They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second ComingSinclair, Upton
General
They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming
Sinclair, Upton
Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Fiction; Jesus Christ -- Fiction
He stepped upon the altar, and lifted the portrait in front of the
window. How he got it to stay there I am not sure--I was too much
taken aback by the procedure to notice such details. There the
picture was; it seemed to fit the window exactly, and the effect was
simply colossal. You'd have to know old de Wiggs to appreciate
it--those round, puffy cheeks, with the afternoon sun behind them,
making them shine like two enormous Jonathan apples! Our leading
banker was clad in decorous black, as always on Sunday mornings, but
in one place the sun penetrated his form--at one side of his chest.
My curiosity got the better of me; I could not restrain the
question, “What is that golden light?”
Said the stranger: “I think that is his heart.”
“But that can't be!” I argued. “The light is on his right side; and
it seems to have an oblong shape--exactly as if it were his
wallet.”
Said the other: “Where the treasure is, there will the heart be
also.”
VI
We passed out through the arched doorway, and Broadway was before
us. I had another thrill of distress--a vision of myself walking
down this crowded street with this extraordinary looking personage.
The crowds would stare at us, the street urchins would swarm about
us, until we blocked the traffic and the police ran us in! So I
thought, as we descended the steps and started; but my fear passed,
for we walked and no one followed us--hardly did anyone even turn
his eyes after us.
I realized in a little while how this could be. The pleasant climate
of Western City brings strange visitors to dwell here; we have
Hindoo swamis in yellow silk, and a Theosophist college on a
hill-top, and people who take up with “nature,” and go about with
sandals and bare legs, and a mane of hair over their shoulders. I
pass them on the street now and then--one of them carries a
shepherd's crook! I remember how, a few years ago, my Aunt Caroline,
rambling around looking for something to satisfy her emotions, took
up with these queer ideas, and there came to her front door, to the
infinite bewilderment of the butler, a mild-eyed prophet in pastoral
robes, and with a little newspaper bundle in his hand. This, spread
out before my aunt, proved to contain three carrots and two onions,
carefully washed, and shining; they were the kindly fruits of the
earth, and of the prophet's own labor, and my old auntie was deeply
touched, because it appeared that this visitor was a seer, the sole
composer of a mighty tome which is to be found in the public
library, and is known as the “Eternal Bible.”
So here I was, strolling along quite as a matter of course with my
strange acquaintance. I saw that he was looking about, and I
prepared for questions, and wondered what they would be. I thought
that he must naturally be struck by such wonders as automobiles and
crowded street-cars. I failed to realize that he would be thinking
about the souls of the people.
Said he, at last: “This is a large city?”
“About half a million.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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