the psychologist but the chemist and physicist as well, to
unravel. To begin with, Asa Griffiths, the father, was one of
those poorly integrated and correlated organisms, the
product of an environment and a religious theory, but with
no guiding or mental insight of his own, yet sensitive and
therefore highly emotional and without any practical sense
whatsoever. Indeed it would be hard to make clear just how
life appealed to him, or what the true hue of his emotional
responses was. On the other hand, as has been indicated,
his wife was of a firmer texture but with scarcely any truer or
more practical insight into anything.
The history of this man and his wife is of no particular
interest here save as it affected their boy of twelve, Clyde
Griffiths. This youth, aside from a certain emotionalism and
exotic sense of romance which characterized him, and
which he took more from his father than from his mother,
brought a more vivid and intelligent imagination to things,
and was constantly thinking of how he might better himself,
if he had a chance; places to which he might go, things he
might see, and how differently he might live, if only this, that
and the other things were true. The principal thing that
troubled Clyde up to his fifteenth year, and for long after in
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retrospect, was that the calling or profession of his parents
was the shabby thing that it appeared to be in the eyes of
others. For so often throughout his youth in different cities
in which his parents had conducted a mission or spoken on
the streets—Grand Rapids, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago,
lastly Kansas City—it had been obvious that people, at
least the boys and girls he encountered, looked down upon
him and his brothers and sisters for being the children of
such parents. On several occasions, and much against the
mood of his parents, who never countenanced such
exhibitions of temper, he had stopped to fight with one or
another of these boys. But always, beaten or victorious, he
had been conscious of the fact that the work his parents did
was not satisfactory to others,—shabby, trivial. And always
he was thinking of what he would do, once he reached the
place where he could get away.
For Clyde’s parents had proved impractical in the matter of
the future of their children. They did not understand the
importance or the essential necessity for some form of
practical or professional training for each and every one of
their young ones. Instead, being wrapped up in the notion
of evangelizing the world, they had neglected to keep their
children in school in any one place. They had moved here
and there, sometimes in the very midst of an advantageous
school season, because of a larger and better religious field
in which to work. And there were times, when, the work
proving highly unprofitable and Asa being unable to make
much money at the two things he most understood—
gardening and canvassing for one invention or another—
they were quite without sufficient food or decent clothes,
and the children could not go to school. In the face of such
situations as these, whatever the children might think, Asa
and his wife remained as optimistic as ever, or they insisted
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to themselves that they were, and had unwavering faith in
the Lord and His intention to provide.
The combination home and mission which this family
occupied was dreary enough in most of its phases to
discourage the average youth or girl of any spirit. It
consisted in its entirety of one long store floor in an old and
decidedly colorless and inartistic wooden building which
was situated in that part of Kansas City which lies north of
Independence Boulevard and west of Troost Avenue, the
exact street or place being called Bickel, a very short
thoroughfare opening off Missouri Avenue, a somewhat
more lengthy but no less nondescript highway. And the
entire neighborhood in which it stood was very faintly and
yet not agreeably redolent of a commercial life which had
long since moved farther south, if not west. It was some
five blocks from the spot on which twice a week the open
air meetings of these religious enthusiasts and proselytizers
were held.
And it was the ground floor of this building, looking out into
Bickel Street at the front and some dreary back yards of
equally dreary frame houses, which was divided at the front
into a hall forty by twenty-five feet in size, in which had been
placed some sixty collapsible wood chairs, a lectern, a map
of Palestine or the Holy Land, and for wall decorations
some twenty-five printed but unframed mottoes which read
in part:
WINE IS A MOCKER, STRONG DRINK IS RAGING
AND WHOSOEVER IS DECEIVED THEREBY IS NOT
WISE.
TAKE HOLDOFSHIELD AND BUCKLER, AND STAND
UP FOR MINE HELP. PSALMS 35:2.
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AND YE, MY FLOCK, THE FLOCK OF MY PASTURE
are men, AND I AM YOUR GOD, SAITHTHE LORD
GOD. EZEKIEL 34:31.
O GOD, THOU KNOWEST MY FOOLISHNESS, AND
MY SINS ARE NOT HID FROM THEE. PSALMS 69:5.
IF YE HAVE FAITH AS A GRAIN OF MUSTARDSEED,
YE SHALL SAY UNTO THIS MOUNTAIN, REMOVE
HENCE TO YONDER PLACE; AND IT SHALL MOVE;
AND NOTHING SHALL BEIMPOSSIBLE TO YOU.
MATTHEW 17:20.
FOR THE DAY. OF THE LORD IS NEAR. OBADIAH 15.
FOR THERE SHALL BE NO REWARD TO THE EVIL
MAN. PROVERBS 24:20.
LOOK, THEN, NOT UPON THE WINEWHEN IT
ISRED: IT BITETH LIKE A SERPENT, AND STINGETH
LIKE AN ADDER. PROVERBS 23:31, 32.
These mighty adjurations were as silver and gold plates set
in a wall of dross.
The rear forty feet of this very commonplace floor was
intricately and yet neatly divided into three small bedrooms,
a living room which overlooked the backyard and wooden
fences of yards no better than those at the back; also, a
combination kitchen and dining room exactly ten feet
square, and a store room for mission tracts, hymnals,
boxes, trunks and whatever else of non-immediate use, but
of assumed value, which the family owned. This particular
small room lay immediately to the rear of the mission hall
itself, and into it beforé or after speaking or at such times as
a conference seemed important, both Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths
were wont to retire—also at times to meditate or pray.
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25
How often had Clyde and his sisters and younger brother
seen his mother or father, or both, in conference with some
derelict or semi-repentant soul who had come for advice or
aid, most usually for aid. And here at times, when his
mother’s and father’s financial difficulties were greatest,
they were to be found thinking, or as Asa Griffiths was wont
helplessly to say at times, “praying their way out,” a rather
ineffectual way, as Clyde began to think later.
And the whole neighborhood was so dreary and run-down
that he hated the thought of living in it, let alone being part
of a work that required constant appeals for aid, as well as
constant prayer and thanksgiving to sustain it.
Mrs. Elvira Griffiths before she had married Asa had been
nothing but an ignorant farm girl, brought up without much
thought of religion of any kind. But having fallen in love with
him, she had become inoculated with the virus of
Evangelism and proselytizing which dominated him, and
had followed him gladly and enthusiastically in all of his
ventures and through all of his vagaries. Being rather
flattered by the knowledge that she could speak and sing,
her ability to sway and persuade and control people with
the “word of God,” as she saw it, she had become more or
less pleased with herself on this account and so persuaded
to continue.
Occasionally a small band of people followed the preachers
to their mission, or learning of its existence through their
street work, appeared there later—those odd and mentally
disturbed or distrait souls who are to be found in every
place. And it had been Clyde’s compulsory duty throughout
the years when he could not act for himself to be in
attendance at these various meetings. And always he had
been more irritated than favorably influenced by the types
of men and women who came here—mostly men—down-
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26
and-out laborers, loafers, drunkards, wastrels, the botched
and helpless who seemed to drift in, because they had no
other place to go. And they were always testifying as to how
God or Christ or Divine Grace had rescued them from this
or that predicament—never how they had rescued any one
else. And always his father and mother were saying “Amen”
and “Glory to God,” and singing hymns and afterward taking
up a collection for the legitimate expenses of the hall—
collections which, as he surmised, were little enough—
barely enough to keep the various missions they had
conducted in existence.