Is your church budget strained? Trying to support a building that’s just too darned big? Stephen Leacock has described how the people of Mariposa, in Missinaba County, in Canada, handled the financial problems of their Church of England congregation, and at the same time supported their rector, Dean Drone. Leacock’s story is immediately below; my commentary appears after Leacock:

———

“The fire had broken out late, late at night, and they fought it till the day. The flame of it lit up the town and the bare grey maple trees, and you could see in the light of it the broad sheet of the frozen lake, snow covered still. It kindled such a beacon as it burned that from the other side of the lake the people on the night express from the north could see it twenty miles away. It lit up such a testimony of flame that Mariposa has never seen the like of it before or since. Then when the roof crashed in and the tall steeple tottered and fell, so swift a darkness seemed to come that the grey trees and the frozen lake vanished in a moment as if blotted out of existence.

“When the morning came the great church of Mariposa was nothing but a ragged group of walls with a sodden heap of bricks and blackened wood, still hissing here and there beneath the hose with the sullen anger of a conquered fire. Round the ruins of the fire walked the people of Mariposa next morning, and they pointed out where the wreck of the steeple had fallen, and where the bells of the church lay in a molten heap among the bricks, and they talked of the loss that it was and how many dollars it would take to rebuild the church, and whether it was insured and for how much. And there were at least fourteen people who had seen the fire first, and more than that who had given the first alarm, and ever so many who knew how fires of this sort could be prevented.

“Most noticeable of all you could see the sidesmen and the wardens and Mullins, the chairman of the vestry, talking in little groups about the fire. Later in the day there came from the city the insurance men and the fire appraisers, and they too walked about the ruins, and talked with the wardens and the vestry men. There was such a luxury of excitement in the town that day that it was just as good as a public holiday.

“But the strangest part of it was the unexpected sequel. I don’t know through what error of the Dean’s figures it happened, through what lack of mathematical training the thing turned out as it did. No doubt the memory of the mathematical professor was heavily to blame for it, but the solid fact is that the Church of England Church of Mariposa turned out to be insured for a hundred thousand, and there were the receipts and the vouchers, all signed and regular, just as they found them in a drawer of the rector’s study. There was no doubt about it. The insurance people might protest as they liked. The straight, plain fact was that the church was insured for about twice the whole amount of the cost and the debt and the rector’s salary and the boarding-school fees of the littlest of the Drones all put together.

“There was a ‘Whirlwind Campaign’ for you! Talk of raising money,— that was something like! I wonder if the universities and the city institutions that go round trying to raise money by the slow and painful method called a ‘Whirlwind Campaign,’ that takes perhaps all day to raise fifty thousand dollars, ever thought of anything so beautifully simple as this.

“The Greater Testimony that had lain so heavily on the congregation went flaming to its end, and burned up its debts and its obligations and enriched its worshippers by its destruction. Talk of a beacon on a hill! You can hardly beat that one.

“I wish you could have seen how the wardens and the sidesmen and Mullins, the chairman of the vestry, smiled and chuckled at the thought of it. Hadn’t they said all along that all that was needed was a little faith and effort? And here it was, just as they said, and they’d been right after all.

“Protest from the insurance people? Legal proceedings to prevent payment? My dear sir! I see you know nothing about the Mariposa court, in spite of the fact that I have already said that it was one of the most precise instruments of British fair play ever established. Why, Judge Pepperleigh disposed of the case and dismissed the protest of the company in less than fifteen minutes! Just what the jurisdiction of Judge Pepperleigh’s court is I don’t know, but I do know that in upholding the rights of a Christian congregation — I am quoting here the text of the decision — against the intrigues of a set of infernal skunks that make too much money, anyway, the Mariposa court is without an equal. Pepperleigh even threatened the plaintiffs with the penitentiary, or worse.

“How the fire started no one ever knew. There was a queer story that went about to the effect that Mr. Smith and Mr. Gingham’s assistant had been seen very late that night carrying an automobile can of kerosene up the street. But that was amply disproved by the proceedings of the court, and by the evidence of Mr. Smith himself. He took his dying oath,— not his ordinary one as used in the License cases, but his dying one,— that he had not carried a can of kerosene up the street, and that anyway it was the rottenest kind of kerosene he had ever seen and no more use than so much molasses. So that point was settled.

“Dean Drone? Did he get well again? Why, what makes you ask that? You mean, was his head at all affected after the stroke? No, it was not. Absolutely not. It was not affected in the least, though how anybody who knows him now in Mariposa could have the faintest idea that his mind was in any way impaired by the stroke is more than I can tell. The engaging of Mr. Uttermost, the curate, whom perhaps you have heard preach in the new church, had nothing whatever to do with Dean Drone’s head. It was merely a case of the pressure of overwork. It was felt very generally by the wardens that, in these days of specialization, the rector was covering too wide a field, and that if he should abandon some of the lesser duties of his office, he might devote his energies more intently to the Infant Class. That was all. You may hear him there any afternoon, talking to them, if you will stand under the maple trees and listen through the open windows of the new Infant School….

“So you will understand that the Dean’s mind is, if anything, even keener, and his head even clearer than before. And if you want proof of it, notice him there beneath the plum blossoms reading in the Greek: he has told me that he finds that he can read, with the greatest ease, works in the Greek that seemed difficult before. Because his head is so clear now.

“And sometimes,— when his head is very clear,— as he sits there reading beneath the plum blossoms he can hear them singing beyond, and his wife’s voice.”

———

Thus ends Stephen Leacock’s account of the financial salvation of the C of E church in Mariposa. This is taken from “The Beacon on the Hill,” the sixth chapter of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, available from Project Gutenberg as a text file.

The only comment I will add is that years ago I was in a neighborhood bar — a friendly, conversational sort of place — with two staff people from a Unitarian Universalist district. We were talking about a nearby Unitarian Universalist congregation that was facing financial and other kinds of problems. One district staff person said to the other, “There’s nothing about that church that one well-placed match couldn’t fix.” But the cost of such a fix will not be zero.

Thanks to Scott for prompting this post.