"This is the most wonderful thing I ever heard and I want father pushed

to the limit with the planning. I don't care where the parson comes in,

just so I don't have to join the church to get the garden," I said, as I

tinkled the ice in Nickols' empty glass, while he consumed the last bit

of cream from the empty plate.

"Oh, I'll join the church if it is needed to push the garden," said

Nickols with a laugh, as he lit a cigarette and puffed a smoke ring out

toward the gray little chapel. "Most people who join churches do it for

some kind of pull, social or business, or a respectability stamp or to

be white-washed. I'll put on a frock coat and pass the plate if it will

help the parson evolve another phase of gardenism."

"Billy gets home from his poker game at the Last Chance, down in the

Settlement, on Sunday morning, just in time to bathe and get into his

frock coat to perform that office," I said with a laugh that had a hint

of recklessness tinged with contempt.

"I'll see Billy through both ceremonials," said Nickols. "Has Billy come

into the fold?"

"He has! So have all the rest," I answered. "I am the only black sheep

and they are all backsliding down on me. I am getting, and will get,

the blame of it all as a corrupter of public morals."

"Why don't you join and then do as you please with the official stamp of

Christianity upon you?" Nickols asked, as he puffed comfortably away in

the moonlight.

One of the things that cause me the deepest hurt is to try to get

Nickols to look down into my depths and read one, just any one, of the

hieroglyphics there. I know each time I open my nature to him he is

going to turn aside, and yet I will try. As his arm stole around me I

made another one of the attempts that I always know beforehand are

doomed to failure.

"There is something in me, a quality of mind that seems to be judicial,

which insists that as a cold scheme for existence in this universe

nothing compares with that of life followed by eternal redemption

through personal effort interpreted by a mediator. The bare Christian

tenets have a nobility that it kills me to see belittled by the bored,

half-hearted observances of most of its protestants, who in turn are not

to be blamed for being half-hearted and bored by the dogmas and

restrictions and littleness with which the great bare scheme has been

enmeshed and clothed. The Methodist Church positively forbids Billy to

play poker or drink, but it just as positively forbids him to see

Pavlowa dance or Beerbohm Tree play Falstaff or Forbes Robertson

incarnate Hamlet. And look at its wretched machinery--they allow a young

man to give his life and expect inspiration from him at six hundred

dollars a year with a wife and two dozen children, which he has been

encouraged to bring down upon himself, dependent on that same six

hundred dollars. The great men who are expected to direct our spiritual

destinies don't get as much money as many ordinary grocers and certainly

not enough to support their obligations with dignity. What is true of

the Methodist Church is true of all the rest, in perhaps a greater

degree. So with their smallness and their pettiness and their befogging

stupidity I feel that they may be denying thinkers like you and me the

use of their scheme and we'll have to find another for ourselves if we

want immortality."




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