Fish On Friday

Until last summer, the Y. W. C. A. meant nothing more to me than the feminine gender of Y. M. C. A., formed by turning the M upside down. And of the Y. M. C. A. I knew little beyond the fact that it had swimming pools in most of the large American cities. It was interesting, therefore, last August, on the Continent, in a crowded railway carriage (which on European trains are compartmental, and so make for easy conversation and acquaintanceship) to meet two Young Women Christian Associates returning to the United States after a five years’ missionary sojourn in Japan.

We did not speak at once; English and American tourists never do, the former because they are soured with the superior airs of Anglicanism, the latter because we are tainted with the bad manners of Methodists. We went through the usual preliminary ritual of pretending to be uninterested in one another, of unnecessary clearings of one’s throat, unnecessary windings of one’s watch, unnecessary mistings and dryings of one’s spectacles, and all the foolish frigidity of behavior that came to be regarded as “good form” when the Reformers ruined the natural comradeship of Christianity.

It was a very nice Polish gentleman, a Catholic, traveling in our compartment with his wife and family, who shamed us into conversation. After vainly trying to make friends with us by cordial little blinkings of his eyes, tiltings of his nose, churnings of his mouth, and shruggings of his shoulders, his warm Catholic heart, eager to give and receive affection, drove him, as a last desperate effort, to open his lunch basket and offer us each, for pity’s sake, a cheese sandwich.

It was cruel to refuse him, but we Americans did, the ladies for their own reasons, and I because my usual railway headache was with me, and was doing quite well, thank you, without any further caloric assistance. However, we tried to make it up to him with much gracious bowing and smiling, and I tried to tell him, in gesticulated Polish, that he was an awfully good sport, and I wasn’t refusing because I feared the Poles bearing gifts, but only because I couldn’t manage a cheese and a headache on the same journey.

After this episode the Y. W. C. A. and the R. C. Church felt we could exchange a word or two without violating the conventional canons of Christian conduct. Hitherto we had had nothing in common (except a language, a flag, an Unknown Soldier, a human nature, and an original father and mother). Now, by God’s mercy, we had acquired something definitely in common, something that would warrant our turning Hem and Haw into Hello. Even Emily Post would forgive us now for speaking without being introduced. We had established a point of social contact. We had refused a cheese sandwich conjointly, (And, incidentally, they were the largest cheese sandwiches in point of cheese I have ever witnessed. There was an absolute geometrical minimum of bread to them, just enough to give one a sanitary grip on the cheese. And the nice Polish gentleman, after taking a gigantic bite out of his, showed us, by a round smile and a luscious bulge on his cheek, that we didn’t know what we were missing.)

It was not to be expected, although we chatted for three hours, that the Y. W. C. A. ladies should give me their names. And in a way I am rather glad they did not do so, as it will allow me to write about them with less embarrassment and more elbow-room. So whether they were Carrie and Cora, or Daphne and Dora, or Fifi and Flora, or some other selections from a feminine litany not usually associated with ora pro nobis, for purposes of this tale let X = Y. W. C. A.; let 2X = two ex-missionaries returning from Japan; and let 3X = three exiles in Europe, who became friends in a Continental railway compartment, all over a cheese sandwich.

If there is any bitterness in these lines so far, and there seems to be, it is directed against a heresy, and not against these Young Women Christian Associates personally. Personally they won my regard and admiration much more than they will ever know. Indeed, this paper is intended to be a eulogy of their splendid goodness, a eulogy I feel will be all the more sincere because they will never read it or even dream of its existence. And when I salute them as “Good Christians” I do so in no spirit of irony. I do so with reverence and respect and a little tinge of sadness.

I have never been privileged to meet young women more refined and gentle in their deportment or more shining in their natural goodness. They were dressed with taste and simplicity. They wore plain felt hats that seemed to have come from the same bargain counter, and their flowered dresses, almost identical in design, were modest, thrifty and charming. Their complexions were innocent of all artifice. They were bedecked with the jewelry of the poor. Their voices were low and ladylike. One of them spoke with the bewitching drawl of Georgia, the other with the sprightly accent of Illinois. They seemed wonderfully healthy in an unathletic way. It was not the health of a gymnasium (that forced, inferior sort of health that destroys one’s nicer sensibilities and turns one’s brain into a biceps); it was the health of wind and sunshine, of boating and bathing and roaming in the fields, the health of a good appetite, a good conscience, and a good night’s sleep.

Their books and their baggage all bespoke the temper of their character. Their books especially interested me. They were good books, clean books — travel, biography, ethnology, educational essays, interesting and wholesome reading for interesting and wholesome minds. Their talk about the countryside, the people, the customs, culture, art, cathedrals of Europe, was all intelligent and sympathetic, and full of nice observation and generous impulse. They spoke of their work in Japan with a likeable restraint. They were loath to be called “missionaries” because the word seemed to smack of the heroic. They preferred to call their enterprise “welfare work,” or “Y work,” undertaken, they said, partly in a spirit of zeal and partly in a spirit of adventure. There were times when I suspected them of possessing, at least in a few brief flashes, the sublime virtue of humility.

They were most delicate and resourceful in avoiding any issue with me on the subject of religion. Not that I tried even remotely to force any, but it requires a great deal of tact to talk in loose, watered terms about “Christianity” and “the Christianizing of the Pagan,” etc., with a man who displays his religion in his clothes. But they managed it skillfully, and I evinced a real sympathy for them when they complained of the bad influences effected by American movies, American magazines, and even American tourists, in destroying in the minds of the native Japanese the ideals of Christian modesty and Christian social behavior which the Y workers were trying to instill. I assured them also that I was very proud of the fact that Christian ladies of their type were giving the better features of our civilization at least some representation in the Orient. This small show of tolerance on my part thawed our small talk and melted it nearly to the point of authentic friendship. They seemed suddenly to breathe more freely and to cherish the fact that I had not been despising them in secret. And anxious to be generous to me in return, one of them unbent so far as to remark, almost with warmth, almost with pride, almost without any trace of condescension: “You know I have a friend who is a Catholic nun. She is a Madame of the Sacred Heart.”

I expect always to remember the little cold chill that ran down my spine at the mention of this name on her lips. In all my life I had never before heard a Protestant speak of “The Sacred Heart.” In the present instance it was an incidental and official use of the term, to be sure, but it was nonetheless unusual and astounding. It was as though I had seen Mr. Hoover bless himself; as though I had heard Lindbergh recite the Hail Mary; as though I had listened to the Salvation Army singing the Tantum Ergo.

With this shock for a start, I had only to close my eyes and allow all sorts of strange things to happen in my imagination. I began to picture how goodness could be transmuted into saintliness in the lives of these two young ladies who sat across the aisle, if only they could discern in their Messiah any traces of the real Sacred Heart.

If only their pleasant philosopher, their excellent citizen, their skillful mouther of sweet slogans, their other Abraham Lincoln, would flare for one moment into the Incarnate Word of God, alone and incomparable, who came to Earth not to plague His people with platitudes, but to stiffen them with a challenge and amaze them with a revelation, there might be some feeling in their souls for a Kingdom not of this world, there might be some message to bring from Jesus to the Japanese.

If only Christ should seem to talk to them with dogmas and not with drivel, if He should stop saying, “I am your Big Brother, your Big Pal, your Big Friend, your Goody-goody What-you-may-call-me” and lapse into some great and Godlike announcement like “Unless a man eat My Body and drink My Blood he cannot have life in him,” if He would speak more like Jehovah and less like Santa Claus, they, who had very nearly reached the limit of spiritual excellence allowed them in their faded pattern of Christianity, might, on a supernatural basis, slip into that lovely company of virgins for which by character, temperament and generosity they were so eminently fitted. They might reach out for God like a moth for a star. They might be seized with the Divine madness of trying to be perfect as their Heavenly Father is perfect.

Those flowered dresses would lengthen and darken. Girdles would bloom at their sides. Two white wimples would creep up and encircle their faces. And long black veils would journey across their hair and drop in folds over their shoulders. They would walk soft-footed and to the tinkle of rosary beads. And on each breast a little silver crucifix would swing. Their awkwardness would be supplanted by the lovely manners of the cloister, and their nervous self-assurances would yield to a mighty certitude and an inward peace.

I dared not open my eyes. The picture was too lovely to spoil. And so, when we came to their station and they were up and ready to depart, I pretended to be sleeping. It was a censurable insincerity, I know, even though I was not due to leave the train until another station. But anyhow, I am so very sure that my Good Christians will go safely to Heaven when they die (for God loves us for our efforts and forgives us our ignorances) that, if I shall have managed to get there myself, there will not have been any need for having said good-bye.