Then he stood twinkling, teasing the crowd, and giving hints. “It has to do with the Bible,” he said. “Why, every one of you knows it.” He said, “It’s something you often consult.” He even said, “It’s helpful in understanding Saint Paul.” He teased, “Don’t tell me you all give up!”
Every last one of them had to give up, and Laura was almost bursting with pride and delight when at last Pa told them, “It’s Commentators on the Ac’s.”
As this sunk in, up rose a roar of laughter and applause.
On the way home, Laura heard Mr. Bradley say, “We’ll have to go some, to beat that stunt of Ingalls!” Gerald Fuller, in his English way, called, “I say, there’s talent enough for a musical program, what?”
For the next Literary, there was music. Pa with his fiddle and Gerald Fuller with his accordion made such music that the schoolhouse and the crowd seemed to dissolve in an enchantment. Whenever they stopped, applause roared for more.
It seemed impossible ever to have a more marvelous evening. But now the whole town was aroused, and families were driving in from the homestead claims to attend the Literaries. The men in town were on their mettle; they planned a superb musical evening. They practiced for it, and they borrowed Mrs. Bradley’s organ.
On that Friday they wrapped the organ carefully in quilts and horse blankets, they loaded it into Mr. Foster’s ox wagon and took it carefully to the schoolhouse. It was a beautiful organ, all shining wood, with carpeted pedals and a top climbing up in tapering wooden pinnacles, tiny shelves, and diamond-shaped mirrors. Its music rack was a lace pattern in wood, with red cloth behind it that showed through the holes, and on either side was a round place on which to set a lamp.
The teacher’s desk was moved away, and that organ set in its place. On the blackboard Mr. Clewett wrote out the program. There was organ music by itself, organ music with Pa’s fiddle, and organ music with the singing of quartets and duets and solos. Mrs. Bradley sang,
“Backward, turn backward,
Oh Time in thy flight.
Make me a child again,
Just for tonight.”
Laura could hardly bear the sadness of it. Her throat swelled and ached. A tear glittered on Ma’s cheek before she could catch it with her handkerchief. All the women were wiping their eyes, and the men were clearing their throats and blowing their noses.
Everyone said that surely nothing could be better than that musical program. But Pa said mysteriously, “You wait and see.”
As if this were not enough, the church building was roofed at last, and now every Sunday there were two church services and Sunday school.
It was a nice church, though so new that it still looked raw. As yet there was no bell in the belfry, nor any finish on the board walls. Outside, they were not yet weathered gray, and inside they were bare boards and studding. The pulpit and the long benches with boxed-in ends were raw lumber, too, but it was all fresh and clean-smelling.
In the small entry built out from the door there was room enough to settle clothing blown awry by the wind, before going into the church, and Mrs. Bradley had lent her organ, so there was organ music with the singing.
Laura even enjoyed Rev. Brown’s preaching. What he said did not make sense to her, but he looked like the picture of John Brown in her history book, come alive. His eyes glared, his white mustache and his whiskers bobbed, and his big hands waved and clawed and clenched into fists pounding the pulpit and shaking in air. Laura amused herself, too, by changing his sentences in her mind, to improve their grammar. She need not remember the sermon, for at home Pa required her and Carrie only to repeat the text correctly. Then, when the sermon was over, there was more singing.
Best of all was Hymn Eighteen, when the organ notes rolled out and everybody vigorously sang:
“We are going forth with our staff in hand
Through a desert wild in a stranger land,
But our faith is bright and our hope is strong,
And the Good Old Way is our pilgrim song.”
Then, all together letting out their voices in chorus louder than the swelling organ song,
“’Tis the Good Old Way by our fathers trod,
‘Tis the Way of Life and it leadeth unto God,
‘Tis the only path to the realms of Day,
We are going home in the GOOD OLD WAY!”
With Sunday school and morning church, Sunday dinner and dishes, and going to church again in the evening, every Sunday fairly flew past. There was school again on Monday, and the rising excitement of waiting for the Friday Literary; Saturday was not long enough for talking it all over, then Sunday came again.
As if all this were not more than enough, the Ladies’ Aid planned a great celebration of Thanksgiving, to help pay for the church. It was to be a New England Supper. Laura rushed home from school to help Ma peel and slice and stew down the biggest pumpkin that Pa had raised last summer. She carefully picked over and washed a whole quart of small white navy beans, too. Ma was going to make a mammoth pumpkin pie and the largest milkpan full of baked beans, to take to the New England Supper.