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To Make a Hoosier Holiday, by George Ade

The Naked Word electronic edition of....
To Make a Hoosier Holiday
by George Ade, 1904



If you will take a map of the State of Indiana and follow with your pencil one
of the many railway lines radiating from Indianapolis, you will find, if you are
extremely diligent in your search, a black speck marked "Musselwhite." It is not
an asterisk, meaning a county seatЧ simply a speck on the enameled surface.
Furthermore, it is one of many specks. A map which shows all of the towns of the
Musselwhite kind looks like a platter of caviareЧ a mere scramble of dark
globules, each the same as the others.
As a matter of fact, Musselwhite seemed one of a thousand to the sleepy
travelers in the parlor cars. Lying back on their upholstered griddles, slowly
baking to a crisp, they would be aroused by a succession of jolts and grinds and
would look out with torpid interest at a brindle-colored "depot," a few brick
stores ornately faced with cornices of galvanized iron, a straggling row of
frame houses prigged out with scallops and protuberant bay windows, a few alert
horses at the hitch-rack and a few somnolent Americans punctuated along the
platform. Then the train would laboriously push this panorama into the
background and whisk away into the cornfields, and the travelers would never
again think of Musselwhite. Certainly they would never think of it as a hotbed
of politics, an arena of social strivings, a Mecca for the remote farmhand and a
headquarters for religious effort. Yet Musselwhite was all of theseЧ and more.
The town had two wings of the Protestant faith, but they did not always flap in
unison. They were united in the single belief that the Catholic congregation at
the other end of town was intent on some dark plan to capture the government and
blow up the public school system.
The Zion Methodist Church stood across the street from the Campbellite
structure. Each had a high wooden steeple and a clangorous bell. Zion Church had
an undersized pipe-organ which had to be pumped from behind. The Campbellites
had merely an overgrown cottage organ, but they put in a cornet to help outЧ
this in the face of a protest from the conservative element that true religion
did not harmonize with any "brass-band trimmings."
In the Campbellite Church the rostrum was movable, and underneath was a
baptismal pool wherein the newly converted were publicly immersed. Whenever
there was to be a Sunday night "baptizing" at the Campbellite Church, the
attendance was overflowing. The Methodists could offer no ceremony to compare
with that of a bold descent into the cold plunge, but every winter they had a
"protracted meeting" which kept the church lighted and warmed for seven nights
in the week. During this "revival" period the Campbellites were in partial
eclipse.
It must not be assumed that there was any petty rivalry between the two flocks.
It was the strong and healthy competition between two laborers in the vineyard,
each striving to pick the larger bunch of grapes. If the Zion Church gave a
mush-and-milk sociable, it was only natural that the Campbellites, in their
endeavor to retain a hold on the friendly sympathies of Musselwhite, should