Your Boys Part 2
"No, no," I replied; "that's the wrong bait."
Those Munster boys knew nothing about hymn-books. We preachers have got to come off our pedestals and not give our hearers what we want, but the thing that will catch them. If a pretty, catchy Sankey hymn will attract a crowd, why shouldn't we use it instead of an anthem? If a bra.s.s band will catch them, why shouldn't we play it instead of an organ?
"Keep back those hymn-books," I said. "They know nothing about hymn-books." I had a pretty good idea of what would have happened if those hymn-books had been produced at the start.
I got on that platform, and I looked at those eight hundred Munsters and said, "Boys, are we down-hearted?"
"_No_," they shouted.
You can imagine what eight hundred Munsters shouting "No" sounds like.
They were all attention instantly. I wonder what would happen if the Vicar went into church next Sunday morning and asked the question, "Are we down-hearted?" I knew it would cause a sensation, but I'd rather have a sensation than a stagnation.
Those boys sat up. I said, "We are going to talk about gipsy life." I talked to them about the origin of my people. There's not a man living in the world who knows the origin of my people. I can trace my people back to India, but they didn't come from India. We are one of the oldest races in the world, so old that n.o.body knows how old. I talked to them about the origin of the gipsies, and I don't know it, but I knew more about it than they did. I talked to them about our language, and I gave them specimens of it, and there I was on sure ground. It is a beautiful language, full of poetry and music. Then I talked about the way the gipsies get their living-and other people's; and for thirty minutes those Munsters hardly knew if they were on the chairs or on the floor-and I purposely made them laugh. They had just come out of the h.e.l.l of the trenches. They had that haunted, weary, hungry look, and if only I could make them laugh and forget the h.e.l.l out of which they had just climbed it was religion, and I wasn't wasting time.
When I had been talking for thirty minutes, I stopped, and said, "Boys, there's a lot more to this story. Would you like some more?"
"Yes," they shouted.
"Come back to-morrow," I said.
I was fishing in unlikely waters, and if you leave off when fish are hungry they will come back for more. For six nights I told those boys gipsy stories. I took them out into the woods. We went out amongst the rabbits. I told the boys the rabbits got very fond of me-so fond that they used to go home with me! I took them through the clover-fields on a June day and made them smell the perfume. I took them among the b.u.t.tercups. I told them it was the Finger of Love and the Smile of Infinite Wisdom that put the spots upon the pansy and the deep blue in the violet. And then we went out among the birds and we saw G.o.d taking songs from the lips of a seraph and wrapping them round with feathers.
And the boys saw Jesus in every b.u.t.tercup and every primrose, and every little daisy, and in every dewdrop, and heard something of the song of the angels in the notes of the nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was there, and they felt Him, and they saw Him. I took them amongst the gipsy tents, amongst the woodlands and dells of the old camping-grounds. They walked with Him and they talked with Him. I didn't use the usual Church language, but I used the language of G.o.d in Nature and the boys heard Him.
Towards the end of the week one of those Munster boys came and touched me and said, "Your Riverence! Your Riverence!" he says. "You're a gentleman."
I _knew_ I had got that boy.
Now, if you are an old angler you know what happens if you begin to tug at the line the first time you get a bite. When you hook a fish, if he happens to be a Munster, you have got to keep your head and play him, let him have the line, let him go, keep steady, no excitement, give him play.
I gave him a bit of line, that young Munster. I thanked him for his compliment and then walked away-with my eyes over my shoulder, for if he hadn't come after me I should have been after him.
Presently he pulled my tunic and said, "Won't you give me a minute, sir?"
"What's the trouble?" I said.
"Sir," he said, with a little catch in his voice that I can hear now, "you've got something I haven't."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"It's like the singing of a little song, and it gets into my heart. I want it. Won't you tell me how to get it? I want it."
"Sonny," I said, "it's for you. You can have it at the same price I paid for it."
"Begorra," says he, "you will tell me to give up my religion, you will!"
I said, "If G.o.d has put anything in your life that helps you to be a better and a n.o.bler and a braver man, He doesn't want you to give it up."
"He doesn't?" he asked. "What am I to give up, then?"
And I replied, "Your sin."
The boy said again, "You're a gentleman."
If I had said one word about his religion or his creed, my line would have snapped and I would have lost my fish.
That night, when all the boys had gone, we got into a corner and we knelt down, and when he went he said, "I've got it, sir. I've got the little song-_and it's singing_."
At one of my meetings the boys were four thousand strong and the Commandant of the camp was to preside. As they say in the Army, he had got the wind up. He did not know me. When he saw the crowd there he began to wonder what was going to happen. He called one of the officers to him, and said,
"I don't know what he's going to do. I hope he's not going to give us a revival meeting or something of that sort. I hope he knows that one-third of these fellows are Roman Catholics."
Well, of course I knew, and I was laying my plans accordingly. What right have you or I when we have got a mixed crowd like that to try to cram our preconceived programme down everybody's throat? The officer, who was one of my friends, said to the Colonel, "I don't think you need trouble, sir.
He's all right, and knows his job."
When we were ready, I went to the Colonel, and said, "We are quite ready to begin, sir."
The Colonel rose and announced, "Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, I now introduce to you Gipsy Smith, who will perform."
Now, the first thing I wanted to do was to disarm all prejudice in the mind of both officers and men. So I said, "Are you ready, boys?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, we'll have our opening hymn, 'Keep the home fires burning.'"
And didn't those boys sing that! Some of them were smoking, and I wasn't going to tell them not to smoke. That would have put their backs up. They were British boys and they knew what to do when the right moment came. And so I said, "Boys, you sang that very well, but you were not _all_ singing.
Now, if we have another, will you all sing?" And they answered, "Yes." I knew if they sang they couldn't smoke. So we had "Pack up your troubles,"
and this time every smoke was out and every boy was singing. "We'll have another," said I, when they had finished; "we'll have-
"Way down in Tennessee Just try to think of me Right on my mother's knee.' "
I knew if I got them round their mothers' knees I should be all right.
"Now, boys," I said, "what am I to talk to you about?" I let them choose their subject very often.
"Tell us the story of the gipsy tent," they called out.
And there I was at home, and it was all right, and for an hour I told them the story of how grace came to that gipsy tent-the old romance of love.
"Now, boys, I'm through," I said when I had spoken for an hour-and they gave me an encore. When I had finished my encore, the dear old Colonel got up to thank the "performer"-and he couldn't do it; there was a lump in his throat and big tears were rolling down his cheeks.
"Boys, I can't say what I want to, but," said he, "we have all got to be better men."
The Gospel was preached in that hut in a different way from what we have it preached at home, but we got it in, and the thing is to get it in.