New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American
I go to church in the forenoon and in the evening again; in the
afternoon I've been going up to Central Park. There's a piece of woods
there they call the Ramble, and I've found a seat on a cobble up over
the pond. The trees are not very thrifty, but they help me to make
believe I am back in Auburnvale. Sometimes I go into the big Museum
there is in the Park, not a museum of curiosities, but full of pictures
and statuary, ever so old some of it, and very peculiar. Then I wish for
you more than ever, for that's the sort of thing you'd be interested in
and know all about.
Last Sunday night I went to Dr. Thurston's church, and I thought of you
as soon as the music began. I remember you said you did wish you were an
organist in a Gothic church where they had a pipe-organ. Well, the organ
at Dr. Thurston's would just suit you, it's so big and deep and fine.
And you'd like the singing, too; it's a quartet, and the tenor is a
German who came from the Berlin opera; they say he gets three thousand
dollars a year just for singing on Sunday.
But I suppose it pays them to have good voices like his, for the church
was crowded; and even if some of the congregation came for the music,
they had to listen to Dr. Thurston's sermon afterward. And it was a very
good sermon, indeed--almost as good as one of your father's, practical
and chockful of common sense. And Dr. Thurston isn't afraid of talking
right out in meeting, either. He was speaking of wealth and he said it
had to be paid for just like anything else, and that many a man buys his
fortune at too high a price, especially if he sacrifices for it either
health or character. And just in front of him sat old Ezra Pierce, one
of the richest men in the city--and one of the most unscrupulous, so
they say. He's worth ten or twenty millions at least; I was up in the
gallery and he was in the pew just under me, so I had a good look at
him. I wonder how it must feel to be as rich as all that.
And who do you suppose was in the pew just across the aisle from old
Pierce? Nobody but the Gilt-Edged Girl, as you call her, that Miss
Stanwood. So you see it's a small world even in a big city, and we keep
meeting the same people over and over again.
I rather think I shall go to Dr. Thurston's regularly now. I like to
belong to a church and not feel like a tramp every Sunday morning. Dr.
Thurston is the most attractive preacher I've heard yet, and the music
there is beautiful.
I don't suppose I shall ever be as rich as old Ezra Pierce, although I
don't see why not, but if ever I am really rich I'll have a big house,
with a great big Gothic music-room, with a pipe-organ built in one end
of it. I guess I could get Some One to play on it for me when I come
home evenings tired out with making money down-town. I wonder if she
guesses how much I love her?
JACK.
VI
NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1894.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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