第72章 THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING(1)

One day Josiah and me went into a meetin' where they wuz kinder fixin' over the world, sort a repairin' of it, as you may say.

Some of the deepest, smartest speeches I ever hearn in my life, Ihearn there.

You know it is a middlin' deep subject.But they rose to it.

They rose nobly to it.Some wuz for repairin' it one way, and some another -- some wanted to kinder tinker it up, and make it over like.Some wanted to tear it to pieces, and build it over new.But they all meant well by the world, and nobody could help respectin' 'em.

I enjoyed them hours there with 'em, jest about as well as it is in my power to enjoy anything.They wuz all on 'em civilized Christian folks and philanthropists of different shades and degrees, all but one.There wuz one heathen there.A Hindoo right from Hindoostan, and I felt kinder sorry for him.Aheathen sot right in the midst of them folks of refinement, and culture, who had spent their hull lives a tryin' to fix over the world, and make it good.

This poor little heathen, with a white piller case, or sunthin'

wound round his head (I s'pose he hadn't money to buy a hat), and his small black eyes lookin' out kinder side ways from his dark hombly little face, rousted up my pity, and my sympathy.There had been quite a firm speech made against allowin' foreigners on our shores.And this little heathen, in his broken speech, said, It all seemed so funny to him, when everybody wuz foreigners in this country, to think that them that got here first should say they owned it, and send everybody else back.And he said, It seemed funny to him, that the missionarys we sent over to his land to teach them the truth, told them all about this land of Liberty, where everybody wuz free, and everybody could earn a home for themselves, and urged 'em all to come over here, and then when they broke away from all that held 'em in their own land, and came thousands and thousands of milds, to get to this land of freedom and religion,then they wuz sent back agin, and wuzn't allowed to land.It seemed so funny.

And so it did to me.And I said to myself, I wonder if they don't lose all faith in the missionarys, and what they tell them.

I wonder if they don't have doubts about the other free country they tell 'em about.The other home they have urged 'em to prepare for, and go to.I wonder if they haint afraid, that when they have left their own country and sailed away for that home of Everlastin' freedom, they will be sent back agin, and not allowed to land.

But it comferted me quite a good deal to meditate on't, that that land didn't have no laws aginst foreign emigration.That its ruler wuz one who held the rights of the lowest, and poorest, and most ignerent of His children, of jest as much account as he did the rights of a king.Thinkses I that poor little head with the piller case on it will be jest as much looked up to, as if it wuz white and had a crown on it.And I felt real glad to think it wuz so.

But I went to every meetin' of 'em, and enjoyed every one of 'em with a deep enjoyment.And I said then, and I say now, for folks that had took such a hefty job as they had, they done well, nobody could do better, and if the world wuzn't improved by their talk it wuz the fault of the world, and not their'n.

And we went to meetin' on Sunday mornin' and night, and hearn good sermons.There's several high big churches at Saratoga, of every denomination, and likely folks belong to the hull on 'em:

There is no danger of folks losin' their way to Heaven unless they want to, and they can go on their own favorite paths too, be they blue Presbyterian paths, or Methodist pasters, or by the Baptist boat, or the Episcopalian high way, or the Catholic covered way, or the Unitarian Broadway, or the Shadow road of Spiritualism.

No danger of their losin' their way unless they want to.And Ithought to myself as I looked pensively at the different steeples, "What though there might be a good deal of'wranglin', and screechin', and puffin' off steam, at the different stations, as there must always be where so many different routes are a layin' side by side, each with its own different runners, and conductors, and porters, and managers, and blowers, still it must be, that the separate high ways would all end at last in a serener road, where the true wayfarers and the earnest pilgrims would all walk side by side, and forget the very name of the station they sot out from.

I sez as much to my companion, as we wended our way home from one of the meetin's, and he sez, "There haint but one right way, and it is a pity folks can't see it." Sez he a sithin' deep, "Why can't everybody be Methodists?"We wuz a goin' by the 'Piscopal church then, and he sez a lookin'

at it, as if he wuz sorry for it, "What a pity that such likely folks as they be, should believe in such eronious doctrines.

Why," sez he, "I have hearn that they believe that the bread at communion is changed into sunthin' else.What a pity that they should believe anything so strange as that is, when there is a good, plain, practical, Christian belief that they might believe in, when they might be Methodists.And the Baptists now," sez he, a glancin' back at their steeple, "why can't they believe that a drop is as good as a fountain? Why do they want to believe in so much water? There haint no need on't.They might be Methodists jest as well as not, and be somebody."And he walked along pensively and in deep thought, and I a feelin'

somewhat tuckered didn't argue with him, and silence rained about us till we got in front of the hall where the Spiritualists hold their meetin's, and we met a few a comin' out on it and then he broke out and acted mad, awful mad and skernful, and sez he angrily, "Them dumb fools believe in supernatural things.They don't have a shadow of reason or common sense to stand on.A man is a fool to gin the least attention to them, or their doin's.Why can't they believe sunthin' sensible? Why can't they jine a church that don't have anything curius in it? Nothin' but plain, common sense facts in it: Why can't they be Methodists?""The idee!" sez he, a breakin' out fresh."The idee of believin'