Jesse Halsey |c1927
Reverend Josephus has a big house—and a big family; a big
church building and a big congregation; a large parish house with many rooms,
but also with many activities.
He has a room designated a study, but it is a perpetual
motion office. Parties, dances, classes, conferences, meetings for prayer, for
praise, for study, and whatnot. Committees and boards and agencies, meetings
morning afternoon and night are held in Reverend Josephus’ church and parish
hall. He is seldom alone or unattended. His telephone is like a junebug on the
first hot night of late spring.
And his house; in the attic he took an unused room, stacked
the boxes, whitewashed the walls, and improvised a desk, for two mornings it
was his, unmolested. Then his little girl needed a playhouse—she got it.
One boy went away to school. Rev. Josephus appropriated his
room, forgot the trinkets on the wall, covered up the stuffed snakes that gave
him the jitters, and began to write. Mother needed a sewing room “where there
was sunshine.” She got it.
A study was provided in the parsonage. It had an inside and
outside door; it was a convenient pass to the side yard, as such it was
successful; but as a study it was not a success—the adjoining garden was the
children’s playground.
Then the radio for some reason seemed to fit this study best
and night and day if any of the family were home it wailed away.
Reverend hated the radio—except for a few minutes a week—but
the family were addicts: Tiny Tim to Fire
Chief and School Boy Pete; the
Cook to Tink and Wink; Jimmie to
____; and mother to Danroch (Rev always tried to finish his sermon on Friday
morning, and Saturday afternoon) and the opera.
In the evening, he hit upon the kitchen; it was warm; the
big table could accommodate his books. For a while it worked, but Helen came
home from boarding school and fudge and cookies were concocted by night and
after she went back Mirandy, the cook, got a beaux and the Rev moved out.
Sermon quality began to deteriorate; people spoke of it. All
parish activities boomed, but sermons were thin.
The pastor put a sign on his (church) study door: “Occupied”;
but the phone didn’t heed and the beggars who stopped in could read, and the
President of the Board, or the Ladies Aid, didn’t. So he burned it up.
One day at the trade show he heard shop management. It
worked. The boys carried on their studies in the noise.
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