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By Root 1358 0

was enough to banish the sourhours for the rest of the day. Beneath the preacher’s otterskin hat protruded bushy tufts of red hair surrounding a pink freckled face reddened by the cold, a large red mustache dripping with icicles: it was a surpassingly gentle face, not jolly, but capable of compassion and animation. He seemed to be close to forty, but not beyond it, while his companion was only a teenager. Her hair was the same color as his, which made people surmise that she was his daughter. He went from door to door in the village, speaking in a soft, almost inaudible voice, inviting everyone to join him at the meeting house on the following morning, which was Sunday. He and the girl, or young woman, were given beds for the night at the Dinsmores, who had boarded the unhungry Campbellite, and they noted that he, in contrast to the former, had a prodigious appetite. They offered him a second helping, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth; they believed he would have accepted a sixth, if they had offered it, which they could not. His name, they learned, was Long Jack Stapleton. Brother Long Jack Stapleton, he said, although nobody ever learned which denomination, if any, he belonged to. No, the young woman was not his daughter; she was his “baby sister,” name of Sirena.

After supper the Dinsmores were treated to a preview of his powers of narration, when he told them the story of Samson and Delilah, creating such powerful word pictures that his audience could actually “see” the whole dramatic love story unfolding before their eyes. If the modern mobile home may be traced back to Viridiana Boatright’s “cat wagon,” if the monthly luncheon of Lions and Rotarians may be traced to Jacob and Noah Ingledew’s ceremony of the clock on the Second Tuesday of the Month, if the oral tradition may be traced to Jacob’s entertaining Lizzie Swain and her large brood with stories about Indians, then surely it would be no exaggeration to trace the motion picture, and by extension television, to Brother Long Jack Stapleton. Before his service on Sunday morning, the Dinsmores had spread word of his powers throughout the village, and all the men and boys crowded through the right door and all the women and girls through the left door, and the meeting house was packed to the rafters, so that body heat alone was sufficient to warm the room, which had been below freezing moments earlier. Brother Stapleton mounted the pulpit; without all his furs he did not look quite so imposing, but still he was the most striking figure ever to stand on that platform. He surveyed the “amen corner,” where the most prominent men of the church were sitting, spotted his host Clyde Dinsmore among them, and asked, “Brother Dinsmore, ‘sposin ye could lead us sing a hymn or two?”

Brother Dinsmore rose from his bench, shifted his cud of tobacco from one cheek to the other, and faced the congregation. “Brethern and sistern, let’s us sing one of them old’uns that we’uns all know—‘Warshed in the Blood.’” Then he cleared his throat loudly and gave out the key: “DO MI SOL DO! DO SOL MI DO!” and began swinging his arms vigorously as every voice sang at its top…every voice, that is, except Brother Long Jack Stapleton’s. Maybe he didn’t know the words. Then Brother Dinsmore requested that they sing “Lead, Kindly Light,” followed by “Abide with Me.” After that, Brother Stapleton asked for a volunteer to lead them in prayer, and Seth Chism stood up and thanked God for sending them a parson in the coldest winter ever known to man and beast, and asked God to grant the parson power to banish their sourhours and save their souls, in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Then he sat down and Brother Stapleton began his sermon.

“Brethering and sistering,” he addressed them in his gentle voice that could barely be heard in the back of the room, “I take as my text this mornin the eleventh and twelfth verses of the second chapter of Solomon’s song, ‘For lo, the winter is past, the snow is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singin of birds is come, and the voice