Grandma had been to church Sunday morning and heard for the first time the wonderful new pipe organ, and in the evening she was talking about it—how beautiful the music was, how solemn, how sacred.
“And when I think,” she said, “of the opposition there was to the first little organ we had in our church and of the trouble we had getting it—well, well, times certainly have changed.
“It was like this. Some of our people were bitterly opposed to organ music in church and right up till the last minute did everything they could to keep us from getting an organ. This made it very hard to raise money for the organ, but after a long time we got enough—all but about forty dollars. It was decided to have a box social to raise this.
“At a box social each girl or woman took a box containing enough supper for two people. Then the boxes were auctioned off, and the men and boys bought them and ate supper with the girl whose box they got.
“Aggie and Belle trimmed their boxes with colored tissue paper and flowers and ribbon, but Mother just wrapped hers in plain white tissue paper and fastened a bunch of pinks out of the garden on top so Father would know it when it was put up to be sold. Father was going to buy Mother’s box, and I was going to eat with them. Charlie had money to buy a box for himself, and he said he meant to buy Aunt Livvy Orbison’s box because she always had so much to eat.
“Every one in the family was going, and there was a great rush and bustle to get ready. Mother cut Charlie’s hair and oiled it and curled mine. She scrubbed us till we shone, and at last, dressed in our best clothes, we started.
“Father and Mother and Belle and Aggie and I went in the surrey. All the boys walked over the hill, except Joe, who had gone to Clayville on business for Father that morning and was to stop at the church on his way home.
“It was a lovely warm evening, and there was a large crowd at the church when we got there, though it was early. The girls took their boxes in and then came right out again. Every one was having a splendid time, talking and laughing and visiting around.
“I was with Father. After a while I got tired hearing the men talk about the crops and the price of wool and the election, and I went to hunt Mother. I looked all around and I couldn’t find her. I thought maybe she had gone into the church, so I went in there to look for her, but there was no one in the church at all. The boxes had been piled on the pulpit and covered with a sheet so that no one could see them. Just as I was going out the door I noticed that the sheet was lying on the floor and the boxes were nowhere to be seen. I went on out and presently I found sister Belle. She was talking to John and Isabel Strang and Will Orbison.
“I tugged at Belle’s dress and pulled her to one side.
“‘What did they do with the boxes?’ I asked her.
“‘Why, they put them in the church, and after a while they will sell them,’ she said. ‘You run and find Mother now, like a good girl.’
“‘But the boxes aren’t on the pulpit,’ I whispered. ‘I was in the church hunting Mother, and the boxes are all gone and the sheet is lying on the floor.’
“Belle told the others, and they all went hurrying into the church, I following after. The boxes were gone, sure enough. The pulpit windows, which faced a strip of woods, were open. The boys said the boxes could have been taken out that way as the crowd was in front of the church. There was no place in the church to hide them. There was a loft, but it was entered through a hole in the ceiling and there was no ladder. Belle placed two chairs with their seats touching and covered them with the sheet so that no one could tell the boxes were not there.
“‘It looks as if some of the people who don’t want the organ have spoiled this box supper,’ said John Strang, ‘and they will keep us from having our organ for a while, too.’
“‘But that isn’t the worst of it,’ put in Isabel. ‘It’ll cause no end of trouble and hard feelings.’
“‘It may have been some of the boys who did it for a joke,’ said Belle. ‘Let us raise the money anyway and get ahead of them.’
“‘But how,’ Isabel asked anxiously, ‘with no boxes?’
“Then they thought out their plan. It was that John and Will were to go out and explain quietly to the boys in favor of the organ what had happened and get them to give the money they meant to spend on their boxes to John. Brother Joe had bought a new pair of shoes in town. They would put his shoe box up for sale just as if all the rest of the boxes were still under the sheet. Will was to bid against John and run the box up to the amount they had collected.
“Isabel stayed in the church to see that no one disturbed the sheet, and John and Will and Belle went outside to carry out their plan. I found Mother, and pretty soon we went into the church. The lamps had been lit, and I thought how nice it looked. The girls had come up the day before and swept the floor and dusted the benches and shined the tin reflectors on the lamps, and put great bunches of flowers and ferns over the doors and windows and covered the two big round stoves with boughs of evergreen. There was a short program first, and then Stanley, who was to auction off the boxes, stepped to the front of the pulpit and held up a plain white box tied with stout string.
“‘How much am I offered for this box?’ he said.
“The bidding started at twenty-five cents. At first there were lots of bids, but finally every one dropped out but John and Will. There wasn’t a sound in the church as the bidding went higher and higher—thirty dollars for that plain, white box, thirty-five dollars, forty dollars, forty-one dollars. Will stopped bidding and the box went to John for forty-one dollars.
“Some one called out, ‘Open the box!’ and that started things. ‘Open the box!’ they shouted. ‘Open it!’ ‘Let’s see what’s in it!’ ‘Open, open, open!’
“When they quieted down a little, Stanley explained about the boxes disappearing and everything. Then he untied the string, took the lid off the box, and held up a pair of men’s shoes number ten. Then that crowd went wild. They clapped and shouted and yelled. Stanley said he thought the boxes had been taken for a joke and suggested that they be returned.
Stanley held up a pair of men’s shoes
“‘We have enough money for the organ,’ he said. ‘Now let us have our suppers and some fun.’
“One of the boys on the side opposing the organ got up and said that the boxes had been taken for a joke and would immediately be returned. And you couldn’t guess where those boxes were hidden! Right in the big round stoves there in the church! Of course everybody laughed again and laughed and laughed. Such a good-humored crowd you never saw.
“They handed out the boxes first to the people who had paid in their money, and sold the others. There weren’t enough boxes to go around, but each had plenty in it for three or four people. Every one divided, and there was not a person in the church who did not get something to eat. People who had been in favor of the organ ate out of the same boxes with those who had been against it and forgot that they had ever disagreed. And when the organ came and sister Aggie played it that first Sunday, why, it sounded sweeter to me than that beautiful big organ in your church did this morning.
“And now, ‘’night, ’night,’ everybody, and next time I think—yes. I’m pretty sure—next time we’ll have something about my school.”