The Choir Invisible

"And do you think I have no troubles?" said John, his lips trembling. He

turned away and the parson walked beside him.

"You have two troubles to my certain knowledge," said he in the tone of one

bringing forward a piece of critical analysis that was rather mortifying to

exhibit. "The one is a woman and the other is John Calvin. If it's Amy,

throw it off and be a man. If it's Calvinism, throw it off and become an

Episcopalian." He laughed out despite himself.

"Did you ever love a woman?" asked John gruffly.

"Many a one--in the state of the first Adam!"

"That's the reason you threw it off: many a one!"

"Don't you know," inquired the parson with an air of exegetical candour,

"that no man can be miserable because some woman or other has flirted his

friend? That's the one trouble that every man laughs at--when it happens in

his neighbourhood, not in his own house!"

The school-master made no reply.

"Or if it is Calvin," continued the parson, "thank God, I can now laugh at

him, and so should you! Answer me one question: during the sermon, weren't

you thinking of the case of a man born in a wilderness of temptations that

he is foreordained never to conquer, and then foreordained to eternal

damnation because he didn't conquer it?"

"No--no!"

"Well, you'd better've been thinking about it! For that's what you believe.

And that's what makes life so hard and bitter and gloomy to you. I know! I

carried Calvinism around within me once: it was like an uncorked ink-bottle

in a rolling snowball: the farther you go, the blacker you get! Admit it

now," he continued in his highest key of rarefied persistency, "admit that

you were mourning over the babies in your school that will have to go to

hell! You'd better be getting some of your own: the Lord will take care of

other people's! Go to see Mrs. Falconer! See all you can of her. There's a

woman to bring you around!"

They had reached the little bridge over the clear, swift Elkhorn. Their

paths diverged. John stopped at his companion's last words, and stood

looking at him with some pity.

"I thank you for your sermon," he said huskily; "I hope to get some help

from that. But you!--you are making things harder for me every word you

utter. You don't understand and I can't tell you."