Henry Hugh Hodder

Weeks had passed, and a touch of spring time was in the Dixie air. Sidney Wyeth's canvass was now assisted by another, while from over the country he had secured, here and there, an agent to sell the book. He found desk space in an office on the second floor, hired a stenographer, and filled the country with circular letters. Perhaps fifty or more replies were received, a few with a money order and requests for further information.

Although most of the letters were sent to preachers and teachers throughout the south, two-thirds of the replies came from the north. From Boston, New York, Chicago, and centers where literature is obtainable from the libraries which are open to Negroes, more letters by far came, than from the south where such is not always available. And out of these, a few agents were secured. But it seemed almost an impossibility to interest those at the south in a subject of literature.

One day, there came a letter from a small town in Florida that amused Wyeth. It was from the secretary of the board of trade. In reply to the circular inquiry, requesting the names of the Negro preachers in that city, it ran thus:

My Dear Sir: Replying to your favor of recent date relative to the names of Negro preachers of this city. In regard to this, I am compelled to say, that I cannot fully enlighten you, for this reason: Everything with trousers appears to be a preacher, or, any one who can spell "ligon."

My gardener is a preacher, although he finds my work more remunerative, apparently; but you could, however, write to him, and he would, I feel sure, give you the desired information.

When Sidney appraised Tompkins of his failure to get the cooperation of southern preachers, in his exploit, he was advised that the preachers were working that "side of the street."

We cannot appreciatively continue this story, without including a character that is very conspicuous in Negro enterprise. That is the undertaker. He is always in evidence. Mortality among Negroes exceeds, by far, that among whites. This is due to conditions that we will not dwell upon, since they will develop during the course of the story; but in Attalia, there was one undertaker who was particularly successful. He had the reputation of burying more Negroes than any man in the world. He had a son, a ne'er-do-well, to say the least, and they called him "Spoon."

Sidney, who at this time shared a room with Thurman, became acquainted with "Spoon" one Sunday night. It was at a "tiger," of which, as we now know, there were plenty.

Spoon had a reputation in local colored circles, as well as his father; but Spoon's reputation was not enviable. He was booziogically inclined, and reputed by those who knew him, to be able to consume more liquor than any other ordinary society man. Moreover, Spoon was "some" sport, too; could play the piano, in ragtime tune, and could also "ball the jack." He would lean back upon the stool, play the latest rag, as no other could, and at the end, cry: "Give me some more of that 'Sparrow Gin!'"

Wyeth and Spoon became close friends following their first meeting, and Sunday nights, they would roam until one or two in the morning. Spoon knew where every "tiger" in town was; and, moreover, he proved it.

Thurman, although two and fifty, was no "poke;" but was a sport too. His began early Sunday morning. One Sunday morn, as they lay abed, after the light of the world had come back and claimed its own, Thurman called to Sidney where the other lay reposing in the pages of a "best seller." "Say, kid! how 'bout a little toddy this mawnin'?"

"I'm there," came the reply.

"Good!" exclaimed Thurman. "Guess, tho' I'll haf to go after it, 's see you lost in a book all time. Gee! Looks lak you'd lose your mind a-readin' so much." No comment. "Guess that's why you got all these nigga's a-argun' 'roun' heah though; cause you read and they don't. M-m; yeh, yeh; that makes a diff'nce. M-m."

"Wull, reckon' ah'll haf t' git in muh breeches and crawl ou' and git dat stuff t' make it wid. M-m. Old Mis' 'roun' the conah 'll be glad t' git dis twenty cents dis mawnin'. M-m. Wull, kid, be back t'rectly."

He was, sooner than expected. He didn't get outside. He peeped out. What met his gaze would send any southern rheumatic Negro back.

It was snow.

"Jesus Chr-i-s-t!" he exclaimed, returning hastily from the hallway. "Hell has sho turned on dis' mawnin out dare. K-whew! 'f the's anything in this world I hates, it's snow."

Sidney stopped reading long enough for a good laugh, as Thurman skinned off his trousers and clambered back into bed.

"Aw, shucks, Thur, this is a morning for toddies."

"A mawnin' fo' Hell, yes, hu! hu! Wow!"

After a spell, he peeped from beneath the coverlets. "Say! since ah come t' think uv't, we c'n have them toddies wid-out get'n froze out in doin' it."

"How's that?" asked the other.

"I'll get dat liquah from John."

"And who is John?"

"John? Wull, did'n' you git 'quainted wi'im when I brung you heah? John's the man we room with. He sells liquah."

"Say Spoon," said Sidney one day, "I'm going to cut the tiger kitin' out."

"Aw, gwan, kid, what you talkin' 'bout?"

"I'm going to church in the mornings, and in the evenings, I hope to find a place that will be more in keeping with respectable people," announced Sidney.

"Come on, let's go up here to old lady Macks, and get some of that 'Sparrow Gin,'" Spoon suggested, temptingly.

"To prove that I am not likely to keep my resolution."

"You've none to keep as I can particular see. I have never seen you drink anything stronger than beer when you've been with me. You seem to go along with me, to see me and the others act a fool. Sometimes you impress me as being a strange person.... I wonder. Now I wonder...."

"Where is a church that would be likely to appeal to you and myself?"

"Up on Herald Street is one that I think will appeal to you. You're serious. Me—I'm quite unfit for any; but I'll take you up there, and sit through one of Hodder's sermons if you care to go. My people are members of that church, and it is a progressive one."

"We will attend services there—Sunday morning."

Wyeth became a regular visitor.

The following Sunday, the pastor appraised the congregation of the fact, that on the following Sunday, they would have with them the Reverend W. Jacobs, the energetic young man who was doing such great work for the training of wayward children. And this takes our story into a matter of grave human interest.

Coincident with better educational facilities, and the more careful training of the children, time had brought a change that was slowly but surely being felt by these black people in the south. It has already been stated, that the Baptist church required little literary training in order to preach; but, in this church, it is quite different, and no man would be tolerated as a minister, who had not a great amount of theological, as well as literary training.

Henry Hugh Hodder was a man, not only prepared in the lines of theology and literature, but was fully supplied with practical knowledge as well. He had, at the time Sidney Wyeth became acquainted with him, gathered to his church, a majority of Attalia's best black people. His popularity was, moreover, on the increase, and his church was filled regularly with a class of people who listened, studied and applied to their welfare, what he said each Sunday in the pulpit.

His church stood on a corner to the edge of the black belt, and near a fashionable white neighborhood. And it had, at the time it was constructed, caused considerable agitation. When Sidney and Spoon came to the door, prayer was being offered, and when it was over, they entered, taking seats near the door.

It was a nicely ventilated church, with large colored windows, arranged to allow air to pass in without coming directly upon the congregation. At the front, a small rostrum rose to the level of the rear, and contained, in addition to the altar, only four chairs. Sidney was told afterwards, that, due to a practice always followed in other churches, particularly the Baptist, of allowing journeymen preachers to put themselves before the congregation uninvited, Hodder had removed the chairs in order to discourage such practice.

Apparently he had succeeded, for, on the Sundays that followed, Sidney saw only those who were invited, facing the congregation.

Directly over the rostrum hung a small balcony, which contained the choir and a pipe organ. Following a song, the pastor came forward. He was a tall man, with width in proportion, perhaps two hundred and twenty pounds. Not unlike the average Negro of today, he was brown-skinned. His hair, a curly mass of blackness, was brushed back from a high forehead. His voice, as he opened the sermon, was deep and resonant. And for his text that day, he took "Does It Pay!"

Not since Sidney Wyeth had attended church and heard sermons, had he been so stirred by a discourse! Back into the ancient times; to the history of Judea and Caesar, he took the listener, and then subtly applied it to the life of today. Never had he heard one whose eloquence could so blend with everyday issues, and cause them to react as moral uplift. For he knew the black Oman's need. Pen cannot describe its effect upon Sidney Wyeth. It seemed, as the words of the pastor came to him, revealing a thousand moral truths, which he had felt, but could not express, that he had come from afar for a great thing, that sermon. It lifted him out of the chaos of the present, and brought him to appreciate what life, and the duty of existence really meant.

Having, in a sense, drifted away from the pious training he had received as a youth, Sidney Wyeth was suddenly jerked back to the past, and enjoyed the experience. On account of his progressive ideas, he had been accused, by some of his people, since his return to live among them, of being an unbeliever. He was often told that he was not a Christian; they meant, of course, that he was not a member of a church, which, to most colored people, is equivalent to disbelief. Sidney Wyeth saw the life, the instance of Christ as a moral lesson.

When the sermon closed, Wyeth had one desire, and fulfilled it, and that was to shake Henry Hugh Hodder's hand; moreover, to tell him, in the only way he knew how, what the sermon had been to him.

He did so, and was received very simply.

As he approached the rostrum, at the foot of which stood the pastor, shaking hands with many others who had come forward in the meantime, he was like one walking on air. He recalled the many sermons preached to satisfy the emotion of an ignorant mass, and which, in hundreds of instances, went wide of the mark, causing a large portion of the congregation to rise in their seats, and give utterance to emotional discordance, the same being often forgotten by the morrow.

Hodder was not only as he was just described, but he proved to Sidney Wyeth to be a practical, informed, and observing man as well. When he had received the card, he inquired of the country from whence Sidney came, and related briefly the notices he had followed, regarding its opening a few years previous.

At that moment, a large man, almost white—that is, he was white, although a colored man—was introduced to him as Mr. Herman. He proved to be the proprietor of the large barber shop on Plum Street, which had caught Sidney's attention the day he came. After Mr. Herman's introduction, he met many others prominent in Negro circles, including the president and cashier of the local Negro bank. And thus it came that Sidney Wyeth met these, the new Negro, and the leaders of a new dispensation.

Two hours after the services had closed, he passed a big church on Audubon Avenue; a church of the "old style religion" and, which most Negroes still like. It was then after two o'clock. Morning service was still in order—no, the sermon had closed, but collection hadn't. Out of curiosity, he entered. The pastor had, during this period, concentrated his arts on the collection table. He was just relating the instance of people who put their dollar over one eye, so closely, that it was liable to freeze to the eye and bring about utter blindness. "So now," he roared, brandishing his arms in a rally call, "We jes' need a few dollahs mo' to make the collection fo'ty-fo'. I'll put in a quata', who'll do the rest," whereupon the choir gave forth a mighty tune, that filled the church with a strain which made some feel like dancing.

The following Tuesday, an editorial appeared in one of the leading dailies, concerning the sermon and the instance of Henry Hugh Hodder. It dwelt at some length on his work for the evolution of his people, and concluded by praying that (among the black population) great would be the day when such men and such sermons were an established order.

Sidney, now in an office to himself, read it to a man next door. Whereupon the other said:

"Oh, that is nothing unusual. They often speak of him and his work in the editorial columns. Which might account for his having such a fine church." ...

Wyeth was silent, apparently at a loss what to say. The silence had reached a point which was becoming strained, when another, who happened to be in the office, relieved it by spitting out sneeringly:

"White fo'kes'll give any nigga plenty money, when he says what they want him too." He was a deacon in the big church referred to. This was not investigated.

Wyeth called him a liar then and there.