They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second ComingSinclair, Upton
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They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming
Sinclair, Upton
Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Fiction; Jesus Christ -- Fiction
I bowed to a score or two of the elegant ladies, and to their
escorts in shiny top hats and uncreased kid gloves, and went into
the exquisite church with its glowing stained glass window, and
looked up over the altar--and there stood Carpenter! I tell you, it
gave me a queer shock. There he was, up in the window, exactly where
he had always been; I thought I had suddenly wakened from a dream.
There had been no “prophet fresh from God,” no mass-meeting at Grant
Hall, no editorial in the “Times”! But suddenly I heard a voice at
my elbow: “Billy, what is this awful thing you've been doing?” It
was my Aunt Caroline, and I asked what she meant, and she answered,
“That terrible prophet creature, and getting your name into the
papers!”
So I knew it was true, and I walked with my dear, sweet old auntie
down the aisle, and there sat Aunt Jennie, with her two lanky girls
who have grown inches every time I run into them; and also Uncle
Timothy. Uncle Timothy was my guardian until I came of age, so I am
a little in awe of him, and now I had to listen to his whispered
reproaches--it being the first principle of our family never to “get
into the papers.” I told him that it wasn't my fault I had been
knocked down by a mob, and surely I couldn't help it if this man
Carpenter found me while I was unconscious, and made me well. Nor
could I fail to be polite to my benefactor, and try to help him
about. My Uncle Timothy was amazed, because he had accepted the
“Times” story that it was all a “movie” hoax. Everybody will tell
you in Western City that they “never believe a word they read in the
'Times'”; but of course they do--they have to believe something, and
what else have they?
I was trying to think about that picture over the altar. Of course,
they would naturally have replaced it! I wondered who had found old
de Wiggs up there; I wondered if he knew about it, and if he had any
idea who had played that prank. I looked to his pew; yes, there he
sat, rosy and beaming, bland as ever! I looked for old Peter Dexter,
president of the Dexter Trust company--yes, he was in his pew,
wizened and hunched up, prematurely bald. And Stuyvesant Gunning, of
the Fidelity National--they were all here, the masters of the city's
finance and the pillars of “law and order.” Some wag had remarked if
you wanted to call directors' meeting after the service, you could
settle all the business of Western City in St. Bartholomew's!
The organ pealed and the white-robed choir marched in, bearing the
golden crosses, and followed by the Reverend Dr. Lettuce-Spray,
smooth-shaven, plump and beautiful, his eyes bent reverently on the
floor. They were singing with fervor that most orthodox of hymns:
The church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ, her Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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