Esther
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St. John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon, had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure. Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this
games with us.
She wanted me to be quite faultless. She would say: "I want you to be
perfect. Do you hear, child? Perfect." One day she thought I had
told a lie. There were three cows which used to graze on some land in
the middle of which was a great big chestnut tree. The white cow was
wicked, and we were afraid of it, because it had knocked a little girl
down once. That day I saw the two red cows, and just under the
chestnut tree I saw a big black cow. I said to Ismerie:
"Look; the white cow has been sent away because she was wicked, I
expect." Ismerie, who was cross that day, screamed, and said that I
was always laughing at the others, and trying to make them believe
things which were not true. I showed her the cow. She said it was a
white one. I said, "No, it is a black one." Sister Marie-Aimee heard
us. She was very angry, and said, "How dare you say that the cow is
black?" Then the cow moved. She looked black and white now, and I
understood that I had made a mistake because of the shadow of the
chestnut tree. I was so surprised that I could not find anything to
say. I did not know how to explain it. Sister Marie-Aimee shook me.
"Why did you tell a lie?" she said. I answered that I did not know.
She sent me into a corner in the shed, and told me that I should have
nothing but bread and water that day. As I had not told a lie, the
punishment did not worry me. The shed had a lot of old cupboards in
it, and some garden tools. I climbed from one thing on to the other,
and got right up and sat on the top of the highest cupboard. I was ten
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St. John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon, had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure. Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this