do such things, and besides, somehow it seemed shabby
and even degrading. On more than one occasion, before he
had been taken on the street in this fashion, other boys had
called to him and made fun of his father, because he was
always publicly emphasizing his religious beliefs or
convictions. Thus in one neighborhood in which they had
lived, when he was but a child of seven, his father, having
always preluded every conversation with “Praise the Lord,”
he heard boys call “Here comes old Praise-the-Lord
Griffiths.” Or they would call out after him “Hey, you’re the
fellow whose sister plays the organ. Is there anything else
she can play?”
“What does he always want to go around saying, ‘Praise
the Lord’ for? Other people don’t do it.”
It was that old mass yearning for a likeness in all things that
troubled them, and him. Neither his father nor his mother
was like other people, because they were always making
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so much of religion, and now at last they were making a
business of it.
On this night in this great street with its cars and crowds
and tall buildings, he felt ashamed, dragged out of normal
life, to be made a show and jest of. The handsome
automobiles that sped by, the loitering pedestrians moving
off to what interests and comforts he could only surmise;
the gay pairs of young people, laughing and jesting and the
“kids” staring, all troubled him with a sense of something
different, better, more beautiful than his, or rather their life.
And now units of this vagrom and unstable street throng,
which was forever shifting and changing about them,
seemed to sense the psychologic error of all this in so far
as these children were concerned, for they would nudge
one another, the more sophisticated and indifferent lifting
an eyebrow and smiling contemptuously, the more
sympathetic or experienced commenting on the useless
presence of these children.
“I see these people around here nearly every night now—
two or three times a week, anyhow,” this from a young clerk
who had just met his girl and was escorting her toward a
restaurant. “They’re just working some religious dodge or
other, I guess.”
“That oldest boy don’t wanta be here. He feels outa place, I
can see that. It ain’t right to make a kid like that come out
unless he wants to. He can’t understand all this stuff,
anyhow.” This from an idler and loafer of about forty, one of
those odd hangers-on about the commercial heart of a city,
addressing a pausing and seemingly amiable stranger.
“Yeh, I guess that’s so,” the other assented, taking in the
peculiar cast of the boy’s head and face. In view of the
uneasy and self-conscious expression upon the face
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17
whenever it was lifted, one might have intelligently
suggested that it was a little unkind as well as idle to thus
publicly force upon a temperament as yet unfitted to absorb
their import, religious and psychic services best suited to
reflective temperaments of maturer years.
Yet so it was.
As for the remainder of the family, both the youngest girl
and boy were too small to really understand much of what it
was all about or to care. The eldest girl at the organ
appeared not so much to mind, as to enjoy the attention
and comment her presence and singing evoked, for more
than once, not only strangers, but her mother and father,
had assured her that she had an appealing and compelling
voice, which was only partially true. It was not a good voice.
They did not really understand music. Physically, she was
of a pale, emasculate and unimportant structure, with no
real mental force or depth, and was easily made to feel that
this was an excellent field in which to distinguish herself
and attract a little attention. As for the parents, they were
determined upon spiritualizing the world as much as
possible, and, once the hymn was concluded, the father
launched into one of those hackneyed descriptions of the
delights of a release, via self-realization of the mercy of
God and the love of Christ and the will of God toward
sinners, from the burdensome cares of an evil conscience.
“All men are sinners in the light of the Lord,” he declared.
“Unless they repent, unless they accept Christ, His love and
forgiveness of them, they can never know the happiness of
being spiritually whole and clean. Oh, my friends! If you
could but know the peace and content that comes with the
knowledge, the inward understanding, that Christ lived and
died for you and that He walks with you every day and hour,
by light and by dark, at dawn and at dusk, to keep and
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18
strengthen you for the tasks and cares of the world that are
ever before you. Oh, the
“Amen!” asseverated his wife, and the daughter, Hester, or
Esta, as she was called by the family, moved by the need
of as much public support as possible for all of them—
echoed it after her.
Clyde, the eldest boy, and the two younger children merely
gazed at the ground, or occasionally at their father, with a
feeling that possibly it was all true and important, yet
somehow not as significant or inviting as some of the other
things which life held. They heard so much of this, and to
their young and eager minds life was made for something
more than street and mission hall protestations of this sort.
Finally, after a second hymn and an address by Mrs.
Griffiths, during which she took occasion to refer to the
mission work jointly conducted by them in a near-by street,
and their services to the cause of Christ in general, a third
hymn was indulged in, and then some tracts describing the
mission rescue work being distributed, such voluntary gifts
as were forthcoming were taken up by Asa—the father. The
small organ was closed, the camp chair folded up and
given to Clyde, the Bible and hymn books picked up by Mrs.
Griffiths, and with the organ supported by a leather strap
passed over the shoulder of Griffiths, senior, the
missionward march was taken up.
During all this time Clyde was saying to himself that he did
not wish to do this any more, that he and his parents looked
foolish and less than normal—“cheap” was the word he
would have used if he could have brought himself to
express his full measure of resentment at being compelled
to participate in this way—and that he would not do it any
more if he could help. What good did it do them to have
him along? His life should not be like this. Other boys did
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19
not have to do as he did. He meditated now more
determinedly than ever a rebellion by which he would rid
himself of the need of going out in this way. Let his elder
sister go if she chose; she liked it. His younger sister and
brother might be too young to care. But he——
“They seemed a little more attentive than usual to-night, I
thought,” commented Griffiths to his wife as they walked
along, the seductive quality of the summer evening air
softening him into a more generous interpretation of the
customary indifferent spirit of the passer-by.
“Yes; twenty-seven took tracts to-night as against eighteen
on Thursday.”
“The love of Christ must eventually prevail,” comforted the
father, as much to hearten himself as his wife. “The
pleasures and cares of the world hold a very great many,
but when sorrow overtakes them, then some of these
seeds will take root.”
“I am sure of it. That is the thought which always keeps me
up. Sorrow and the weight of sin eventually bring some of
them to see the error of their way.”
They now entered into the narrow side street from which
they had emerged and walking as many as a dozen doors
from the corner, entered the door of a yellow single-story
wooden building, the large window and the two glass panes
in the central door of which had been painted a gray-white.
Across both windows and the smaller panels in the double
door had been painted: “The Door of Hope. Bethel
Independent Mission. Meetings Every Wednesday and
Saturday night, 8 to 10. Sundays at 11, 3 and 8. Everybody
Welcome.” Under this legend on each window were printed
the words: “God is Love,” and below this again, in smaller
type: “How Long Since You Wrote to Mother?”
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20
The small company entered the yellow unprepossessing
door and disappeared.
An American Tragedy
21
Chapter 2
THAT such a family, thus cursorily presented, might have a
different and somewhat peculiar history could well be
anticipated, and it would be true. Indeed, this one
presented one of those anomalies of psychic and social
reflex and motivation such as would tax the skill of not only