Part 5

But the straw that broke the religious back of the Courts and hastened the end of Brother Court’s ministry was the fact that Mrs. Court took a nap each afternoon. This was considered nothing less than scandalous, and for a long time our Brothers and Sisters refused to believe that the wife of a man of God should so far forget herself as to lie abed when she might be praying or sitting at her front window looking through the curtains for a sin to happen. But the story persisted, and was broadcast by a discharged servant who swore that with her own eyes she had seen Mrs. Court sound asleep at three o’clock in the afternoon. Finally two Sisters appointed themselves a committee of investigation. They rang the bell at the parsonage one afternoon, and told the maid that they had called to join Mrs. Court in afternoon prayer, and, although they did not say it, backbiting gossip.

“Mrs. Court,” said the maid, “is asleep and cannot be disturbed. Can you call later?”

They could not. They had barely strength enough to get home, but after prayer they revived sufficiently to sally forth and carry the awful news throughout the town. There could no longer be any doubt. The wife of the Pastor of the Southern Methodist church took a nap in the afternoon. The Sisters had called, and had been so informed by the maid, and while a few chronic doubters remained, the vast majority realized that in a matter involving such serious consequences to Mrs. Court’s spiritual welfare, a matter that directly affected and almost destroyed her chances of going to Heaven, the Sisters could not tell a lie.

So Brother Court soon resigned and accepted a call to a town where members of his family could sleep when they felt like it, and could even snore without jeopardizing their immortal souls. Nor did his successor last very long. He was an Englishman, and spoke in a high nasal voice, pronouncing his words very distinctly, syllable by syllable. He was criticized for several reasons. One was that his favorite phrase was “and an-gels can do no more,” and it was felt that it was somewhat blasphemous to mention angels so often before mixed company. And then he spoke from notes, whereas it was a custom of our Pastors to preach solely out of divine inspiration at the moment of delivery.

There was much talk about the new Preacher’s notes, and it was felt that, somehow, he was lacking in devotion to God; many Brothers and Sisters argued that if he were really a Man of God he would not have to use notes, but would be inspired and filled with words as he rose in the pulpit. His finish came the Sunday morning that the wind blew through an opened window and scattered his notes, so that he had to leave the pulpit and chase the scraps up and down the aisle before he could proceed with his discourse. This was regarded as direct evidence that God had deserted him, and he left town soon afterward.

5

The personalities of the preachers of my home town, impressed as they were upon my growing, plastic mind, probably will remain with me always, but I am thankful that for the most part their names elude me. I remember clearly, however, Brother Jenkins and Brother Fontaine, of our Southern Methodist church; Brother Nations, of the so-called Christian church; Brother Hickok, of the Presbyterian church, and, clearest of all, Brother Lincoln McConnell, the professional itinerant evangelist who “converted” me with the aid of half a dozen strong-armed and strong-lunged Brothers and Sisters who dragged and pushed me down the aisle of the church to the mourners’ bench, where I was surrounded and overwhelmed by “workers for the Lord.”

Brother Jenkins I recall as a meek, thin little man with a sad smile and a classical appetite for fried chicken. At the time I was very much in awe of him, and listened to his every utterance with the most profound respect. I thought him saintly, and concluded that he and God were the closest sort of friends, and that the Deity would not dare launch upon a plan for a new universe or start a new war without consulting Brother Jenkins. But in truth he was probably only under-nourished. Brother Jenkins was a demon quoter of platitudes and Biblical passages; nothing happened that it did not remind him of a quotation from the Bible.

Brother Fontaine was a plump man who would have been jovial and possibly likable--that is giving him the benefit of a great doubt--if he had not been so burdened by the troubles of God and if he had not been so frightfully aware of the responsibilities of his position as a recipient and promulgator of Heavenly wisdom and commands. He officiated at the wedding of my sister, principally because our family belonged to his church and the presence of another preacher at the wedding would have deprived Brother Fontaine of a goodly fee and made an enemy of him for life. Christian charity does not function well when it hits the pocketbook. I think my sister would have preferred Brother Hickok, but she yielded to public opinion and Brother Fontaine got the job. He arrived at the house chewing tobacco, a habit of his which he disliked intensely in other men, but for which he found justification for himself in the belief that he walked with the Lord and that it was tacitly understood he was to have a little leeway.

He was excessively sanctimonious; and so was his wife. We have never forgiven her for her attitude at the wedding. I recall that she looked suspiciously from time to time at the groom, and watched the whole proceeding with an air that said there must of a necessity be something wrong somewhere; for one thing, there was quite a deal of laughter in our house that day, and that in itself was a sign that the Lord was not hovering over the housetop. Immediately after the ceremony Sister Fontaine paraded up front and began waving her hands back and forth before my sister’s face, shouting at the top of her lungs: “Praise the Lord, Sister! Praise the Lord!” We gathered that she thought my sister should immediately fall upon her knees and thank God that she had at last acquired a husband, even though Sister Fontaine did not seem to think much of him. But we were greatly offended; we considered it a reflection on our family and wholly uncalled for, because my sister was, in fact, neither old nor homely, and she had had and rejected a great many first-class matrimonial opportunities.

I had an intense dislike for Brother Fontaine and his ways, and time has not softened my impression of him. He dearly loved to be the only man in a feminine gathering, where he could make heavy inroads upon the cake and ice cream and lay down the law to the adoring Sisters. I have seldom known a Preacher who was not afflicted with this mania, but in Brother Fontaine it had developed into a highly acute disease. I remember that he was always present at our house when the members of the Ladies’ Aid Society came once each week for their bit of sewing for the heathen and to enjoy their pleasant afternoon of scandal. He had no business there; he did not sew and he did not contribute much to the symposium, but he listened avidly and ate heartily.

It was “Don’t you think so, Brother Fontaine?” and “I fear I must take issue with you, Sister. The Lord provideth answers for all problems affecting human conduct.” Fool talk like that.

It was the practice of our Southern Methodist preachers to stand at the door of the church after every performance and shake hands with the customers, making such remarks as “Praise the Lord, Sister! Get right with Jesus, Brother!” I always dreaded this part of the service, and several young girls told me that they did also. All of the preachers who did this, and almost all of them did, shook hands with a clammy pressure that put me in mind of an oyster, and it always seemed to me that when a lady customer passed through the door the Man of God invariably found it necessary to sigh.

But although I cannot rate Brother Fontaine very highly among the servants of the Lord, my younger brother consigned him to even lower depths. They went fishing together once, at Brother Fontaine’s request, and Fred appeared at the parsonage with lunch, fishing tackle and car fare. Brother Fontaine knelt and asked divine guidance for the expedition, and then they boarded a trolley car and went to De Lassus, to fish the St. Francis River around Blumeyer’s Ford. Fred paid his fare.

“You must pay my fare, too, Fred,” said Brother Fontaine. “I am the minister.”

So Fred paid. There was nothing else that he could do; he was afraid that if he did not Brother Fontaine would whistle to God to call down an avenging angel armed with thunderbolts and lightning. Then it developed that Brother Fontaine had brought neither lunch nor fishing tackle; he had brought only himself, and being a Man of God that was sufficient. Perhaps he felt that since his influence with the Almighty was undoubtedly great enough to make the trip successful, Fred had no right to expect him to bear any of the expenses or furnish any equipment. So he used Fred’s tackle and ate Fred’s lunch, and when that was not enough for him he sent Fred a mile and a half to a farmhouse to buy a bottle of milk, for which Fred paid and which the reverend one guzzled without offering to share it.

Throughout the whole day Brother Fontaine alternately prayed and fished, but there must have been something wrong with his connecting line to Heaven, for he caught no fish. He finally turned the tackle over to Fred, with the remark that Fred had not brought the right sort of worms, and with the further explanation that worms being God’s creatures as well as fish, God probably did not want the fish to eat them. Fred fished earnestly; he was ordinarily a good and successful fisherman, and it was a matter of pride with him not to go home without a string. But neither did Fred catch any fish, and he became increasingly annoyed at Brother Fontaine.

The preacher apparently labored under the delusion that Fred required religious instruction. He told, several times, the story of the loaves and the fishes, and many other Biblical fairy tales as well. Once, when Fred was anxiously watching his cork and felt certain that a perch was nibbling at his hook, Brother Fontaine stopped him to read the Sermon on the Mount from a Bible which he drew from his pocket. Everything he saw reminded him of something in the Scriptures. So passed the day, and when Fred came home that night, with no fish, he ate heavily of supper and then dared parental wrath by saying:

“No more of these damned preachers for me.”

Brother Nations is probably Farmington’s most illustrious gift to religion. It is true that he eventually resigned from the ministry and became Probate Judge and Principal of the High School, but he remained a steadfast adherent of the Protestant God and a singularly devout and godly man. I presume he still is, as he is the same Gilbert O. Nations who in 1924 ran for President as the candidate of what he called the American party, asking for the votes of the electorate on a pro-Ku Klux Klan and anti-everything else platform. I am told that he is now the editor of a magazine devoted to baiting the Catholics.

Once when Brother Nations was principal of the Farmington High School he whaled me because Barney Blue and I had thrown snowballs at Jake Schaeffer, the town truckman. I felt that the licking was coming to me and I bore no malice; only the week before I had thrown lumps of coal at Pete Anderson’s house across the street and had been warned that the hurling of anything at all would result in punishment. But after the thrashing was over, Brother Nations told me that throwing snowballs at Jake Schaeffer was a sin against God: that Christ had reference to it when he said: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” I could not plead that I was without sin, because it had been impressed on me by every Brother and Sister and Preacher that I met that I was practically broken out with it. But young and gullible as I was, Brother Nations’ statement sounded silly.

I could understand that from Jake Schaeffer’s viewpoint I had sinned, and grievously, because Jake was stooping over when the snowball struck and I had put a stone in the center of it to make the snow pack tighter; I was willing to admit that and repent. But what did God care if two boys smacked snowballs against a soft part of Jake’s person? It seemed to me that if God had been really interested in the matter He would have advised Jake Schaeffer not to stoop over when two boys were abroad with snowballs. Thus He might have prevented a sin. Further, if God was as intelligent as I had been led to believe, He must have known that boys cannot resist the temptation to throw snowballs, and since He made both the boys and the snowballs He was responsible for the sin committed against Himself. But Brother Nations appeared to believe that God had permitted me to sin in order that I might taste the joys of castigatory rebuke. And I did.

Brother Hickok was the only Preacher of those days to whom I gave the slightest measure of respect. I had a genuine admiration for him, but it was not because he was a Preacher or because he pretended to any inside knowledge of the customs of Heaven or the thoughts and wishes of God. On the contrary, I have heard him admit that there were things in the Bible he did not understand, and I have heard him admit that there were passages in it that he did not particularly care for. But I liked him simply because he chewed tobacco without any effort at concealment, and played lawn tennis on the courts near our home, and because I suspected, every time I saw him wallop a tennis ball or bite a chunk from a slab of plug-cut, that he was Wild Bill Hickok in disguise.

About the time Brother Hickok came to Farmington I acquired a book devoted to the adventures of Wild Bill, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and other heroes of the Western plains, and of them all I liked Wild Bill best. He seemed to me to be everything that a man ought to be. He had more notches on his gun than any of the others, and it appeared that he could not so much as sneeze without a redskin biting the dust. I put the question of identity to Brother Hickok rather bluntly, and told him I would respect his confidence, but he denied it, although I gathered the impression that he was a relative of Wild Bill and, of course, mighty proud of him. But I was not satisfied, and for a long time I shadowed him in the manner set forth by Old and Young King Brady in that sterling nickel novel, “Secret Service,” hoping to learn his secret. However, I never did solve the question to my own satisfaction.

But principally I admired Brother Hickok because he was the only Preacher I knew who did not proclaim incessantly that he was a Man of God and therefore entitled to the largest piece of pie, and because he was the only one who did not seem to be impressed by my relationship with Bishop Asbury. He didn’t seem to give a damn about the Bishop; his only ambition, so far as I was concerned, was to beat me at tennis, which he did. But from the others, and from the Brothers and Sisters, I got the impression that the right reverend deceased, seated at God’s right hand between Jesus Christ and St. Peter, perhaps crowding the latter a bit, had nothing to do but receive messages from the Almighty touching on my conduct, and relay them to me by whatever Preacher I happened to meet. For many years I thought that God and the Bishop had a consultation on my case every night.

I do not think that I shall ever forget Brother Lincoln McConnell, although I probably should not recognize him if I saw him to-day. I hope not. But for some eighteen long years I have cherished a compelling desire to stand him in a corner, minus his band and singers and his other aids to emotion, and then bind and gag him. After that I want to talk to him for hours and hours, embellishing my remarks with such florid words as I have acquired in various military and journalistic enterprises, and possibly inventing new ones for the occasion. He was responsible for the most miserable period of my life. But it was he, too, who definitely kept me from being a Preacher, or even a Brother, and so, perhaps, I should thank him. If he had let me alone I might at this moment be calling some other preacher Brother; I might be an intimate of God, and a walking Baedeker of Heaven; I might even be gloating over the glories of a Heaven paved with gold and populated by angels, all female, all beautiful, all amiable. Certainly I should not be given over to a life of sin; that is to say, I should not be having a pretty good time with this business of living.

Brother McConnell, as I write, is a pastor of a Baptist church in Oklahoma City, Okla., with occasional forays onto the Chautauqua platform, and is a potent force in the life of that abode of righteousness. But if reports are to be believed, there are even there those who consider him a blight. He has been the central figure in several rows that have undoubtedly redounded to the greater glory of God; he tried to prevent the citizens of his town from seeing one of the best American plays of recent years because it dealt a bit too truthfully with certain aspects of religious fanaticism, and he erected a radio broadcasting station which blanketed the city and forced the population to listen, willy-nilly, to his sermons and his ponderous pronouncements against sin.

I once wrote a magazine article in which I discussed a few of the activities of Brother McConnell, and he put me in my place in an interview which, it seems to me, shows that he has not changed a great deal since the time that I first shook hands with him as he leaned over the mourner’s bench and beseeched me to give my heart to his God. I give it here. It appeared in the Oklahoma City _News_, on January 27, 1925.

“He is a very small potato.” That was the reply of the Rev. Lincoln McConnell, First Baptist Church pastor.... “I have some doubt,” said the Rev. McConnell, “as to whether I should feel honored or otherwise by the repeated mention of my name in this article by Herbert Asbury without realizing that this writer cannot possibly have inherited anything more from his illustrious ancestry than his name.

“I confess that it is rather surprising to me that editors of a magazine could attach enough importance to such cheap drivel as this as to give it the position and the space they do.

“The natural assumption is that they believe about religion, the religion of Christ, what this poor fellow does, and therefore, actually believe that this ‘weak stuff’ is a contribution to their cause.

“I remember Farmington, Mo., very well, having been there about twenty-five years ago. I do not remember Herbert Asbury at all.

“I am not surprised that I do not, as he must have been then somewhat as he evidently is now--a very small potato--and while I would feel naturally as interested in his conversion as in anyone else, at the same time I am forced to admit that it would not be possible for a man of training and experience to list a man of his evident mentality very highly, even though he were a professed convert in his meeting.

“I am very sorry that he was not really converted. If the Editor of the _American Mercury_ cares for things of a really constructive nature, I can give him the life story of thousands of men and women whom because of the genuineness of their conversion to Christ in my own meetings, have given to the world characters of such beauty and worth as have reflected credit upon themselves and their church and have proved a blessing to society at large.

“I have never asked people to stand up if they want to go to Heaven. I think that very ridiculous.”

6

It was these people who taught me of God, and who had dominion over my spiritual welfare! And not only did they instruct me to worship their conception of Him; they threatened me with eternal damnation if I didn’t, and with even more horrible punishment if I ventured to cast doubt upon the truth and holiness of the Bible. Eternal damnation meant that I should, in the life to come, hang throughout eternity on a revolving spit over a great fire in the deepest pit of Hell, while little red devils jabbed white-hot pokers into my quivering flesh and Satan stood by and curled his lip in glee. I received the impression that Satan was the only one actively concerned with religion who was ever permitted to laugh. God was not, nor His disciples, and that Satan could and apparently did was sufficient proof that laughter was wicked.

And they described God to me, and told me in minute detail of the architectural design of Heaven and the furnishings of the Mansions in the Sky. I do not know where they obtained their information. I gathered that God was an old man who wore a long white nightgown and boasted a luxuriant growth of whiskers, with a disposition compounded of the snarls of a wounded wildcat and the pleasant conceits of a _must_ elephant. He chewed tobacco--perhaps that impression was due to the fact that so many of our preachers were addicted to the vile weed--and He had an enormous head which contained an eye for every person on earth, and this eye was constantly upon its object. And it was a vindictive and jaundiced eye, peering into the innermost depths of the soul and the mind and the heart for some thought or feeling that might call for punishment.

The descriptions of Heaven and the physical appearance of the angels varied somewhat, according to whether the tale was told by a preacher or a Brother, or a Sister. But all of them talked with gusto of streets paved with gold and of clouds lined with silver, of magnificent buildings constructed of precious stones, and of angels sitting on the clouds with no worthier purpose in life than strumming a golden harp, protected from the weather by no more substantial raiment than a white nightgown, a halo and a pair of sandals. And whoever told the tale, there was always that underlying idea of sybaritic magnificence; Heaven bore no resemblance to the lowly stable in which the founder of their religion was born, and it was not a somber retreat for the further development of the soul and the cultivation of those virtues that are lost sight of upon the earth. As it was described to me in my youth, and as it is still described on those rare occasions when I can bring myself to hold converse with a Preacher, Heaven was a celestial reproduction of the palace of a Babylonian monarch. Nobody worked, and God’s House abounded with gold and silver and rubies and diamonds, and on every cloud that rolled down the street was a beautiful woman, eternally young and amiable. The Heaven that I was taught to aspire to was a motion picture set on an even grander scale than the creations of Cecil De Mille.

But even more emphasis was placed, in these tales, on feminine virginity. It seemed that Heaven was filled with virgins; I have never heard a Preacher describe an angel without mentioning the fact that the angel was a virgin, and I have never heard a Preacher describe Mary simply as the mother of Jesus. She is always the Virgin Mother, and he pronounces it all in capitals. Even as a boy I was impressed with the frequency with which the word “virgin” appeared in the discourses of our Pastor and in the lectures so freely bestowed upon me by the Brothers. It seemed to me that the word fascinated them; although I might be trembling with fear that God would strike me dead because I had not learned my Sunday-school lesson or had forgotten the Golden Text, I was so impressed that I found time to wonder at the enthusiasm with which they mouthed it.