Benefits Forgot

an excerpt from CHAPTER I - THE DONATION PARTY: Brother Meaker rose from his pew and looked at Jason appraisingly. "I don't know, brethren," he said. "Of course, he's a growing boy. Just turned twelve, didn't you say, ma'am?" Jason's mother nodded faintly without looking up, and Brother Meaker went on. "As I said, he's a growing boy, but he's dark and wiry. And I've always noted, the dark wiry kind eat smaller than any other kind. I should take at least twelve pounds of sugar off the allowance for the year and four gallon less of molasses than you was calculatin' on." He sat do2wn and Sister Cantwell rose. She was a fat woman, famous in the southern Ohio country for the lavish table she set. "Short sweetening," she said in a thin high voice, "is dreadful high. I said to Hiram yesterday that the last sugar loaf I bought was worth its weight in silver. I should say, cut down on short sweetening. Long sweetening is all right except for holidays." Jason whispered to his mother, "What's long sweetening, mother?" "They must mean molasses," she whispered in return, with a glance at Jason's father, who sat at the far end of the pew reading his Bible as he always did at this annual ordeal. Jason looked from his mother's quiet, sensitive face, like yet so unlike his own, to the bare pulpit of the little country church, then back at Brother Ames, who was conducting the meeting. This annual conference and the annual donation party were the black spots in Jason's year. His mother, he suspected, suffered as he did: her face told him that. Her tender lips, usually so wistful and eager, were a3t these times thin and compressed. Her brown eyes, that except at times of death or illness always held a remote twinkle, were inscrutable. Jason's face was so like, yet already so unlike his mother's! The same brown eyes, with the same twinkle, but tonight instead of being inscrutable, boyishly hard. The same tender mouth, with tonight an unboyish sardonic twist. What Jason's father's face might have said one could not know, for it was hidden under a close-cropped brown beard. He turned the leaves of his Bible composedly, looking up only as the meeting reached a final triumphant conclusion with Brother Ames' announcement: "So, Brother Wilkins, there you are, a liberal allowance if I must say it. Two hundred and fifty dollars for the year, with the usual donation party to take4 place in the fall of the year." Brother Wilkins, who was Jason's father, rose, bowed and said: "I thank you, brethren. Let us pray!" The fifty or sixty souls in the church knelt, and Jason's father, his eyes closed, lifted his great bass voice in prayer: "O God, You have led our feeble and trusting steps to this town of High Hill, Ohio. You have put into the hearts and minds of these people, O God, the purpose of feeding and clothing us. Whether they do it well or ill, concerns them and You, O God, and not us. We are but Your humble servants, doing Your divine bidding. Yet this is perhaps the proper occasion, Our Heavenly Father, to thank You that You have sent us but one child and that unlike Solomon, Your servant has but one wife. And now, O God, bless these people in their giving. And make me, in my solitary circuit riding in the hills and valleys a proper mouthpiece of Your will. For Lord Jesus' sake, Amen." 5 There was a short pause after the rich voice stopped, then a few weak "Amens" came from different corners of the church and Brother Ames, jumping to his feet, exclaimed: "Let us close the meeting by singing 'How tedious and tasteless the hoursWhen Jesus no longer I seeâ'"

Author / Editor: WILLSIE, HONORÉ

Category: Historical Fiction

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