It is possible that two women may work together harmoniously in church and parish associations, each esteeming the other’s excellent qualities of heart and enjoying the fellowship of her “kindred mind,” and yet that both should be intensely uncomfortable if forced into reciprocal social relations that have nothing to do with church or charity.
These are plain facts no reasonable person will dispute. In view of them the fact, equally patent, that the Newlyrich clan sometimes resort to church connection as a lever to raise them to a higher social plane, is one of the anomalies of human intercourse that may well stir the satirist to bitter ridicule and move compassionate beholders to wonder.
“When they begin to feel their oats they go off to you!” laughed the keen-witted, sweet-natured pastor of a down-town church to a brother clergyman whose flock worshiped in a finer building and a fashionable neighborhood. “The sheep with the golden fleece always finds a breach in our church-wall.”
It takes him, his ewe and his lambs, a long time to learn that pew proximity does not bring about social sympathy. It is not a week since I saw a girl, a thoroughbred from crown to toe, flush in surprise and draw herself up in unconscious hauteur, when a flashily-dressed young person greeted her across the vestibule of a concert-room with “Hello, Nellie! didn’t we have a bully time last night?”
They had attended a Sunday-school anniversary, and, as their classes were side by side, had exchanged remarks in the intervals of recitations, songs and addresses. The parvenu’s clothes were more costly than “Nellie’s;” her father was richer; _they were members of the same church_! To her vulgar mind these circumstances gave her the right to take a liberty with a slight acquaintance such as no well-bred person would have dreamed of assuming.
First, then, I place among the maxims of church and parish etiquette: Do not imagine that your next-pew neighbor must be your friend. If she be a newcomer and a stranger in the congregation, bow to her in meeting in lobby or in aisle cordially, recognizing her as a fellow worshiper in a temple where all are welcome and equal. If you can be of service to her in finding the place of hymn or psalm, should she be at a loss, perform the neighborly service tactfully and graciously,—always because you are in the House of the All-Father, and are His children,—not that you seek to court a mortal’s favor for any ulterior purpose.