The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-06-05
BANTERING THE LARKINSES
BY REV. GEORGE EAvEs

knows what is going on in their strange
minds?
To this day multitudes of Professionals
believe that every Catholic priest is a
Jesuit and every Jesuit a dark and fear
some parsonage who is pledged to commit
any conceivable crime that will advance
the interests of the church On the other
hand, how many, many Catholics there
are who are quite sure that every Protest
ant is headed straight for a physical and
spiritual jail, with red-hot bars and red
hot floor! Only on the ground of his
being a hopeless fool will he ever escape
thence. With such a mutual estimate,
the 'bantering'' that goes on has too
much Of nervous grin, too little of toll
Grant sympathy to be pleasant.
There are backwoods precincts where
none but Baptists have any prospect of
meeting God and there are others. less
woodsy indeed, where the opening has
been discovered through which Thomas
Carlyle went down to eternal woe. Why?
Because he was, theologically speaking,
one of the Larkinses. If the orthodox
can't stomach his peculiarities, is 1t to be
supposed that the heavens can?
| We have such dreadful habit of fore
ing people into logical humiliation, or at
least into logical confession. that they are
annihiated. Given one hair of their men
1 tai convictions we suddenly and success
fully construct the whole body-and then
throw stones at 1t. This is the prime
amusement of youthful and provincial in
tellects. But l would not call it banter.
| 1t smacks too much of the headsmans
ak. Banter signifies first genuine I'M
derstanding. But this implies such knowl-
edge OF the Larkinses as the ancient
world had of its barbarc neighbors,'' the
anthropophagi. and those whose heads do
grow beneath their shoulders" 1t was
hearsay, that ancient world-knowledge,
that anthropology of Herodotus.
| There's another thing about this Lark
ms business, only too likely to be forgot
ten. 1t is simply the accident that they
are the Larkinses, while we happen to be-
say, the DeSmiths. If we had been born
and brought up in London by-street we
also might be hopping our faces with a
rolled-up handkerchief or inquiring
whether our "'at" was on last street"
Scratch DeSmith and you surely find j
Larkins. What hast thou that thou
didst not receiver" oppositely asks the
great soul who was the apostle of the
nations. We stumble and blunder along
the way, confused by artificial and super
| fetal differences or by artificial and SUI
perficlal resemblances, much like one of
my Georgia friends, who always loses
|
says, is SO much ike another, and the
same corner sometimes seems so differ
ent. But the individual differences are
real. however superficial. Is not the deep
and common likeness also real? And is
it not time to do justice to the Larkinses,
by personal study and sympathetic ap-
proach Indifferent to the clatter of whim-
steal habits or the alien speech? Before
they could be Larkinses they had to be
human.
l suppose the aim Of our schools is to
| free the mind from needless chains, to set
it, emancpated from bigotry, to the task
of obeying the commands of a really gra-
cious heart. After all, this Mrs. Larkins
| is a very lovable sort of a person. And
even IL she were an old cat, there are
causes that force her that way. 1t is not
enough for us to classify her and then
shun her, with contumely. What o. those
social conditions that set her In that by
street, amid the sordid things of grinding
mechanism mis-called city? Are we
without responsibility? Is the wronged
soul, sinking to death amid such COM
monplace drudgeries to be despised? If
it were a struggling body sinking in the
Thames, however poor or mean or vile.
every on-looller would leap to the rescue.
Not many see the tragedy of the COM
. mon-place 1t is Mr.. Wells glory that he
does see 1t and even celebrate 1t, in just
such sombre stories as this of Mr.. Polly,
lhaberdasher and sentimentalst, and his
"fattish" wife When we also have been
socially evolved into true civilization
there will perhaps be no Larkinses and no
Mr.. Polly. But If there are, we shall dis
4 cover in them the tender grace of an I'M
fulfilled prophecy, dawn beautiful.
Though greatly delayed. And perhaps we
shall be willing to take our share of