The Chautauqua Girls At Home

1841-1930 Pansy

Informations

• Publié par: muthong
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 19
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chautauqua Girls At Home, by Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Chautauqua Girls At Home Author: Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden Release Date: October 1, 2008 [EBook #26742] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME *** Produced by Charlene Taylor, Joel Erickson, Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (High resolution images created from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [1] "Dear me! how stiff and proper they both were."—Page 235. THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME BY [2] PANSY AUTHOR OF "FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA," "ESTER RIED," "LINKS IN REBECCA'S LIFE," "JULIA RIED," "HOUSEHOLD PUZZLES," "RUTH ERSKINE'S CROSSES," "THE RANDOLPHS," "WISE AND OTHERWISE," "A NEW GRAFT ON THE FAMILY TREE," "WHAT SHE SAID, AND WHAT SHE MEANT," "THE POCKET MEASURE," "HALL IN THE GROVE," "SOME YOUNG HEROINES," "FIVE FRIENDS," "MRS. SOLOMON SMITH LOOKING ON," ETC. TORONTO WILLIAM BRIGGS, 78 & 80 KING ST. EAST MONTREAL: C. W. COATES HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS CONTENTS. PAGE [3] CHAPTER I. TREADING ON NEW GROUND CHAPTER II. FLOSSY "BEGINS" CHAPTER III. BURDENS CHAPTER IV. COL. BAKER'S SABBATH EVENING CHAPTER V. NEW MUSIC CHAPTER VI. DISTURBING ELEMENTS 7 30 49 72 87 102 [4] CHAPTER VII. PRAYER-MEETING AND TABLEAUX 118 CHAPTER VIII. DR. DENNIS' STUDY CHAPTER IX. A WHITE SUNDAY CHAPTER X. THE RAINY EVENING CHAPTER XI. THE NEXT THING CHAPTER XII. SETTLING QUESTIONS CHAPTER XIII. LOOKING FOR WORK CHAPTER XIV. AN UNARMED SOLDIER CHAPTER XV. MARION'S PLAN CHAPTER XVI. THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE CHAPTER XVII. THE DISCUSSION CHAPTER XVIII. 134 150 166 181 197 211 227 243 258 275 [5] THE RESULT CHAPTER XIX. KEEPING THE PROMISE CHAPTER XX. HOW IT WAS DONE CHAPTER XXI. RUTH AND HAROLD CHAPTER XXII. REVIVAL CHAPTER XXIII. THE STRANGE STORY CHAPTER XXIV. LONELINESS CHAPTER XXV. THE ADDED NAME CHAPTER XXVI. LEARNERS CHAPTER XXVII. FLOSSY'S PARTY CHAPTER XXVIII. A PARTING GLANCE 291 307 322 337 355 368 385 401 418 435 451 [6] [7] THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME. CHAPTER I. TREADING ON NEW GROUND. HAT last Sabbath of August was a lovely day; it was the first Sabbath that our girls had spent at home since the revelation of Chautauqua. It seemed lovely to them. "The world looks as though it was made over new in the night," Eurie had said, as she threw open her blinds, and drew in whiffs of the sweet, soft air. And the church, whither these girls had so often betaken themselves on summer mornings, just like this one—how could two or three weeks have changed it? They could not feel that [8] it was the same building. Hitherto it had been to them simply the First Church; grander, by several degrees, than any other church in the city, having the finest choir, and the finest organ, and the most elegant carpets, and making the grandest floral display of all the temples, as became the First Church, of course; but to-day, this glowing, glorious August day, it was something infinitely above and beyond all this; it was the visible temple of the invisible God, their Saviour, and they were going up to worship—aye, really and truly to worship. They, in their different ways, according to their very different natures, felt this and were thrilled with it as their feet trod the aisles. People can feel a great many things, and not show them to the casual observer. Sitting in their respective pews, they looked in no sense different from the way they had looked on a hundred different Sabbaths before this. Ruth Erskine, in the corner of her father's pew, attired, as she had often been before, in the most delicate and exquisite of summer silks, with exactly the right shade of necktie, gloves and sash, to set off the beauty of the dress, with the soft and delicate laces about her white throat, for which she was especially noted, looked not one whit different from the lady who sat there three weeks before. You wouldn't have known that her heart was singing for joy. Flossy Shipley, aglow with elegance, as she always was, looked the same airy butterfly that had flitted in and out of that church on many a summer day before; and Marion, in her corner in the gallery, was simply the grave, somewhat weary-looking school-teacher at one of the wards—"a girl with infidel tendencies," that is all the great congregation knew about her; in fact, comparatively few of them knew even that. Eurie Mitchell was the doctor's eldest daughter, and had in no sense improved as to her toilet—"a thing which could hardly be expected, since she had thrown away so much money on that wild scheme of living in the woods;" that was what some of the congregation thought about her. Dr. Dennis saw all these girls, and looked gloomy over them; he was in the mood to need sympathetic hearers, to long to be in accord with his audience, and feel that they could sympathize with him in his reach after a higher type of religion. What could these four girls know about a higher type, when they had no religion at all, and had been spending two lawless weeks in looking at the subject, till their hearts were either attuned to ridicule or disgusted, according to their several temperaments? That was what the faces of our four girls said to him. Yet how they listened to his sermon. "I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." These were the words on which he spoke; and the burden of his thought was that satisfaction was not to be sought for here; nothing less than the absolute likeness should give absolute satisfaction; and this likeness was to be forever eagerly, earnestly, constantly, sought for, striven after, until some day would come that blessed awakening, and the picture would be found to be complete! Was it the best sermon that had ever been preached? Was it the only spiritual sermon that the First Church people had ever heard, or was it that four girls had been to Chautauqua, and there learned how to listen? Their cheeks glowed, and their eyes dilated over the wonderful thoughts that the subject presented, the endless possibility for climbing! Marion Wilbur had been counted ambitious; she had longed for a chance to reach high; here was her chance; she felt it, and gloried in it; she meant to try. Every nerve quivered with