“There is but one crowning act to be added to this drama of deceit and infamy—my ordination. I know how all the other fellows are looking forward to it, and how, according to all the prescribed canons, I should view the momentous day; but I am I. Have you ever had one of those dreams where a huge octopus approaches you slowly but certainly, enfolding you in his arms and twining his horrid tentacles about your helpless form? What an agony of dread you feel! You try to move or cry out, but you cannot, and the arms begin to embrace you and draw you towards the great body. Just so I feel about the day of the ceremony that shall take me into the body of which I was never destined to be a member.
“Are you living in a garret? Are you subsisting on a crust? Happy, happy fellow! But, thank God, the ordination does not take place until next year, and perhaps in that time I may find some means of escape. If I do not, I know that I shall have your sympathy; but don’t express it.
But the year was passing, and nothing happened to release him. He found himself being pushed forward at the next term with unusual rapidity, but he did not mind it; the work rather gave him relief from more unpleasant thoughts. He went at it with eagerness and mastered it with ease. His fellow-students looked on him with envy, but he went on his way unheeding and worked for the very love of being active, until one day he understood.
It was nearing the end of the term when a fellow-student remarked to him, “Well, Brent, it isn’t every man that could have done it, but you’ll get your reward in a month or so now.”
“What do you mean?” asked Brent. “Done what?”
“Now don’t be modest,” rejoined the other; “I am really glad to see you do it. I have no envy.”
“Really, Barker, I don’t understand you.”
“Why, I mean you are finishing two years in one.”
“Oh, pshaw! it will hardly amount to that.”
“Oh, well, you will get in with the senior class men.”
“Get in with the senior class!”
“It will be kind of nice, a year before your time, to be standing in the way of any appointive plums that may happen to fall; and then you don’t have to go miles away from home before you can be made a full-fledged shepherd. Well, here is my hand on it anyway.”
Brent took the proffered hand in an almost dazed condition. It had all suddenly flashed across his mind, the reason for his haste and his added work. What a blind fool he had been!
The Church Conference met at Dexter that year, and they had hurried him through in order that he might be ready for ordination thereat.
Alleging illness as an excuse, he did not appear at recitation that day. The shock had come too suddenly for him. Was he thus to be entrapped? Could he do nothing? He felt that ordination would bind him forever to the distasteful work. He had only a month in which to prevent it. He would do it. From that day he tried to fall gradually back in his work; but it was too late; the good record which he had unwittingly piled up carried him through, nolens volens.
The week before Conference met, Frederick Brent, residing at Dexter, by special request of the faculty, was presented as a candidate for ordination. Even his enemies in the community said, “Surely there is something in that boy.”
Mrs. Hester Hodges was delighted. She presented him with his ordination suit, and altogether displayed a pride and pleasure that almost reconciled the young man to his fate. In the days immediately preceding the event she was almost tender with him, and if he had been strong enough to make a resolve inimical to her hopes, the disappointment which he knew failure would bring to her would have greatly weakened it.
Now, Conference is a great event in the circles of that sect of which Cory Chapel was a star congregation, and the town where it convenes, or “sets,” as the popular phrase goes, is an honoured place. It takes upon itself an air of unusual bustle. There is a great deal of housecleaning, hanging of curtains, and laying of carpets, just prior to the time. People from the rural parts about come into town and settle for the week. Ministers and lay delegates from all the churches in the district, comprising perhaps half of a large State or parts of two, come and are quartered upon the local members of the connection. For two weeks beforehand the general question that passes from one housewife to another is, “How many and whom are you going to take?” Many are the heartburnings and jealousies aroused by the disposition of some popular preacher whom a dozen members of the flock desire to entertain, while the less distinguished visitors must bide their time and be stuck in when and where they may. The “big guns” of the Church are all present, and all the “little guns” are scattered about them, popping and snapping every time a “big gun” booms.
But of all the days of commotion and excitement, the climax is ordination day, when candidates for the ministry, college students, and local preachers are examined and either rejected or admitted to the company of the elect. It is common on that day for some old dignitary of the church, seldom a less person than the president of the Conference himself, to preach the sermon. Then, if the fatted calf is not killed, at least the fatted fowls are, and feasting and rejoicing rule the occasion.
This ordination day was no exception. A class of ten
