One warm Sunday evening in the moon of golden-rod,
we all, grown-ups and children, were sitting in the
orchard by the Pulpit Stone singing sweet old gospel
hymns. We could all sing more or less, except
poor Sara Ray, who had once despairingly confided to
me that she didn’t know what she’d ever
do when she went to heaven, because she couldn’t
sing a note.
That whole scene comes out clearly for me in memory—the
arc of primrose sky over the trees behind the old
house, the fruit-laden boughs of the orchard, the
bank of golden-rod, like a wave of sunshine, behind
the Pulpit Stone, the nameless colour seen on a fir
wood in a ruddy sunset. I can see Uncle Alec’s
tired, brilliant, blue eyes, Aunt Janet’s wholesome,
matronly face, Uncle Roger’s sweeping blond
beard and red cheeks, and Aunt Olivia’s full-blown
beauty. Two voices ring out for me above all
others in the music that echoes through the halls of
recollection. Cecily’s sweet and silvery,
and Uncle Alec’s fine tenor. “If
you’re a King, you sing,” was a Carlisle
proverb in those days. Aunt Julia had been the
flower of the flock in that respect and had become
a noted concert singer. The world had never
heard of the rest. Their music echoed only along
the hidden ways of life, and served but to lighten
the cares of the trivial round and common task.
That evening, after they tired of singing, our grown-ups
began talking of their youthful days and doings.
This was always a keen delight to us small fry.
We listened avidly to the tales of our uncles and
aunts in the days when they, too—hard fact
to realize—had been children. Good
and proper as they were now, once, so it seemed, they
had gotten into mischief and even had their quarrels
and disagreements. On this particular evening
Uncle Roger told many stories of Uncle Edward, and
one in which the said Edward had preached sermons at
the mature age of ten from the Pulpit Stone fired,
as the sequel will show, the Story Girl’s imagination.
“Can’t I just see him at it now,”
said Uncle Roger, “leaning over that old boulder,
his cheeks red and his eyes burning with excitement,
banging the top of it as he had seen the ministers
do in church. It wasn’t cushioned, however,
and he always bruised his hands in his self-forgetful
earnestness. We thought him a regular wonder.
We loved to hear him preach, but we didn’t like
to hear him pray, because he always insisted on praying
for each of us by name, and it made us feel wretchedly
uncomfortable, somehow. Alec, do you remember
how furious Julia was because Edward prayed one day
that she might be preserved from vanity and conceit
over her singing?”
