A CHRISTMAS CANTATA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7923, 30 January 1904, Page 1

A CHRISTMAS CANTATA.

(By PAUL L. M'KENEICK.) "Yes," said Abe, as he thrust the whip into its socket, and tucked the lap robe around his knees and feet, " most folks hey reasons for their opinions about things, and I hey mine. A mule's about tbe only critter that walks or swims or flies that can't figure out the whys and wherefores of his opinions and moodus upperandy. That pair of words I handed you jest then jingle aristocratic-like, don't they? Well, I got them out of a book the city lass that grassed out at our place last summer left behind when she flitted, amd they mean something about the style folks hey when they peel their coats and git down to their jobs.' "Well, I ain't a mule— not quite — and I hey a few reasons pasted on to the tail end of the six or eight idees I can hitch un in the dark and drive through the gate 'thout ripping a wheel off. So, when Hank Bowser hollered 'cross from the big road to-day, and asked me if I's goin' to th c cau'tarter down to the Zion church aChristmas, I says, ' Not by a jug full." "I'm not what you call a. communicative man. By follerin' the tracks of my pedigree back through the brush, you'll find that it ain't natural for -me to talk much — 'cept on occasions. If t'other fellow wants information, my rule is to let him dig for it like he would for ground-hogs or potatoes. Of course, there's times when I split a silver off my traditions and say a ifew says—but mostly to myself. There's something comfortable about talking to yourself' cause you know the fellow you're tootin' to wont blab. "But to come back to the 'post and place of beginnin',' as deeds say ! I didn^ hey to dilly -dally long in informin' Hank that the cantater would hey to be shot off 'thout the assistance and inspirin' presence of yours truly. I had) my reasons — that was enough for Hank. "I got my reasons, when I was a good many years younger. Yes, lam not so blamed purty as I was theh, but I hey a heap more sense! My first cabtater cost me three thousand good hard dollars, to 6ay nuthin' of sundry items of mortification of" the flesh and anguish of spirit. " Tildy Morgan was, in them days, about the likeliest bunch \6l young womanhood in this part of the country. That's what she was considered by the most competent jedges, and my opinion was pasterin' in the same meadow. The fact is, I got to .likin' her when we was little shavers gdTn' to school. When we got older, I'd beau • her 'round some to the Grangers' picnics, and buy tickets for her and ime to ride in the ' Flyin' Jinny.' Half a dozen times, I guess, I took her to festivals over to Muttontown, and bought her icecream. She'd always say- 'thank you' so sugary, and tell me I was so kind-aSLd^ow she wished she had a brother.Mlik*^-_ie. Honestly, she could feel grateful easier and tell it smoother' than anybody else' I ever j laid eyes on. ' . ■ ] "Then we used to go to xsingin 1 schppl in my sleigh. She was a purty fair to middlin' singer and knew a lot about music, and I fell into the business jest to keep on the good side of her. In fact I used to whistle all the . way home after such trips, and you'd a-thought, jest as I did, that I was "forty xods ahead of anything a- j coming down the pike— as regard Tildy. I " That was the standin' of matters when the new railroad cam. up the creek, and Pap Morgan sold the coal under his farm, paid off his mortgages, painted the house, barn and fences, and 'lowed that his daughter could learn enough to teach school if she went- to th e town academy. Tildy went. She was away about a year, but it was a mighty long year when it unfolded itself and got stretched out. • "She came home on a Friday — I remem-ber-it like it was yesterday. The next night a blind man could hey found me. I was dressed vp t purty as a soap prize picture, sayin' my 'howdy' to Miss Tildy. " She was changed considerable in some ways, but we soon got acquainted. As I hey said, I'm not a full harvest hand at taJkin', and never was, and that night I didn't earn a boy's keep. There wasn't half as much to the acre of my conversation as there was before she went away. She talked about this amd that school friend of hers, and made speeches about things I knew nuthin' about and never will see. She talked like a lawyer 'lectioneerin', and all I said was yes and no. After I conversed in this comprehensive manner for an hour or so, and said 'yes' where 'no' oughter been, I jest said nuthin', 'cept when she'd block her wheels and stop for wind. Then I'd chase up a smile — one of those you-know-I-think-you're-smart kind, 'cause I'd found out that was safer. " She wasn't stuck-up-ish nor- nuthin' like that, but jest seemed to hey a lot of stuff on her mind she had to mow off before goin' ahead. , "Tildy jest had to talk about town folks and town doin's to satisfy the family^ but she didn't try to act as if she had never picked blackberries or baked a stack of buckwheat cakes. Sh c had too good sense for that, and I felt that she was jest the Same's she used to be — and a leetle bit more •so. "The next week I chased myself over to see her aigain, and it didn't take a flock of bulldogs to hurry me, either. She had her say about foreignerSj and was ready .to talk home folks and -homo things, and I got sociabler 'cause I could tell more where I was at. After we talked about Jim Johnson's children that had the measles, she said that the new preacher had been to see her and informed her that the Sunday sohool was goin' down-hill fast and needed spraggin'. It needed revivin', and something oughter to be- did to revive it. So they two decided that for revivin' a i Sunday school there was -nuthin' like a cantater, and they would have one on Christmas. " She said : '1 told him- that I jest loved cantaters, fox you know the folks in town jest go plumb wild oveij cantaters.' . " That's what she said, and I says to myself, 'Cantaters, cantaters — -what's a cantater?' I was not quite ripe in the cantater business jest then, don't forgit. "Then she says: 'Don't you think it would be lovely, wouldn't it be splendiferous? Of course,' says she, 'tnere never was one here, but you know how. they are got up.' I says, ' Yessum !' Then there was something inside of me sayin', 'You're alyin' as fast as a horse can trot !' I was powerfully chilly for fear . she'd ask me how I always took my cantaters — with sugar or 'thout. "She helped me out purty soon--— how much she helped me out nobody else knows. She says: 'We have piles of . folks here that can sing. Annie Cobb and Jessie Black can be a duet,' whichever that was, . ' and Mame Wiggins can have •ai part, and the Skinner children can hey a song. Theuj if you and some more'll join in and take parts, 1 .lean git it up and it will be a success. If it ain't a success I won't hey a thing to do with it.' i "X took another breath and let, go of the ione ! had been agaeezin'. I felt like a

I man that's been pulled out of the water, in i. January and laid up beside a fire. 1 saw [ there was si-gin. in it, and I felt at that i moment that I was no slouch at singin'. !My opinion was that I hadn't gone to Buck .Keller's singin' school twi> winters | fur nuthin'. But if I had been carryin' my | Monday, Tuesday and every other day sense with me, . I'd hey remembered that I 1 raever said a piece in school Friday afternoons, and that I always took the back seat at singin' and hid! behind a book— l was so allfired bashful. * " Well, it was fixed that I was to be Santer Claus, and Tildy. give me a. book chat had the words in. I was to be dressed up in a buffalo robe with whiskers made of cotton, and had <to sing about four or five lines and then pass around the candy and presents, or whatever. That seemed easier tban rollin' off a log. By the way I felt when Tildy was talkin' about it I b'lieve I could hey sung a book full/ of songs. - . " I camped at home for a week or more a-tryin' to learn the lines. • I said thenover and over,, but there, didn't seem to be enough pitch on my ..brain to make them stick. I had them put down on a clip of paper and I carried that with me, and every time I'd forgit I'd pull that paper out to look at and git a fresh start. " A week on- the front side df Christmas Tildy sent word for me to come to rehearse, as she called it/ That meant that everybody was to sing and do jest like they'd do a-Ohristmas so's they'd git used to'the'harness. " That cantater was in the church where the one is to be bad this year. There was nobody there when we rehearsed but the ones that had parts, and I ploughed through 'thout hittin' a root. I came last and I had the book, 'cause it wasn't supposed- to be the real thing that night. Besides. Tildy stood by the organ and see-sawed ~er hand to me when to trot out and start around the ring ; but I never looked at one ■livin' soul after I cut loose— jest kept my little peepers nailed to that book. We all agreed that the cantater would be better'n a circus, and went home feelin' importantlike. " I took Tildy in my sleigh/ and she'd tklk about nuthin' but the cantater. I tried to switch her off onto matters that to my style of thinkin' had more interest for us, but she didn't seem to want to be switched that way. She was soaked \ with that cantater. She says:— " 'Since I got this cantater up stacks of folks is jealous — some 'cause their children ain't in dt, and some 'cause they think I'mi tryin' to put on style since I've been to school in town. I ain't slept much over it, and if it ain't a great success I don't know what I'll do — I'll feel so humilerated.' * "I didn't want her to feel that way, so I said awful ericouragin' words to her and clinched the thing by tellin' her that if she couldn't make the whole business whistle nobody in seventeen counties could. " Since She had come home I was dead jsot on. gittm' her to say yes to a little question I had been winterin' for a long, spell, and that was the boss reason Ibadfor bein' hauled into the cantater. I wanted to please her and keep sloshih' around! handy while I hatched' out a good chance to pop. So on this night, when she came to the hankerin'-for-sympathy point,' I told her that the cantater'd be a dandy and that it wouldn't hey an insect on it or a kink 1 in its mane or tail.: Then I figured that •I'd ; tak>e-her Ghriishnas night, and when , we got oh the road home, some place where, the trees made a nice comfortable shadow; and she was feelin' gay and gingery, I'd chirp my little' chirp. i "Christmas Night everything was ready, and waitin'. Tildy and the preacher bossed the job. The front of the church was fixed up like a dancin' platform, with spruce all round- it. We had sheets tacked up oSI. each side of the platform for the cantater people to bide behind. On one side was the organ, and on t'other side on the floor was a big spr_ce tree jest plastered over with red, white and blue paper, sticks of candy, and all kinds of -doll babies /and candles. That tree wouldn't hey been known by its own mother — it was a sight, I tell you. " Some of the cantater folks would hey made you almost die of laughin' — they's dressed up so ridiculous, but Tildy said they had to be that way. As I said, I was to be Santer Claus, and I had myself got up regardless— jest kivered with that robe, and everything regular. "Back of the sheets everyone was hummin' the songs so's they'd' not forgit, and Tildy was a-prancing here and there tellin' them how to do. Mothers that had children in it kept busy fixin' their hair and tryin' to keep their little darlings from cryin' or fightin' each other. " When I squinted out 'twixt the sheets and saw the church jambed full of everybody from miles around I felt as if the floor of my stomach had dropped out. Then I turned around and saw the anxious look on Tildy's face, and I took a hitch in the strap around my equator, and, says I to myself, 'Do it or bust!' I tied that little paper of mine to a string and threw it over I the sheet so's it'd hang outside where 1 could take a bird's-eye view of it in time ; of need, then pinned t'other, end of the string, and felt that there's more'n one way of killin' a pup and that I was not quite so green as I was cabbaze lookin'. I had confidence enough to feed to the chickens. "Purty soon the organ began to pump, up and the people tried to quit talkin',— the cantater was .tretchin' itself and -gittm' ready to move. "First: Susie Spalkin's class sang, a' song of welcome. That was all right, and after the class marched off, everybody looked at everybody else, and said .they thought they'd done splendid. After all the audience people got through tellin' each other who they thought looked nicest, Annie Cobb and Jessie Black had what Tildy called a duet. That may be what it was, but it 'peared to me- like ene of them tried to sing it alone and couldn't ; then t'other would put in a few good licks to help out, and then they'd git mad and argify and sass each other back and forth, and then jest before they fought and tore each other's hair, they made up and sang the last verse together. That was purty nigh 0.X., too. "After them came the Skinner heirs. They came out to sing a song about bein' happy little children. They shoved each other around a bit trying*to git a foothold, and forgot their say. Tildy tried to whisper it to them, but I guess that they thought she was scoldin', 'cause one of them/ began to cry, and she had to go out and ; lead them off the platform. ; ' "From that time on things was scrambled worsen eggs, and I saw; that Tildy was gettin' nervous and shy. The organ started too early br too late to ketch the . gait of the singers. You'd a-thought Tildy's face was a crazy quilt when six little boys stumbled out and began to sing about bein' good men some day. "I was next, and had come out at one! side as these little heathen went off t'other. I yas excited terrible. One of those boys, must hey spied my string, , for jest as I stepped out I saw that precious paper climbin' up and- disappearin' over the top of the sheet. The organ kept a-buzzin. - and everybody was awaitin'. P never thought so many, faces could git into that ■' church— l thought there must be more'n. a million, eyesi lookin* at me. There never was a ' thermometer long enough to tell just how hot 'my face „was at that' time. The organ kept a-buzzin* all the time, a-tryin* to coax me, but I wouldn't coax— l had forgotten my song su. d I don't know now what I was to say. Tildy had*

the book back of the sheet and whispered \ something to me and told me to go on, I but I wasn't goin' — I'd gone as far as Icould, for I was plumb crazy. I tried ' to hear her say the words, but 'she seemed miles away. Oh, how I wished' I was home amd had my lickin', and was in my little bunk. The words had something in them like this: — "'Banter's he^ who is it humbly begs?' ;' and then some more. ' My recollector had quit his job and gone a-fishin' somewheres. ; but I pulled my jaws open to Bay the word* as they sounded- from behind the sheet. 1 don't know, what I did say, but Pap told me afterwards that I bawled out like a I brindle calf ,: — " ' Can't I hear who chucked 'em eggs?' I "No matter! That crowd yelled, and then that platform seemed' to dance and try to stand on end, and my bead went around a-flyin'. Everything went a _whi__ih' around me, and as soon as the come-out hole in the sheet came fkootin' past me I ' made a break for it z but got off the. road. ; Some imp had got two bushel baskets of pop-corn on the tree side of the platform, and I tripped on my robe and made I a grand dive over the* baskets, | and went into that gorgeous tree head first. | The tree started to fall over, and the I trimmin's got afire. Everybody jumped into the air and yelled murder, the babies screamed, the dogs under the stove yelped, and old' 'Lice Sankey fainted. " As soon as I got myself amputated -from that tree and got my a_ms aiid legs raked together, I wenfc outside, and let the audience put out the fire and divide the candy— -I ...didn't want none. I went around a corner of the church and husked myself out of that pair of whiskers and buffalo robe. .'*••■'• "Purty Boon the people came out, and they were jest a -talkin' and a-caeklin'. Someone says: — • "'lt's all right to hey sich things in the school-house, but that's what comes of circus doin's in the church. We mighter been burned up for examples.' " Then came Tildy a-cryin' and a-snifflin' and a-heavin' out a nice assortment of sobs, and a-sayin* that it was -a total failure. I saw that she was mighty apt to evaporate or something .unless she was taken in hand, so I stepped out in front of her amd says:-— " ' Tildy, won't you let me see you borne in my sleigh? I'm sorry, Fm- ' •-. "But she trimmed my grape vine up close, and did it quick with — "'Do-'t'tell me what you are! I know what you are! Yqu are a great, great, big, big nuthin' ! You've anade my friends laugh ■ ■. at "me and. Tv 'peared worse than ridiculous,- No, I won't go home with you, and' you can't go too quick.' "I tell you she was boilin'. She had some spunk, at all times, but jest then her temper . seemed -to Eev a sort o' . family. reunion. I didn't stop to. argify — I knew Tildy. I. started for home. I pufcj Old Baidy, in the stable, and then went up- ■ stairs into the granary and banged the door shut and had it out with myself. - "As I hey said, I can talk to myself confidential-like, and that was one time I did. I called myself every kind of a fool you could meet from Kiskiminetas to Punxsutawney, and then said it backwards. I jest asked myself why it was that piefaced beauties like me, that hadn't voice enough •to call the cows, could get such fool notions.- ii. their- heads , and try to do ; 6ahtafer'"bli-me'ss ; , and act like town folks, when they oughter hire out to be stuffed in smashed windows to keep out the snow or for;, hitchin' posts iiu barnyards. "About a week after that Jim Welson came over to borrow a bridle, and say 9 that he s'posed I knew about Tildy's goin* back to town, and that he saw her dad drive her away with her trunk on the waggon. '" From that day to this I hey never gone near a singin' school, or any kind of doin's at the church, 'cept preachin'. And as for cantaters ; Well, I have my opinion of them, and I hey my reasons, and don't you think I ain't. " Oh, yes, about that three thousand dollars I lost! Some folks mightn't figure as I do; but Tildy married a town man that had a shoe store, x and .had a face full , of voice, and could sing about flowers and ( birds and ' Come Back, Mariar, Mr Heart's Growing Bilious for You,' and sich like. When [Tildy's dad died she got the farm-—; and three thousand dollars is a mighty low: ; estimate as farms go. Now,' if that ain't as good as droppin' that much long green. I'd like to know what is." In a few minutes we swung into the lane leading up to the house and barn. In silence we unhitched , and stabled the horses, but as we walked toward the house, Abe began to whistle softly the notes of a song I recognised as one of old-time singing, school vintage, and as 'we mounted the kitchen steps he drawled out : " Funny how a fellow uncorks himself onoe in a while, aitft it?"