oscar
General
The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races
Micheaux, Oscar
African Americans -- Fiction
The following Sunday, the pastor appraised the congregation of the fact,
that on the following Sunday, they would have with them the Reverend W.
Jacobs, the energetic young man who was doing such great work for the
training of wayward children. And this takes our story into a matter of
grave human interest.
Coincident with better educational facilities, and the more careful
training of the children, time had brought a change that was slowly but
surely being felt by these black people in the south. It has already
been stated, that the Baptist church required little literary training
in order to preach; but, in this church, it is quite different, and no
man would be tolerated as a minister, who had not a great amount of
theological, as well as literary training.
Henry Hugh Hodder was a man, not only prepared in the lines of theology
and literature, but was fully supplied with practical knowledge as well.
He had, at the time Sidney Wyeth became acquainted with him, gathered to
his church, a majority of Attalia's best black people. His popularity
was, moreover, on the increase, and his church was filled regularly
with a class of people who listened, studied and applied to their
welfare, what he said each Sunday in the pulpit.
His church stood on a corner to the edge of the black belt, and near a
fashionable white neighborhood. And it had, at the time it was
constructed, caused considerable agitation. When Sidney and Spoon came
to the door, prayer was being offered, and when it was over, they
entered, taking seats near the door.
It was a nicely ventilated church, with large colored windows, arranged
to allow air to pass in without coming directly upon the congregation.
At the front, a small rostrum rose to the level of the rear, and
contained, in addition to the altar, only four chairs. Sidney was told
afterwards, that, due to a practice always followed in other churches,
particularly the Baptist, of allowing journeymen preachers to put
themselves before the congregation uninvited, Hodder had removed the
chairs in order to discourage such practice.
Apparently he had succeeded, for, on the Sundays that followed, Sidney
saw only those who were invited, facing the congregation.
Directly over the rostrum hung a small balcony, which contained the
choir and a pipe organ. Following a song, the pastor came forward. He
was a tall man, with width in proportion, perhaps two hundred and twenty
pounds. Not unlike the average Negro of today, he was brown-skinned. His
hair, a curly mass of blackness, was brushed back from a high forehead.
His voice, as he opened the sermon, was deep and resonant. And for his
text that day, he took "Does It Pay!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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