PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

Gabriel Grimes, Negro, born 1884, deep in the uncivilized wilds of Georgia, prayed.

He was a very tall man, broad-shouldered, heavy-limbed, and muscular.

His loose, free walk and fluid muscles gave a suggestion of latent strength and danger; a suggestion somehow akin to the sense of relaxed power one feels in a locomotive as it stands patient and short winded at some country railroad station.

He was not a handsome man, but he was able to pass for one. For good looks he substituted a sexual magnetism which managed to be at once immoral, spiritual, and depraved; and this is a highly exciting combination. The immoral and the depraved had worked his spiritual downfall more than once.

He had fallen only last night and he prayed now for forgiveness.

He prayed earnestly and alone, his dark, thin face distorted with con-trition, the wide nostrils flaring, His eyes were shut in grief.

"The Lord forgive me," he muttered. "Please, God, forgive this po-sinner....."

It was a plaint terribly familiar to God and all His angels. He prayed on his knees in the aged, battered, weatherbeaten church. It was the summer of 1919.

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Gabriel was a sinner saved by grace. The Lord had touched his heart when he was seventeen, filling him with conviction of sin and inspiring in his breast a desperate panic to achieve salvation. Salvation lay first in believing; believing that God was, that He had given his only begotten Son for the salvation of sinners; that whosoever believed on

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Him should not perish but have everlasting life. In order to be truly saved, one must believe that God kept a gigantic record-book in Heaven and had on the Day of Judgment His book would be opened before you to determine where you would spend eternity. Smoking, drinking, dancing and lying were firmly prohibited, as were movie-going, sex (out of wedlock) and the taking of the Lord's name in vain.

Believing this was merely the first step; living this was the second.

Man, it has been said, shall not live by bread alone. The earliest men, once the functions of eating and sleeping had been carried out, and after they achieved some sort of shelter and a mate with whom to share the universe and themselves, looked about for something in the universe with which they could identify themselves. They were here, and here was a broad and alien world, the ego of a man refused to accept the possibility of being a mere accident. He made himself at once the best-beloved and the prey of the animate heavens. Stones were invested with spirits, the miracle of fire was fraught with terror; alone in his wilderness Man trembled because he could not understand, and with the same lack of understanding crippled his life with arbitrary morals, and unperceptive values of right and wrong. He was happy, having created for himself something of which to be afraid. This was all he had and no one in his wretchedness, this хаос, this world had more threats to his well-being, his place in the universe.

But with the passing of time it was discovered, and irrevocably, that a stone was a stone and fire a chemical reaction and the heavens filled only with planets and space and comets and no one could say with any certainty that Divinity resided there. Then, then were the cries of "Infidel and Unbeliever" and many were the stones flung in a desperate agony of terror. "Give us back our fears," Man seemed to cry. In more than one sense the history of humanity is the tracing of that cry.

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"De fear of de Lord," Gabriel's mother had told him and his sister, Roselia, "is de beginning of wisdom." Gabriel's wisdom began in his seventeen th year early one autumn morning in the middle of a barren field. Roselia's neve began properly and came to a late and bitter maturity.

He had been to church the night before and heard a Holy Ghost inspired sermon the subject of which was "The Terrors of Hell." He took Lulu Davis home afterward, and stopped in a dark field on the way. Lulu was a virgin and terrified; she fought him desperately at first, whimpered, wept, protested, finally yielded in an ecstasy of tearful desire.

Gabriel had been going to Church all his life. His mother, all his family, most of his community were good, hard-working, God-fearing Negroes. "Won't find no better niggers down here," Mr. Purvis, their landlord had boasted more than once.) Gabriel had been working since he was very young, his school years, all told, being no more than five. In white men's kitchens, at their backdoors and in their basements, he had waited, he had worked, he had crawled "Yes, suh, Mr. Purvis." "No, sir, Mr. Purvis"......He had never questioned the status-quo particularly. It was something he had been born to, it was a black man's lot. His mother said she pitied most white people. With all their riches, she said, they weren't happy because they didn't have God.

He was thinking these things that morning walking idly along in the autumn sunshine, kicking at the hard ground under his feet. "No, suh, Mr Purvis." Mr. Purvis didn't have God, maybe, but he sure had everything else. All this land belonged to him and they just worked it for him, like dogs they worked on it. Half the crop from the fields was his and whatever else they owed him for the rest of the year; which usually amounted to almost their half or more. They just worked the land year in, year out - was that all? He wanted to get away from here, forged all this, go North maybe.

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That was a peculiar morning. Never before in all his life had he felt the way he felt at that moment. Gabriel said later (much later) that if the Lord hadn't saved him then he'd probably have grown up to be the worst sinner ever born to go to Hell. He was at the cross-roads he said. On the one hand there was Satan, on the other there was Christ pleading with him to surrender.

Specifically: he paused to stare at a twig, thinking with unaccustomed bitterness thatt his belonged to Mr. Purvis too when suddenly, in an agony of awareness, there came to his startled brain the realization that n owhere was there anything which he could claim. Not a scrap of earth, nor a stone, not a single moulding brick (unless it had been thrown away) was his. The sky had never seemed so distant as it was that day, nor the world so vast, nor himself so little.

He snapped the twig between powerful thumbs and looked about him. He was all along, no livin g thing stirred in this desolate place. He wanted to go home, to run to his mother, but his body seemed rooted and would not move. The words of an old song flashed into his mind:

Way down yonder
In the valley by myself
I couldn't hear n obody pray

He could hear the voices of his kin-folk singing that song and now it seemed to him that they were singing it for him. Loud, desolate, sad, infinitely believing, he heard their voices on the chill,morning air.

"....I couldn't hear nobody pray."

He heard them. They were begging him to come with them and walk in the light of God; to turn his back on this savage desolation, this wake wasteland of the Spirit and come to Jesus ere it was too late. Their voices rose, pleading: "Come on, Gabriel." Let the Lord have your heart, Boy, let the Lord save you now. The world ain't got nothin' for you."

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And himself: hard-hearted, obdurate, sinful, going from one pleasure to another and grieving the holy Spirit of God. Lulu's agonized face of the hight before rose before him and suddenly his guilt was more than he could bear. He turned away, his face in his hands and knelt on the barren ground.

"Oh, Lord....." His voice was thick and jagged with sorrow. "Oh, Lord...."

"Save him, Lord," the voices cried, "Save him!"

"Oh, Lord....." He lay face down on the earth and hid his face from heaven. His spirit in agony of shame. At that moment the world was grey, the heavens bleak with grief. His tears ran into the earth, glistened in the light, sank slowly, and the earth was dull.

"Save him, Lord!" A tambourine crashed, "Save him!"

Other voices took up the cry and after awhile he too cried "Save me! Save me!"
The cry smuddered on the air, retreated before the wind, almost, not quite,
pierced heaven.

But he must reach heaven and he cried again. This time he rose, and standing on his feet, his arms outstretched he called on heaven:

"Save me!"

"Save him!" they cried.

"Save me, oh Lord God......!"

He wept, in agon y he pleaded, he moved before heaven. His body seemed on fire.
He could not leave before God heard him.

They heard him in the shacks beyond the field and people came running to

touched the heart of this young sinner.

"Hallelujah!" they cried. "Praise Him!"

He was there from that early morning till long past noon and they prayed with him. They prayed and they shouted and danced before the King and Gabriel wresled with the angel for his soul's salvation.

"Go get Sister Grimes", somebody said. "Tell her de Lord's done touched her boy."

But as the amissary turned to leave the field, a cloud parted and God sent the sun. The world which had been grey, grew bright and Gabriel opened his eyes.

Now his blood leaped and his head seemed bursting. I'm saved," he whispered. "I'm saved." Glad thanksgiving filled his head and tears - sweet tears, tears of joy - flowed down his cheeks. They cried in triumph; they laughed, the of a people with a great secret and a deep peace and someone began to sing:

"I got good news to tell you.... Ain't that good news?"

The song filled the air and met Roselia as she sped across the fields to see what had happened to her brother.

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The summer of 1919 was Gabriel's last year in the churches of the South. He left at the beginning of 1920 for New York and never returned.

Roselia had been settled in New York for the last five years. She had grown into a beautiful, darkeyed-woman, slender and quick-tempered and proud. People said she gave herself airs and was "dioty." She never got happy at Church and looked on with what seemed to be bored disdain when the others did. She turned down an attractive offer of marriage from a steady, good-tempered hard-working farmer of the region and after the death of their

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Nevertheless, at thirty-four, he was lonely, frustrated and bitter. All
his hand had touched had turned to ashes. He lingered out that summer and
that fall; working, praying for strength, going to Church occasionally
and sitting ill with loneliness on one of the benches. They spoke to him,
cordially some of them, but he was a marked pariah, an outcast. They could
not trust him again and he knew he could not stay.

Finally, in January of 1920, he packed his bags and set out for Roselia's
home in New York.

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"How dare you? How dare you say that to me!

"For Pete's sake, dry up!"

"Don't talk to me like that! Who the hell do you think you are, the
Queen of Sheba?"

"Frank!"

"Well, stop puttin' on so many airs. You ain't talkin' to no rabbit-
brained pastor. I'm I'm your husband."

"You might show me a little respect even if you are my husband," she said
sarcastically.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," the man said. "Are you sorry you married me? Is
that what you're trying to say? she demanded tensely.

"No, that ain't what I'm tryin' to say. I wouldn't have no trouble sayin'
it if I wanted to."

"You're not the only pebble on the beach, you know. If you want that
cheap Georgia nigger go ahead and take her. I won't stop you. I'm only

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"Shut up!"

Don't tell me to shut up! Maybe you can say that to some women but you can't say that to me."

"Will you keep quiet before I slap you against that wall?"

"How dare you! How dare you!"

"How dare you!" he mimicked "That's all you know how to say!"

"If you ever lay a hand on me," she said, "I'll walk out of this house so fast —"

"Yeah, an' you'll come back just as fast. You walked out before". He spat into the sink, disgustedly. "Frank," he mimicked, "Frank, I'm sorry. Love me, Frank? Hol' me tight, Frank. I'll never bother you again, Frank. You just like all the other righteous tom-cats. All you want is a good ——

"Frank!" She sat down and burst into tears.

"Oh, for Pete's sake!" the man said. He put on his hat. "I'll see you later," he said and slammed the door behind him.

The woman jumped up and ran to the door. "Frank!" she screamed. "Frank!" She heard the downstairs door bang. He was gone. She ran back into the room and flung up the window. "Frank!" she called, "Frank!" She saw him turn the corner.

He was gone.

Supper had been ready hours ago. She had warmed it twice through blind and uncon trollable tears. As a terrible concession to Frank she had even bought two bottles of beer, which she had placed with desperate fingers in the small ice-box.

Frank. Black hair, black eyes, white teeth. He was tall and slim and the most handsome man in Harlem. All the women, she taught savagely were jealous because she had such a handsome husband. That cheap no-good Ida had practically thrown herself at his head.

Well, the Lord would take care of her. If she didn't watch out she'd end up like Jezebel with dogs chewing on her bones.

Why didn't Frank come back? It was nearly eight o'clock. He had to come back.
Pleass, God, send him back.

She wandered to the window and stared into the street. Maybe something had happened. A trolley-car, a horse, some accident somewhere. She wrenched it from her mind.

Please, Frank. Please, God. Please.

She would die without Frank. Tall, slim, beautiful, with a laugh like an angel's laugh. She had been a good woman and a good wife to him. He was the only man she had ever known.

She remembered: a dark night, a dark room, and two throbbing figures on the bed. All night. She remembered: the first time she had seen him (on a crowded trolley-car) and the painful catch at her heart when he had taken her arm and said: "Can I help you?"

And she had said, very primly: "He was a stranger" "If you would be so kind."

She remembered: white teeth in the darkness, his groping hands, his heavy breathing, his body and his arms. She remembered: the consumation, the ecstasy, the pain.

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room until the feet reached the landing and she heard a knock at the door.

"Frank!" she called and flew to the door, and fumbled at the latch, and opened it and stopped with her hand to her throat, for this was a stranger.

"Who are you?" she breathed. And then: "Gabriel!"

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The city was strange and wonderful. Gabriel walked down the wide streets, staring at the tall brick buildings - taller and stronger than those in the South - admiring the air of swift, jocular friendship among these people, loving even while he told himself he disapproved of them, the swift, light-skinned, tan and dark-skinned women who passed him with lithe, swinging strides occasionally stopping to chat with some friend, waving their heads and their arms, their bright teeth and eyes flashing, and their voices ripe with laughter.

"Ain't that it the truth!"

"Chile, I wouldn't let no man......!"

"Chile" they would say would say, with an accent and connotation that almost made the word glint like a new found penny in the sun. "Chile" with curled lips and flashing eyes and scorn. "Chile", with a dangerous rising inflection, with narrowed eyes and pouting lips and a sly, sly glance suggesting a suggestion of contrulsed fury not un mixed with contempt. "Chile" the would say - and the word meant love, fear, anger, hatred, vengeance or whatever they wished it to mean.

Colored people didn't seem to be afraid up here as they were in the South. They walked along briskly, rhythmically, unhurried and calm. He had seen a few white men but they had been very quiet, and no one walked in the gutters to

afraid. Gabriel's heart leaped. That was the way it should be! How would they like to be hung from trees, to have their legs broken or their private parts cut away! Unholy, unholy sons of Lucifer cursed by God.

They'd burn. They'd burn. They'd burn in Hell forever if they didn't stop.

There were a lot of churches up here, too. Small, "store-front" churches for the most part, but sometimes larger and more ornate edifices were being used to the glory of God. He savored the titles: "Mt. Hebron Baptist Church, Mt. Maab Lebanon, Mt. Calvary, Bethel A.M. Church, Church of Bethlehem, Star of Bethlehem and (he said afterwards it stuck in his mind, though it did nothing of the sort) The Holy Temple of Truth, Father James, Pastor.

Roselia attended an enormous church on West 145 Street. "Too big to be holy" Gabriel grumbled after going with her once. He had been in the city a week and had not yet met her husband, Frank. He was away on business, Roselia said and she didn't know exactly when he'd be back. She haunted the mail-box, though and always bought food for three and Gabriel was sure he had heard her crying. When they had gone to church together she had been loath to speak to anybody because she said 'they' were all 'crowing' in behind her back. Gabriel had been rather confused but had asked no questions and they had hurried home.

Slowly, he wended his wayback to the apartment now. Roselia was standing by the window with a letter in her hand.

"Hear from Frank?" he asked her.

She coughed and put the letter in her pocket. After a second she said quietly: "Yes."

"How is he?"

She shrugged. "He's fine."

"Say when he's comin' back?"

She walked to the gas stove, carefully lit a burner and pulled a pot over it.
"No," she said, "He doesn't say." She blew out the match and dropped it into
the can, and stood with her hands in her pockets leaning against the stove.

He felt a little awkward, he didn't know why. He sat down and poured himself a
glass of milk.

"Roselia," he said. "I think I'm gonna stay in New York. I like it fine."

"That's good", she said.

He cleared his throat. "Is somethin' wrong, Roselia?"

"Nothin's wrong, Gabriel. Finish what you were sayin!"

"Well, I was just sayin' that I think I'll stay. You know where I can get a
job? I'll have to get a job."

"A job?" she said. "I think" --she frowned and drew her lower lip through
thoughtfully between her teeth -- "I think that there's probably a job open
in that soda-pop factory in Long Island. You might might get a job there.

"How do I get there?" he asked.

"I'll give you all the directions," she said. "I know them by heart." She
walked past him into her bed-room and started to close the door.

"Keep an eye on the stove," she called.

Alone in the small bedroom she paced up and down, from the door to the window
from the window to the door. She stopped near the bureau with her hands to her

Good Lord! He isn't coming back! He isn't coming back!

After getting a job in the factory on Long Island, Gabriel was obsessed by two hungers to find a church and to find a woman.

It was part of his plan for his new life to marry -- *It was just too much for him*.
"It is better to marry," St. Paul had said, "than to burn" -- and Gabriel was
burning.

He found most of the larger churches in Harlem unfit for his peculiar psy-
chological and spiritual needs. It was nineteen-twenty and his people
seemed to be getting away from the faith that he had known. They were going
to bigger churches, but spending less time there. He did not feel that most of
them had the right attitude towards God. They were too inclined to take him
for granted.

Here he had not found the long, intense, noisy prayer-meeting he had known
in the South. He found the preacher more slick and well-dressed and less
in spired by the word of God than he was by his new altar-cloth - or the new
collection plate. He missed the primitive force which heretofore had shot him
to such heights of glory. God was personal and very terrible to Gabriel and
he wanted to be "close" to Him. He needed more than hymns. He needed a sense,
however false, of sacrifice and self-righteousness which he was unable to feel
in a church where the minister smoked and two-thirds of the congregation at-
tended movies, dances and avidly devoured the comic section of the Sunday
paper. That was why, in spite of Roselia's hints and pleadings he obdurately
refused to become a member. He found it vaguely unrespectable, too, that
Roselia's husband should be away so long, and that he was not, from what
Roselia had told him, a Church-going man. "Be not unequally yoked with an
unbeliever," he had quoted to her once and Roselia had turned away and had not
answered. She had hardly ever spoke of Frank now. Gabriel was beginning to

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One night, late, he stopped in at "The Holy Temple of Truth," attracted by the loud vocalizing and tambourine playing from within. It was a small, rather bare room, obviously first designed as a store with an enormous and exceedingly distorted picture of the Man, Christ Jesus, over the rickety, home-made pulpit. It was furnished with hard, grey chairs and benches, and an ancient, but remarkably pliable piano from which a slight, dark-eyed woman was pounding out what was perilously close to a jass rendition of "He's Everything To Me." The entire congregation was in a state which the uninitiated might dismiss a frenzied or hysterical. A large woman, dressed completely in white was beating, with infinite gusto, a tambourine. The place resounded with shreiks, with screams, with "Hallelujahs" and heavy feet pounding the wooden floor. A young boy was at the front of the Church lost in a mabax jubilee shout---he danced, to wild and incredible rhythm, sweat pouring from his forehead, his face contorted in agonized ecstasy, his arms stiff and jerking as though he were a marionette pulled by unseen strings.

"Oh, God!" the boy cried, "Oh, God, my God!"

"Amen!" cried the congregation. "Bless him, Lord!"

"Amen!" cried the pastor.

"Oh, God, oh, God....!"

"Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" cried a woman near Gabriel. She jumped, as though an assailant had struck from behind, and threw up her hands. "Hallelujah!" she screamed. "Bless the Lord!"

"Yes! Praise Him!" Cried the woman in white.

"Amen!" cried the pastor.

The woman began to dance "The Shout." Her head bobbed, her skirts flash ed,

her heels hit the floor incredibly. "Jesus," she murmured, "Oh, blessed Jesus! And suddenly Gabriel was moved by infinite mystic longing, he could hardly have said for what, and he raised his hands in holy reverence, and his body shook, and tears coursed down his checks.

"My God, my God," he murmured, "have mercy, have mercy"--he did not know what he was saying, it did not matter what he was saying. The Spirit of the Lord was here.

And now his heart was moved to power not his own and he could feel and hear his feet beat upon the floor like drums from a far gone land. He moved and was at one with God, and all the earth was new. His hands were new; his feet were new, each atom of his being tingled with cleanness and newness until he wanted to cry "I'm new! Look at me! I'm new! I'm a new man in the Lord!"

Jericho fell, and the Red Sea rose and the children of Israel were led by day and by night through a weary desert to the Promised Land. And mountains crashed with an awful vengeance, and thunder rolled over the cringing sea and the Lord in purple and silver with fire for a crown rose on His throne and sinners bowed down and cried out "Holy!" And angels ran up the shining way and stars shone with them and vied out "Holy! Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts!"

And the Church cried out with a loudtriumphal voice, for here was a new soul rejoicing. And the tambourine cried "Blessed!" and the piano answered "Yes!" and Gabriel danced before his God, and blessed His name and knew he would not leave this holy place.

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"Are you crazy? What'd ya wanna go and join them for?"

"If amkin' noise means they're God's people, well they do plenty of that."

"It ain't noise, Roselia. It's the Spirit of the Lord."

"It sounds like Homex noise to me."

"Well, maybe makin' a little noise wouldn't hurt you non. Better'n that stiff, dried up place you go to, full of dry bones. The Lord ain't pleased with that."

"He ain't said nothin' to me about it. I live a good, clean Christian life. I don't hurt nobody, I don't talk about nobody, can't nobody paint a finger at me."

"You call goin' to the movies a good Christian life? You think the Lord is pleased with the way you cut up with that Mrs. Johnson next door. Ol' sinner woman, half-drunk all the time......"

"I ain't never said I was perfect, Gabriel. An' I've seen you drunk more'n once."

"That's when I was young and didn't know the Lord like I do now. The Lord wants everybody who serves Him to be holy."

"You, holy?"

"Yes, Yes, I'm holy."

He was holy. God had caused the light of His countenance to shine upon him and made him a blessed among men. Henceforth, his way was a way of holiness.

He would marry and be above temptation. He would have children, fine, strong children who would wax great in the service of the Lord. He would live upright-