Anyone who has received the Call has no need for human intervention.”
“You just say one day ‘I am a non-sectarian clergyman’ and set up shop?”
“There is considerable outlay. You need buildings. But the banks are usually ready to help. Then of course what one aims at is a radio congregation.”
“A friend of mine has the Call, Mr. Bartholomew.”
“Well, I should advise him to think twice about answering it. The competition gets hotter every year, especially in Los Angeles. Some of the recent non-sectarians stop at nothing—not even at psychiatry and table-turning.”
“That’s bad.”
“It is entirely without scriptural authority.”
“My friend was thinking of making a speciality of funeral work. He has connections.”
“Chicken feed, Mr. Barlow. There is more to be made in weddings and christenings.”
“My friend doesn’t feel quite the same about weddings and christenings. What he needs is Class. You would say, wouldyou not, that a non-sectarian clergyman was the social equal of an embalmer?”
“I certainly would, Mr. Barlow. There is a very deep respect in the American heart for ministers of religion.”
*
The Wee Kirk o’ Auld Lang Syne lies on an extremity of the park out of sight from the University Church and the Mausoleum. It is a lowly building without belfry or ornament, designed to charm rather than to impress, dedicated to Robert Burns and Harry Lauder, souvenirs of whom are exhibited in an annex. The tartan carpet alone gives color to the interior. The heather which was originally planted round the walls flourished too grossly in the Californian sun, outgrew Dr. Kenworthy’s dream so that at length he uprooted it and had the immediate area walled, leveled and paved, giving it the air of a schoolyard well in keeping with the high educational traditions of the race it served. But unadorned simplicity and blind fidelity to tradition were alike foreign to the Dreamer’s taste. He innovated; two years before Aimée came to Whispering Glades, he introduced into this austere spot a Lovers’ Nook; not a lush place comparable to the Lake Isle which invited to poetic dalliance, but something, as it seemed to him, perfectly Scottish; a place where a bargain could be driven and a contract sealed. It consisted of a dais and a double throne of rough-hewn granite. Between the two seats thusformed stood a slab pierced by a heart-shaped aperture. Behind was the inscription:
THE LOVERS’ SEAT
This seat is made of authentic old Scotch stone from the highlands of Aberdeen. In it is incorporated the ancient symbol of the Heart of the Bruce.
According to the tradition of the glens lovers who plight their troth on this seat and join their lips through the Heart of the Bruce shall have many a canty day with ane anither and mawn totter down hand in hand like the immortal Anderson couple.
The words of the prescribed oath were cut on the step so that a seated couple could conveniently recite them:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
The fancy caught the popular taste and the spot is much frequented. Little there tempts the lounger. The ceremony is over in less than a minute and on most evenings couples may be seen waiting their turn while strange accents struggle with a text which acquires something of the sanctity of mumbo-jumbo on the unpracticed lips of Balts and Jews and Slavs. They kissthrough the hole and yield place to the next couple, struck silent as often as not with awe at the mystery they have enacted. There is no bird-song here. Instead the skirl of the pipes haunts the pines and the surviving forest-growth of heather.
Here, a few days after her supper with Mr. Joyboy, a newly resolute Aimée led Dennis and, as he surveyed the incised quotations which, in the manner of Whispering Glades, abounded in the spot, he was thankful that a natural abhorrence of dialect had prevented
“You just say one day ‘I am a non-sectarian clergyman’ and set up shop?”
“There is considerable outlay. You need buildings. But the banks are usually ready to help. Then of course what one aims at is a radio congregation.”
“A friend of mine has the Call, Mr. Bartholomew.”
“Well, I should advise him to think twice about answering it. The competition gets hotter every year, especially in Los Angeles. Some of the recent non-sectarians stop at nothing—not even at psychiatry and table-turning.”
“That’s bad.”
“It is entirely without scriptural authority.”
“My friend was thinking of making a speciality of funeral work. He has connections.”
“Chicken feed, Mr. Barlow. There is more to be made in weddings and christenings.”
“My friend doesn’t feel quite the same about weddings and christenings. What he needs is Class. You would say, wouldyou not, that a non-sectarian clergyman was the social equal of an embalmer?”
“I certainly would, Mr. Barlow. There is a very deep respect in the American heart for ministers of religion.”
*
The Wee Kirk o’ Auld Lang Syne lies on an extremity of the park out of sight from the University Church and the Mausoleum. It is a lowly building without belfry or ornament, designed to charm rather than to impress, dedicated to Robert Burns and Harry Lauder, souvenirs of whom are exhibited in an annex. The tartan carpet alone gives color to the interior. The heather which was originally planted round the walls flourished too grossly in the Californian sun, outgrew Dr. Kenworthy’s dream so that at length he uprooted it and had the immediate area walled, leveled and paved, giving it the air of a schoolyard well in keeping with the high educational traditions of the race it served. But unadorned simplicity and blind fidelity to tradition were alike foreign to the Dreamer’s taste. He innovated; two years before Aimée came to Whispering Glades, he introduced into this austere spot a Lovers’ Nook; not a lush place comparable to the Lake Isle which invited to poetic dalliance, but something, as it seemed to him, perfectly Scottish; a place where a bargain could be driven and a contract sealed. It consisted of a dais and a double throne of rough-hewn granite. Between the two seats thusformed stood a slab pierced by a heart-shaped aperture. Behind was the inscription:
THE LOVERS’ SEAT
This seat is made of authentic old Scotch stone from the highlands of Aberdeen. In it is incorporated the ancient symbol of the Heart of the Bruce.
According to the tradition of the glens lovers who plight their troth on this seat and join their lips through the Heart of the Bruce shall have many a canty day with ane anither and mawn totter down hand in hand like the immortal Anderson couple.
The words of the prescribed oath were cut on the step so that a seated couple could conveniently recite them:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
The fancy caught the popular taste and the spot is much frequented. Little there tempts the lounger. The ceremony is over in less than a minute and on most evenings couples may be seen waiting their turn while strange accents struggle with a text which acquires something of the sanctity of mumbo-jumbo on the unpracticed lips of Balts and Jews and Slavs. They kissthrough the hole and yield place to the next couple, struck silent as often as not with awe at the mystery they have enacted. There is no bird-song here. Instead the skirl of the pipes haunts the pines and the surviving forest-growth of heather.
Here, a few days after her supper with Mr. Joyboy, a newly resolute Aimée led Dennis and, as he surveyed the incised quotations which, in the manner of Whispering Glades, abounded in the spot, he was thankful that a natural abhorrence of dialect had prevented
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