Old Judge Priest. Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury

I have changed my mind. I changed it only a little while ago. For I recalled that once on a time the Master said: ‘Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.’ And I believe, in the scheme of everlasting mercy and everlasting pity, that before the eyes of our common Creator we are all of us as little children whose feet stumble in the dark. So I shall take that saying of the Saviour for my text.”

      Perhaps it would be unjust to those whose business is the preaching of sermons to call this a sermon. I, for one, never heard any other sermon in any other church that did not last longer than five minutes. And certainly Judge Priest, having made his beginning, did not speak for more than five minutes; the caressing fingers of the sunlight had not perceptibly shifted upon the flower-strewn coffin top when he finished what he had to say and stood with his head bowed. After that, except for a rustle of close-packed body and a clearing of men’s huskened throats, there was silence for a little time.

      Then Judge Priest’s eyes looked about him and three pews away he saw Ashby Corwin. It may have been he remembered that as a young man Ashby Corwin had been destined for holy orders until another thing – some said it was a woman and some said it was whisky, and some said it was first the woman and then the whisky – came into his life and wrecked it so that until the end of his days Ashby Corwin trod the rocky downhill road of the profligate and the waster. Or it may have been the look he read upon the face of the other that moved Judge Priest to say:

      “I will ask Mr. Corwin to pray.”

      At that Ashby Corwin stood up in his place and threw back his prematurely whitened head, and he lifted his face that was all scarified with the blighting flames of dissipation, and he shut his eyes that long since had wearied of looking upon a trivial world, and Ashby Corwin prayed. There are prayers that seem to circle round and round in futile rings, going nowhere; and then again there are prayers that are like sparks struck off from the wheels of the prophet’s chariot of fire, coursing their way upward in spiritual splendour to blaze on the sills of the Judgment Seat. This prayer was one of those prayers.

      After that Judge Priest bowed his head again and spoke the benediction.

      It turns out that I was right a while back when I predicted this chapter of this book might end with Judge Priest sitting at his desk in his room at the old courthouse. On the morning of the day following the day of this funeral he sat there, putting the last words to his decision touching upon the merits of the existing controversy in the congregation of the True Believers’ Afro-American Church of Zion. The door opened and in walked Beck Giltner, saloon keeper, sure-thing gambler, handy-man-with-a-gun, and, according to the language of a resolution unanimously adopted at a mass meeting of the Law and Order League, force-for-evil.

      Beck Giltner was dressed in his best. He wore his wide-brimmed, black soft hat, with its tall crown carefully dented in, north, east, south and west; his long black coat; his white turn-down collar; his white lawn tie; and in the bosom of his plaited shirt of fine white linen his big diamond pin, that was shaped like an inverted banjo. This was Beck Giltner’s attire for the street and for occasions of ceremony. Indoors it was the same, except that sometimes he took the coat off and turned back his shirt cuffs.

      “Good mornin’, Beck,” said the judge. “Well?”

      “Judge Priest,” said Giltner, “as a rule I don’t come to this courthouse except when I have to come. But to-day I’ve come to tell you something. You made a mistake yesterday!”

      “A mistake, suh?” The judge’s tone was sharp and quick.

      “Yes, suh, that’s what you did,” returned the tall gambler. “I don’t mean in regards to that funeral you held for that dead girl. You probably don’t care what I think one way or the other, but I want to tell you I was strong for that, all the way through. But you made a mistake just the same, Judge; you didn’t take up a collection.

      “It had been a good many years since I was inside of a church, until I walked with you and the others to that little nigger meetin’-house yesterday – forty-odd years I reckon; not since I was a kid, anyway. But to the best of my early recollections they always took a collection for something or other every time I did go to church. And yesterday you overlooked that part altogether.

      “So last night I took it on myself to get up a collection for you. I started it with a bill or so off my own roll. Then I passed the hat round at several places where you wouldn’t scarcely care to go yourself. And I didn’t run across a single fellow that failed to contribute. Some of ‘em don’t move in the best society, and there’s some more of ‘em that you’d only know of by reputation. But every last one of ‘em put in something. There was one man that didn’t have only seven cents to his name – he put that in. So here it is – four hundred and seventy-five dollars and forty-two cents, accordin’ to my count.”

      From one pocket he fetched forth a rumpled packet of paper money and from the other a small cloth sack, which gave off metallic clinking sounds. He put them down together on the desk in front of Judge Priest.

      “I appreciate this, ef I am right in my assumption of the motives which actuated you and the purposes to which you natchally assumed this here money would be Applied,” said Judge Priest as the other man waited for his response. “But, son, I can’t take your money. It ain’t needed. Why, I wouldn’t know whut to do with it. There ain’t no out-standin’ bills connected with that there funeral.

      “All the expense entailed was met – privately. So you see – ”

      “Wait just a minute before you say no!” interrupted Giltner. “Here’s my idea and it’s the idea of all the others that contributed: We-all want you to take this money and keep it – keep it in a safe, or in your pocket, or in the bank to your credit, or anywheres you please, but just keep it. And if any girl that’s gone wrong should die and not have any friends to help bury her, they can come to you and get the cash out of this fund to pay for puttin’ her away. And if any other girl should want to go back to her people and start in all over again and try to lead a better life, why you can advance her the railroad fare out of that money too. You see, Judge, we are aimin’ to make a kind of a trust fund out of it, with you as the trustee. And when the four seventy-five forty-two is all used up, if you’ll just let me know I’ll guarantee to rustle up a fresh bank roll so you’ll always have enough on hand to meet the demands. Now then, Judge, will you take it?”

      Judge Priest took it. He stretched out and scooped in currency and coin sack, using therefor his left hand only. The right was engaged in reaching for Beck Giltner’s right hand, the purpose being to shake it.

      II. A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES

      NEARLY every week – weather permitting – the old judge went to dinner somewhere. To a considerable extent he kept up his political fences going to dinners. Usually it was of a Sunday that he went.

      By ten o’clock almost any fair Sunday morning – spring, summer or early fall – Judge Priest’s Jeff would have the venerable side-bar buggy washed down, and would be leading forth from her stall the ancient white lady-sheep, with the unmowed fetlocks and the intermittent mane, which the judge, from a spirit of prideful affection and in the face of all visual testimony to the contrary, persisted in regarding as an authentic member of the equine kingdom.

      Presently, in their proper combination and alignment, the trio would be stationed at the front gate, thus: Jeff in front, bracing the forward section of the mare-creature; and the buggy behind, its shafts performing a similar office for the other end of this unique quadruped. Down the gravelled walk that led from the house, under the water maples and silver-leaf poplars, which arched over to make a shady green tunnel of it, the judge would come, immaculate but rumply in white linens. The judge’s linens had a way of getting themselves all rumpled even before he put them on. You might say they were born rumpled.

      Beholding his waddlesome approach out of the tail of her eye, the white animal would whinny a dignified and conservative welcome. She knew her owner almost as well as he knew her. Then, while Jeff held her head – that is to say, held it up – the old man would heave his frame ponderously in and upward between the dished wheels and settle back into