Part 2

"Well, Parson Page put his purse back in his pocket and thanked the showman for his kindness, but he said he felt as if he wanted to make some sort of a return, and he begun searchin' around in his pockets to see if he didn't have a tract or somethin' o' that sort to give him, and he come across a Shorter Catechism that he'd been questionin' the children out of the Sunday before. And he pulled it out and says he: 'Sir, I would like to leave this little book with you as a token of remembrance.' Sam said the showman took it and looked at it and turned over the pages right slow, and at last he says: 'Great Jehosaphat! This carries me back forty years, to the time when I was a little shaver, goin' to church Sunday mornin' and listenin' to old Brother Bodley preach from the day of creation down to the day of judgment, and sittin' on the old horsehair sofa in the parlor all Sunday evenin' wrestlin' with this very catechism and prayin' for the sun to go down and wishin' I could cut all the Sundays out o' the almanac.' And he turned over the pages o' the catechism and says he: 'Yes, here's all my old friends, "Santification" and "Justification" and "Adoption."' Sam said he laughed to himself, but there was a curious look in his eyes like he might cry, too. And says he: 'Parson, I know you won't believe me, but there ain't a question in this catechism that I can't answer.'

"And Parson Page, he looked amazed, as anybody would, and says he: 'Is it possible?' And the showman handed him the book, and says he: 'I bet you five dollars I can answer any question you ask me.' Well, of course, Parson Page hadn't any notion of bettin' with the showman, but he took the catechism and says he, jest as earnest as if he was hearin' a Sunday-school class: 'What is sanctification?' And the showman says: 'Sanctification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.'

"And Parson Page looked mighty pleased, and says he: 'That's a perfectly correct answer, but that's justification, and I asked you what sanctification is.' And the showman he thought a minute, and says he: 'You're right! You're right! I always did have trouble with justification and sanctification, and I remember how mother'd say: "Now, Samuel, can't you get it fixed in your mind that justification is an act and sanctification is a work of God's free grace?" I thought I did get it fixed one o' them Sunday evenin's when mother was workin' with me, but I see now I didn't.'

"And then he pulled out his purse,--Mis' Page said she never saw as much money at one time in all her life,--and he handed Parson Page a five-dollar gold piece. Parson Page didn't make any motion toward takin' it; jest looked first at the showman and then at Sam in a kind o' puzzled way, and the showman says: 'Here's your money, Parson. You won it fair and square.'

"And Parson Page says: 'Sir, I don't understand you,' and he stepped back to keep the showman from puttin' the money in his hand--pretty much, I reckon, the way Brother Wilson did when Squire Schuyler was tryin' to make him take the deed to the house that was a wedding fee; and the showman says: 'Why, didn't I bet you five dollars I could answer any question in this catechism, and didn't I lose my bet?' And Parson Page says: 'Sir, I hadn't the slightest intention of betting with you. I am a minister of the gospel.' And the showman he says: 'Well, Parson, you may not have intended bettin' any more than you intended goin' to the circus, but you did bet, and there's no gettin' around it. I bet I could answer any question, and you took up the bet and asked the question; and I lost, and you won.'

"Sam Amos said he never could forgit the look on Parson Page's face when he begun to see that he'd not only been to the circus, but that he'd been bettin' with the circus man. And he says: 'Sir, there's a great misunderstanding somewhere. Surely a minister of the gospel can ask a catechism question without being accused of betting.' And the showman he laughed, and says he: 'Well, we won't argue about that, but here's your money,' And Parson Page says: 'Sir, I shall not take it.' And the showman he looked mighty solemn and says he: 'Do you think it's right, Parson, to keep a fellow man from payin' his just debts?' And Parson Page studied a while, and says he: 'That's a hard question. I never had to deal with just such a matter before, and I hardly know what to say.' And the showman he says: 'I've got a conscience the same as you; my conscience tells me to pay this money, so it must be right for me to pay it; and if it's right for me to pay it, it can't be wrong for you to take it.'

"Well, Parson Page studied a minute, and says he: 'Your reasoning appears to be sound, but, still, my conscience tells me that I ought not to take the money, and I will not take it.' And the showman says: 'Well, if it goes against your conscience to keep it, put it in the contribution box next Sunday,' Says he: 'I haven't been to church since I was a boy, and there may be a good many changes since then, but I reckon they're still passin' the contribution box around.' And the parson he drew back and shook his bead again, and the showman says: 'Well, you can give it to foreign missions; maybe the heathen won't object to takin' a showman's money.' And the parson says: 'Sir, I appreciate your generosity, but on the whole I think it best not to take the money.'

"Sam said the showman looked at Parson Page a minute, and then he slapped him on the shoulder, and says he: 'Parson, you may not know it, but we're pardners in this game. If it wasn't for the church, we wouldn't need the circus, and if it wasn't for the circus, we wouldn't need the church.' Says he: 'You belong to the church, and I belong to the circus; but maybe, after all, there ain't so very much difference betwixt an honest preacher and an honest showman.' And then he bowed to Mis' Page like she'd been a queen, and took Parson Page by the hand, and the next minute he was gone like he had a heap o' business to see to. And Sam Amos laughed, and says he: 'Well, Parson, circus-goin' and bettin' is enough for one day. You and me'd better go home now, before the world, the flesh, and the devil lay hold of you again.'

"So they all started for town, Parson Page talkin' about how kind and polite the showman was, and how his conscience was clear since he'd offered to pay for his seat, and how glad he was that he hadn't taken the five dollars the showman wanted him to take. Sam said he waited till they got to the drug store, and then he told Parson Page to put his hand in his coat pocket,--he had on a black luster coat with the pocket outside,--and Parson Page put his hand in, and there was the five-dollar gold piece. Sam said that while the showman was shakin' hands he slipped the money in the pocket as quick as lightnin', and of course Sam wouldn't tell on him, because he was glad to git another joke on Parson Page.

"Well, it was all Mis' Page and Sam could do to keep him from goin' back to the show grounds to try to find the showman and give him back his money. Mis' Page told him it was gittin' on toward night, and they had to go home, and Sam told him that the show was most likely on its way to the depot. But Parson Page shook his head, and says he: 'I can't go home with this money in my possession.' And Mis' Page reached out and took the gold piece out o' his hand and slipped it into her reticule, and says she: 'Well, now you can go home. That gold piece won't bother you any more, for it's in my possession, and I'm goin' to put it in the treasury of our Mite Society,' and that's what she did the very next meetin' we had.

"Mis' Page said that Parson Page could hardly git to sleep that night, he was so troubled and so upset, and he kept talkin' about the things he'd done because he thought they was right, and how they'd led him into doin' wrong, and says he: 'This morning when I set out for town, I thought I knew exactly what was right and what was wrong, but now I'm so turned and twisted,' says he, 'that if anybody asked me whether the ten commandments ought to be observed, I believe I'd stop and think a long time before I answered, and then like as not I'd say, "Sometimes they ought, and sometimes they oughtn't."'

"Well, of course the news went all over the country that Parson Page had gone to the circus, and everywhere Brother Page went he was kept busy explainin' about the rain and the crowd and how he got in by accident and couldn't git out, and by the time the Presbytery met, all the preachers had got wind of the story, and some of 'em laughed about it, and some of 'em said it was a serious matter. Brother Robert McCallum did more laughin' than anybody. He used to say that next to savin' souls he enjoyed a good joke more than anything in the world, and Sam Amos used to say that if Brother McCallum ever wanted to change his business, he could be the end man in a nigger minstrel show without any trouble.

"Brother McCallum and Parson Page 'd been schoolmates, so they both felt free to joke with one another; and the minute they'd shook hands, Brother McCallum begun laughin' about Parson Page goin' to the circus, and says he: 'Brother Page, I wish I'd been in your place.' Says he: 'I've always thought a man loses a heap by bein' a preacher. If anybody ought to be allowed to go to the circus,' says he, 'it looks like it ought to be us preachers, that's proof against temptation and that's strong to wrestle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Instead o' that we send the poor, weak sinners into the temptation and lead the preachers away from it.' Says he: 'I went to that very show, but I wasn't so lucky as you, for it was clear weather, and I didn't have a chance to see anything but the animals.'

"And then, after sayin' all that, what did Brother McCallum do but git up the last day of Presbytery and read a paper with a lot of 'whereases' and 'be it resolveds', chargin' Brother Page with conduct unbecoming to a minister and callin' on him to explain matters. And Parson Page he had to own up to everything and explain again jest how he happened to git caught in the circus tent, and says he: 'It was a strange place for a minister of the gospel to be in, but my rule is to see what I can learn from every experience that comes to me, and I believe I learned from the circus something that, maybe, I could not learn anywhere else.' Says he: 'As I lay that night on a sleepless pillow, the Lord gave me an insight into the great mystery of predestination. I traced up the events of the day one after another. There was my betting with the showman, and I felt sorry for that. But that would not have happened if I had not sought out the showman to pay my just debt to him, and that was a right act and a right intention, yet it led me into wrong; and I saw in a flash that our own acts predestine us and foreordain us to this thing or to that. We are like children, stumbling around in the dark, taking the wrong way and doing the wrong thing, but over us all is the pity of the Father who "knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust."'

"Says he: 'I went into that tent a Pharisee, and I wrapped the mantle of my pride around me and thought how much holier I was than those poor sinful show people. But,' says he, 'I talked with the showman, and I found as much honesty and kindness of heart as I ever found in any church member, and I left the show grounds with a wider charity in my heart than I'd ever felt before, for I knew that the showman was my brother, and I understood what the Apostle meant when he said: "Now are they many members; yet but one body."'

"And Brother McCallum he got up, and says he: 'Well, that's more than I ever learned from any of Brother Page's sermons,' and everybody laughed, and that ended the matter so far as the Presbytery was concerned.

"But Sam Amos never got through teasin' Parson Page, and every time he'd see him with a passel o' church members, he'd go up and tell some story or other, and then he'd turn around and say: 'You ricollect, Parson, that happened the day you and me went to the circus.'"

MARY CRAWFORD'S CHART

"With this chart, madam," said the agent, "you are absolutely independent of dressmakers and seamstresses. After the instructions I have just given, a woman can cut and fit any sort of garment, from a party gown for herself to a pair of overalls for her husband, and the chart is so scientific in its construction, its system of measurement so accurate, that anything cut by it has a style and finish seldom seen in home-made garments. I have handled many things in the course of my ten years' experience as a traveling salesman, but this chart is the most satisfactory invention of all. I've been handling it now about eight months, and in that time I've sold--well, if I were to tell you how many hundred, you wouldn't believe me, so what's the use?--and I have yet to hear of anybody who is dissatisfied with the chart. The last time I talked with the general manager of the International Dressmaking Chart Company, I said to him, said I: 'Mr. Crampton, you could safely give a guarantee with every one of these charts--offer to refund the money to any one who is dissatisfied, and,' said I, 'I believe the only result of this would be an increased sale. You'd never have to refund a dollar. About a year ago I sold one to Mrs. Judge Graves in Shepherdsville; you may know her. Her husband's county judge, and they are two of the finest people you ever saw. The judge has a brother right here in town, Campbell Graves, the grocer. Your husband knows him, I'm sure. Well, I sold Mrs. Graves this chart a year ago, and I stopped there again on this trip just to say 'how d'ye do' and see how the chart was holding out. And she said to me: 'Mr. Roberts, this chart has saved me at least fifty dollars worth of dressmaker's bills in the last year. My husband thought, when I bought it, that five dollars was a good deal to pay for a thing like that, but' says she, 'he says now it was the best investment he ever made.' I had intended to make a thorough canvass of this neighborhood, but at twelve o'clock to-day, just as I was sitting down to my dinner, I got a telegram from the house telling me to go immediately to Shepherdsville. But I'd already ordered the horse and buggy, so I ate my dinner as quickly as I could, and said I: 'I'll drive three miles out into the country and stop at the first house I come to on the right-hand side of the road beyond the tollgate, and if I sell a chart there, I won't feel that I ran up a livery bill for nothing. And the first house on the right-hand side of the road beyond the tollgate happened to be yours, and that's how I came to give you all this trouble."

Here the agent paused with a pleasant laugh. He realized that the psychological moment was approaching, and he began gathering up the various parts of the chart with an air of extreme preoccupation. The gleam of a ruby ring on his little finger caught Mary Crawford's eye, and she noticed how white and well-formed his hands were, the hands of one who had never done any manual labor. She stood irresolute, fascinated by the gleam of the red jewel, and thinking of her little hoard up-stairs in the Japanese box in the top bureau drawer. Five dollars from thirteen dollars and sixty-five cents left eight dollars and sixty-five cents. It would be three weeks before John's birthday came. The hens were laying well, the young cow would be "fresh" next week, and that would give her at least two pounds more of butter per week. Then, the agent was such a nice-mannered, obliging young man; he had spent an hour teaching her how to use the chart, and she hated to have him take all that trouble for nothing.

She looked over at her husband, and her eyes said plainly: "Please help me to decide."

But John was blind to the gentle entreaty. He had fixed ideas as to what was a man's business and what a woman's; so he tilted his chair back against the wall and chewed a straw while he gazed out of the open door. His mental comment was: "If that agent fellow could work his hands just half as fast as he works his jaw, he'd be a mighty good help on a farm."

The agent looked up with a cheery smile. He had folded the chart, and was tying the red tape fastenings.

"I've got to get back to town in time to catch that four o'clock train for Shepherdsville. I'm a thousand times obliged to you, Madam, for letting me show you the working of the chart. Sometimes I have a good deal of difficulty in getting ladies to understand the _modus operandi_ of the thing. Unless a woman remembers the arithmetic she learned when she was a schoolgirl, she is apt to have trouble taking measurements. But it's a pleasure to show any one who sees into it as readily as you do. Most married women seem to give up their mathematical knowledge just as they give up their music. But you've got yours right at your fingers' ends. Well, good afternoon to you both, and the next time I come this way--"

"Wait a minute," said Mary. "I'll take the chart. Just sit down and wait till I go up-stairs and get the money."

The agent made a suave bow of acquiescence, and then stroked his mustache to conceal an involuntary smile of triumph.

"You have a fine stand of wheat, sir," he said, turning to John and gesturing gracefully towards the field across the road, where the sun was shimmering on the silvery green of oats.

John made no reply. He scorned to talk about farming matters with a raw city fellow who did not know oats from wheat, and he was laboriously counting out a handful of silver.

"Here's your money, young man," he said dryly. "Now skip out, if you can, before Mary gets back."

The agent gave a quick glance at the coins and thrust them into his pocket. He seized his hat and valise, darted out of the house, and was climbing into his buggy when Mary appeared at the door, breathless and distressed.

"Come back!" she cried. "You've forgotten your money."

John was standing just behind Mary, smiling broadly, and making emphatic gestures of dismissal with both hands. The agent understood the humor of the situation and laughed heartily as he lifted his hat and drove away. Mary started to the gate, blushing scarlet with vexation and perplexity, but John held her back.

"I have heard of agents forgettin' to leave the goods," said he, "but I never heard of one forgettin' to collect his money. Go and put your money back, Mary; I paid the man."

"Then you must let me pay you," cried Mary. "I really mean it, John. You must let me have my way. I know you're hard run just now, and I never would have bought the chart, if I had not intended paying for it myself."

She tried to open John's hand to put the money in it, but John took hold of her hand and gave her a gentle shove toward the foot of the stairs.

"Go on and put up your money, Mary," he said. "If half that agent fellow said is true, I'm in about a hundred and fifty dollars. Before long, I reckon, you'll be makin' my coats and pants and the harness for the horses by this here chart."

And Mary went, but her gentle protestations could be heard even after she reached her room and had dropped the money back into the little box that was her savings bank.

She hurried through her after-supper tasks, her mind full of the cutting and fitting she wanted to do before bed-time. Hers was a soul that found its highest happiness in work, and she unfolded the chart with the delight of a child who has a new toy. The agent's tribute to her knowledge of mathematics was no idle flattery. Her quick brain had comprehended at once the system of the chart, and she flushed with excitement and pleasure as she bent over her scale and found that her measurements and calculations were resulting in patterns of unmistakable correctness and style. It was like solving the fifth proposition of Euclid. She laid aside her work that night with a reluctant sigh, but a happy anticipation of the sewing yet to come. The anticipation was fulfilled next day by the completion of a shirt waist so striking in design and fit that even John noticed its beauty and becomingness and acknowledged that the chart was "no humbug."

"You must wear that waist Monday when we go to town," he declared. "I never saw anything fit you as pretty as that does," and Sally McElrath echoed John's opinion when she and Mary met at the linen counter of Brown and Company's dry goods store; and Mary told her of the wonderful chart as they both examined patterns and qualities of table linen and compared experiences as to wearing qualities of bleached and unbleached damask.

There is a system of communication in every country neighborhood that is hardly less marvelous than the telegraph and telephone; and before Mary could put her chart to a second test, all Goshen knew that Mary Crawford had a chart that would cut anything from a baby sacque to a bolero, and that she was willing to lend it to any one who was inclined to borrow.

Sally McElrath was the first applicant for the loan of the chart. Whatever the enterprise, if it had the feature of novelty, Sally was its first patron and promoter. But her promptness ended here, and her friends declared that Sally McElrath was always the first to begin a thing, and the last to finish it.

Accompanying the chart was a set of explicit rules for its use, and Mary read these to Sally, explaining all the difficult points just as the agent had explained them to her.

"Now if I were you, Sally," she said warningly, "I would try some simple thing first, a child's apron, or something like that, so that you won't run the risk of ruining any expensive goods. Everything takes practice, you know."

"Oh," said Sally confidently, "I'm goin' to make a tea jacket out of a piece of China silk I got off the bargain counter the last time I was in town."

"What's a tea jacket?" asked Sally's husband, who had been listening intently, with a faint hope that some new shirts for himself might be the outcome of Sally's interest in the chart.

"It's a thing like this, Dan," said Sally, producing a picture of the elegant garment in question.

"Why do they call it a tea jacket?" demanded Dan.

"Oh, I don't know; I reckon they wear 'em when they drink tea," said Sally.

"But we drink coffee," said Dan argumentatively.

"Well, call it a coffee jacket, then," retorted Sally. "But whatever you call it, I'm goin' to have one, if I don't do another stitch of spring sewin'."

Dan was gazing sadly at the picture of the tea jacket with its flowing oriental sleeves, lace ruffles, and ribbon bows.

"I can't figger out," he said slowly, "what use you've got for a thing like that."

"I can't either," snapped Sally, "and that's the very reason I want it. The only things I've got any use for are gingham aprons and kitchen towels, and they're the things I don't want; and the only things I want are things that I haven't got a bit of use for, like this tea jacket here, and I'm goin' to have it, too."

"All right, all right," said Dan soothingly. "If you're pleased with the things that ain't of any use, why, have 'em, of course. Me and the children would like right well to have a few things that are some use, but I reckon we can get along without 'em a while longer. However, it looks to me as if that chart calls for a good deal of calculatin', and it's my opinion that you'd better get out your old _Ray's Arithmetic_ and study up awhile before you try to cut out that jacket."