June 1, 2018:—In the capital of Illinois, in this year of grace, St. Friend is a healer of the body and soul. He is more of a philosopher than the fuming Black Hawk Boone, that is, he has a cooler disposition. Yet Boone heals by hard maxims, given with that lovely fruit, the Amaranth-Apple. St. Friend heals by sermons and prayers and the pictured parables, the rituals envisaged and illuminated in the celebration of the Office of the Blessed Bread.
The real name of our saint, which no one ever hears, is Hugh Adams Matheney. He is, away and beyond, the oldest of the Board of Education or of any of the leaders of the city. He has little fire in his blood, but has still the greatest reserve battery of nervous force. He was, even as a little boy, a protege and disciple of St. Scribe of the Shrines, who was then in the height of his glory as a leader of 172our town. He preceded St. Friend as the dominating figure of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul and handed down to him and to the whole city the old doctrine, with a new emphasis, that the whole human race is the mystical body of Christ, soon to be raised from the dead. On his mother’s side St. Friend is a descendant of a long line of members of the Church of the Disciples. On his father’s side his ancestors are notable in several lines, for instance, the Matheneys of Springfield. The original Matheneys put up one of the first three settlers’ log cabins ever erected in this county. The Adams strain is from New Harmony, Indiana. There they were bakers for several generations. The cottage of St. Friend has his baker’s coat of arms painted over the little front door, over the tremendous open fireplace, and in the little dining room. On one slender pole, in front of his cottage, all of his family flags are flying. The most important of the flags, in the estimation of St. Friend, is that of the clan of these same Adams people from New Harmony.
St. Friend is the last of his actual clan to be a baker, though the town is full of his first and second cousins;—and third cousins, indeed, that claim him proudly. He has adopted a son, an orphan boy, early apprenticed to 173his flour barrels by the school authorities, a boy of Thibetan ancestry and one of a small local group of Thibetans. He is now grown. Except for ceremonial occasions he has long graduated from baking. He is occupied in designing more exquisite and slender sunset towers, of the school of Louis H. Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, to add one more circle to the outer ring, when purple cottages and old buildings have been sufficiently cleared away. He is known as the “young St. Friend” or the “Thibetan boy.”
When I have passed him on the street, I have observed him muttering to himself or occasionally walking and arguing with the other Thibetans. He looks every inch the stranger, with square face and almond eyes, and skin brickdust red, with heavy bronze beneath it.
The sister of St. Friend, living in the same cottage, a mild, ghostly creature, creeping about, is more than a centenarian. She remembers the celebration of Armistice Day, November 11, 1918. She was then a baby in her father’s arms, and held out her hands to catch the falling showers of confetti thrown from the high buildings. She thought it was snow.
St. Friend graduated from the Hay-Edwards school. He went through one of Springfield’s 174High Schools. He continued on for a while through the Municipal University of the town. He attended a college of his faith at Washington, D. C. He then became a novice of the order of St. Scribe of the Shrines and took that discipline as literally as possible.
St. Friend is a close correspondent of the hundred radical bishops who are, often in remoter fashion, followers of St. Scribe of the Shrines, while at the same time they are conserving the results of the Church Revolution. Two of these bishops, the present leaders of the order, were young pilgrims with him when he made the journey commanded by St. Scribe, the pilgrimage around the world to the one hundred shrines of the one hundred religions, beginning with the Tomb of Lincoln. The boy returned while St. Scribe was still in his prime and a rousing, dominating figure in the city. The boy became the private secretary of the Saint. When the saint was an old man, the disciple was his confidential adviser and finally, when the great man departed this life, the office of leading the Cathedral flock naturally devolved upon the disciple. It was about this time that the rumor began to move among the people that the departed St. Scribe was once Hunter Kelly and it slowly became the fashion, with 175some of the more fanciful citizens, to speak of Hunter Kelly-St. Scribe as though they were one guardian spirit. St. Friend was offered the headship of the order of St. Scribe but he refused it and, without abandoning his place and the prescribed forms and prayers of this discipline, he set up quite a separate order of his own, the Order of the Blessed Bread of the Strict Observance, and today he has proclaimed from the Cathedral pulpit the setting up of a more popular order, of the more liberal observance, and though there is much not yet cleared up by the sermon, Avanel is resolved to join, if possible, and recruit me, if it may be done.
This is the history of The Order of The Strict Observance:—For many years St. Friend has given himself, in true devotion, as a member of the Springfield Associated Charities, to provide for the handful of defectives, drug fiends, and those outlaws who are now classed with them by common consent:—the unskilled laborers. St. Friend finds in his heart a great Franciscan pity for them. He finds there a sharp social rebellion that there should be any outlaws or helpless ones whatever. So he has become, by acclamation, the perpetual head of the Associated Charities, and these feverish wanton ones have been 176cheerfully left to his over-solicitude. The entire contingent of the socially crippled cuts as small a figure on the general horizon of the city as did the group of the professional paupers in the days when blind men turned hand organs. The educational machinery is such that within the double city walls, built long ago by Ralph Adams Cram, the so-called “exploited” have long been kept out. People in general are well-fed, super-skilled laborers. And they have about all the carnal bread and all the carnal circuses they can well digest.
But St. Friend, who in his youth wept for every fallen sparrow till he could weep no more, has long maintained his Order of the Blessed Bread of the Strict Observance for those left behind in the race, generally degenerate sons and daughters of old settlers. The order is properly called the “Brotherhood of the Blessed Bread.” Those who join eat of a bread baked from a special Sangamon County wheat, planted between the inner and the outer wall by some of the various sects of the Flower Religion and the Park Religion. St. Friend cares not what sect plants the wheat, so it be planted by those who believe in democracy and prayer.
After due vigil, the bread is skilfully baked by the Thibetan boy, or other chosen members 177of the society. Those who eat of it are exhorted, but not commanded, to take the oath before John Boat, for the bread, till now, has been primarily intended for the Brotherhood of the Strict Observance.
This oath before John Boat or other cooperating justice of the peace is printed in the little book of devotion that goes with the Strict Observance. The book and oath are intended for the most hopeless derelicts only. Presumably the bread is eaten for the first time by these, after the oath is administered.
The gray-headed old justice of the peace furnished the idea himself, when he and St. Friend were young men, and St. Friend kept the copy of the oath and brooded upon it long before he felt it politic to found the order. John Boat had observed, in his experience as a notary, that men, who seem but animated putrescence, still regard their sworn word in court. It is the last chance to put iron into them. This thought in mind, the oath is administered with the solemnity that went into the old monastic vows. From the many who have been given life by the oath, St. Friend has taken great assurance that he is on the road to a tremendous social amelioration.
June 2:—Because Avanel and I have decided to join the more liberal observance of 178the Order of the Blessed Bread, though we, as yet, know little about it, she is eager to show to me the occasion of the administering of the oath of the Strict Observance. This Monday morning we are taking the back bench in the shadowy corner of the justice court to watch the older ceremonial. Now most oaths in court are rattled off like parrot words, but to John Boat this is an occasion when he is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He gives a seeming dignity to the most carping and exacting demand of the pledge, reading it line upon line. Blue-faced Surto Hurdenburg, the derelict, echoes him with full and honest intent, repeating every line after the learned court with great respect and devotion.
This is the text of the pledge:—
State of Illinois
City of Springfield,
June 2, 2018.
I, Surto Hurdenburg, accepting the lordship of Christ, do solemnly swear, by the everliving God, that from this time henceforth I will support the Constitution of the World Government, the Constitution of the United States, the Laws of Illinois, the Ordinances 179of Springfield, that I will faithfully observe and keep inviolate the moral laws of the community; that I will carefully and faithfully observe my duty to my neighbor, recognizing his rights at all times; that I will endeavor to become an expert workman and member of a guild; that I will faithfully, honestly and conscientiously exercise my rights of franchise as a member of my guild and a citizen of the community, with a firm determination to bring about the best results for clean and honest government, and that I will devote as much strength as possible to the study of civic reform, examining at all times the opinions of clean-minded radical citizens and acting on them according to the dictates of my conscience. I specifically promise to abstain from motion-picture shows, yellow dance halls, bad women, alcoholic liquors and narcotics, and to denounce and work against in every way possible the traffic in Singaporian cocaine.
Further and finally, I promise to eat the Blessed Bread of this Order of the Strict Observance, according to the manner and at the times laid down in the Book of Devotion, and to follow the discipline for body and soul there prescribed and imposed for the good of 180the order and the health and well-being of my city.
(Signed) Surto Hurdenburg.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this Second Day of June, 2018.
(Seal) John Boat
Notary Public.
I conclude that, in the light of Springfield life as I have seen it these strange days, it will be easier for such as Surto Hurdenburg to keep the more literal specifications of the pledge, such as the ban on motion pictures, than to enter into the deep mazes of citizenship with judgment. He will keep close to St. Friend and the order, who hate the films, and thereby be able to let the films alone. Most photoplays outside of the educational buildings or beyond the immediate jurisdiction of the World’s Fair authorities are shown on the right or left of the sauntering corridors opening on the Yellow Dance Halls on the same floors. Here half-hour lengths of film are run through, when the crowd sweeps in to rest. The merits of the exceedingly artistic studio and theatre, called “The Egyptian Photoplay Association,” headed by Gwendolyn Charles and Rabbi Terence Ezekiel remain unappreciated by St. Friend and the members of the Order of the Strict Observance. 181This in spite of the fact that the Photoplay Association in question now has in charge most of those exquisite and unimpeachable film theatres of the University World’s Fair and several other worth-while film-theatre circuits in Central Illinois. “The Egyptian Photoplay Association” will rent slightly worn films to Yellow Dance Halls, after first runs in these others, and thereby make the films in the eyes of the Order of the Strict Observance, mere devil’s nets for fish.
So, though the highly esteemed Rabbi Terence Ezekiel tries to act as mediator, there is eternal war between the fiery Gwendolyn Charles and this saint.
For a long time back truly aesthetic and truly educational motion pictures have been shown in the school and University class rooms. Many of them are scientific and historical records and renderings. In the odd hours of loafing through these three months I have noted many of them as of the best gifts of the new time. But our stubborn St. Friend, as a member of the school board, generally votes against them, and in solitary grandeur. While at one with the general policies of the educational system, he makes many a speech before the members for the restoration of the regime of the book and the blackboard. He truly says that these are now almost 182abolished in the presence of the protean triumphant films, of the street pageantry, the training of skilled labor in the high schools, of the oral, the phonographic, telegraphic and telephone methods, applied to all forms of teaching. And only last week he met what appeared to be his Waterloo when it was voted to extend and enlarge the entirely respectable, if a little frigid, university dance halls and to include motion picture loafing rooms, the better to run competition with the Yellow Halls.
Some of these things I go over with Avanel, as we walk home from witnessing Surto Hurdenburg’s oath, and we wonder just what of the forbidden things, besides motion pictures, St. Friend will include in his pledge for the Liberal Observance. Avanel says: “I admit that the men who are sworn in, like this Surto Hurdenburg, are apt to become useful, if fanatical, citizens. Their poor strength must be economized in narrow channels if it is to last and be recuperated. But if St. Friend tries to put such a set of chains on me I will not speak to him for a month.”
Saturday, June 7:—St. Friend has today given it out by word of mouth and by editorials in the five papers that the whole world is welcome to his bread. The Order of the 183Liberal Observance is already more popularly called by the alternate descriptive title: “The Citizens in the Communion of the Blessed Bread.” There is no oath; even a Quaker may join.
Sunday, June 8:—It is the warmest morning of the year, so far, in an exceedingly backward summer. It is the first real June weather, and all the people rejoice in it. Avanel walks to church in the most wonderful of white airy dresses. And in these vacuum-cleaned streets, with no soot and no coal dust and no factory grime, people, working or playing, can be dressed all day as for a party if they choose.
All day yesterday couriers of all faiths, representing St. Friend’s personal rather than his religious companions, have been out inviting the people. At least one member of each family has been asked to bring his tribe to the Cathedral green and to listen and carry the message back with the bread.
Avanel and I are early for Church and so we make a circuit, enjoying the airy splendors of the crowd. And we go around by St. John’s Hospital, so lately rebuilt by the insistence of Mayo Sims, to vindicate his scientific zeal, and they say it is a splendid scientific monument to any man. It is east of the 184Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, as it has been for over four generations. And the heretic synagogue and the school for teaching Hebrew, conducted by Rabbi Terence Ezekiel, are on the sites where the two orthodox synagogues were, one hundred years ago.
The green in front of the Cathedral was enclosed by a beautiful Gothic wall long ago, at the same time the devout congregation rebuilt the church. The enclosure is rapidly filling with people. St. Friend is to speak to the whole city from the Cathedral steps.
Piled on great wooden trays on the side of the Cathedral steps are the splendid brown loaves, put there for all the world by the Brotherhood of the Strict Observance, who are about in their almost monkish official robes, proud indeed to be so prominent.
Blue-faced Surto Hurdenburg, so lately sworn in, is an ex-headwaiter of alleged New York hotel training and he is now to prove his mettle. He is about his task decorously and swiftly enough, for those seated and settled already have the tissue-wrapped loaves in their laps, and all through the sermon, as fast as our citizens are settled, they are given their loaves without a sound or a grimace, and Hurdenburg, the efficient, rises high at once in the estimation of the children of light.
185But now the saint rises to speak. He is indeed a figure; his white hair gleams in the June morning air. His face is the face of Lincoln, grown old, with a touch of St. Francis eternally young. He straightens to his full height. He is fifty years younger. He is one of those capable of seeming collapse for weeks, when it is but the storage time, and then the lightning is discharged in one tremendous hour.
There is a certain vast medieval humor about him. He is vested in his ceremonial baking apron and Avanel giggles till he actually begins to speak. This is the end of his sermon:—
“Pray consider that, in your freedom from vows this splendid June day, you are nevertheless dubbed knights, my fellow citizens. In medieval times monks and knights served the Church with the same divine vocation and devotion.
“The Church of Springfield has come. It is the sunlit grass of this park; it is this Illinois sky. Under the roof of this Cathedral behind me and of all the churches, temples, and synagogues of this town, its primer work has been done and will be done. It will begin with sheltered faiths and will not contradict or undermine any.
186“It seems that we must periodically sing hymns and look at the little jeweled holy things and read the precious little books, or we cannot go on and out and up. There was only one Johnny Appleseed in the history of mankind. His image is in our Cathedral, but even he read Swedenborg and clung to that system. Yet sooner or later, like that great saint Johnny Appleseed, we awaken to our great outdoors, and all the visions there.
“All Holy worship, learned, as when Johnny Appleseed walked the highroad, or the primer lesson when he first read Swedenborg beneath his boyhood roof, makes over the mere bread of comradeship into this blessed bread which will heal our shameful diseases of body and of soul.
“Share it, share it! When we have shared the blessed bread, communing like true friends, the beauty of all Heaven, the sea in which we move that is above all and through all and in all, will gild more perfectly the Springfield daily grind and the Springfield sabbath. The devout convert and his child and his grandchild will build his house as beautifully as our Sacred Apple Tree is made, as righteously as the Sacred Oak Tree, as democratically as the Golden Rain Tree, which spreads its branches like a gate for 187all of us to pass through in equality. The devout convert will build such architecture as glitters in the songs and books of devotion of St. Scribe.
“The voices of the children will be as noble as the discourses of the prairie winds that catch our tree boughs at sunset. Every house will be as delicate and subtle as the ferny hollows of the Sangamon. The convert will name many birds that will come at his call and he will feed them crumbs of this Blessed Bread in friendship.
“When Springfield has partaken of this manna for a generation, all things will become new. Leavening thoughts will come from all the street corners. Novel fancies will come from the coffee houses. The conferences and colloquies of fallible men will take on something of the aspect of the meetings of the inspired souls of Heaven.
“We walk our plain path! We eat our plain bread in a rare fellowship! Therefore all things become eternal. The Church of Springfield, the church of this sunlit grass, the church of a million days and nights, is proclaimed from the steps of this Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul this day.”
And now Avanel comments:—“If you look deeply into the aphorisms my father serves 188with his apples and with his paper money theory, you will find, though he is no atheist or mocker, he is a son of the narrow, dry antagonisms of some of the village atheist stock with which our blood mingled during our sojourn in Egypt. I glory in my Indian ancestry, even if I do not make myself conspicuous with my hair loose and my left hand crimson. But as to my father’s village-infidel streak, I have no use for it. Moreover, I heard him ding dong his doctrines in my childhood at times when he was not at his best. I know better how to take St. Friend. Both are narrow as mousetraps on their literal side, if one has a turn for being caught.
“I think I choose St. Friend for my guide, because he begins and ends with prayer. I do not stay away from motion pictures, as he commands, nor from the Yellow Dance Halls, as he and my father both command. But I distrust these places, because of the warnings of these good men. I will eat this bread, you and I will eat it together, though I know it is railed at in the Yellow Dance Halls, and I know the keen things that are said there against such superstitions. We will continue to eat together the Amaranth-Apples that are tabooed there. We will read together the proverbs and songs and prayers of St. Scribe and, 189while our feet may be in the Yellow Halls, our souls will be making the pilgrimage of the one hundred religions. We will be thinking together how the whole human race is the body of Christ, soon to be raised from the dead.”
And so this evening Avanel invites me to her own select table in the inn at the top of one of the great northwest gates, the inner gate, that overlooks the former village of Ashland, Cass County, and is one of the chief glories of the Inner Wall. It is the Musicians’ Building and from here oftener than anywhere else on this wall, sound the special evening hymns and organ solos and chimes, over this whole segment of the city and over the forest parks to the north, between the walls. Pilgrims pass through the gate beneath us. They have visited, according to the ritual, Lincoln’s monument, the First Shrine of St. Scribe—Hunter Kelly, and they are hurrying along his great highway leading northwest through the Gate of the Outer Wall, that overlooks the former village of Virginia in old Cass County.
Our refractory is called:—The Pilgrim’s First Inn. It is on the cafeteria principle but is a most spacious place, being the whole floor of the tower, with tremendous sheets of glass 190for windows, so that an aviator, circling it, can see straight through it from every angle, and all the colored and decorative searchlights of this happy June evening sweep through it as the twilight comes on, lights for the most part of the delicate tints of the towers:—more like rapid clouds, left over from the sunset, than sharp, searching, swords.
So Avanel and I find our table, in proper chatting distance from several others, some of whom have also brought their brown loaf. And we carry from the counter a few things like coffee and butter and Amaranth-Apples and we banquet. She speaks more lovingly of her father’s many moods. She divides the apples, uttering at the same time scraps of his philosophy.
At last we take the bread of St. Friend. It is our communion service, High Mass of comradeship.
Avanel quotes from the Gospel of Luke,—from Luke’s deathless story of the first communion.
There is a ringing of bells all over the city, silvery and sweet, and in every tower of the walls:—the ringing of the star chimes. It is a clear night. The sweeping colored lights 191are gone. We go to the great expanse of windows and look up.
Avanel says:—“The trouble with this breaking of bread is that it is a pledge to break our bodies. I do not want to break mine for a long time, if ever.”
“Yet,” I say, “You ride your pale war horse.” Avanel, the dancer, replies:—“Let us hope that the war will never come. Let us hope, before the time war is due, the body of Christ, the whole human race, will be raised from the dead.”