Massachusetts College of Art and Design - Palette and Pen Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 10 text:

the scarlet letter of her shame. For she was the orisinal of Hester Prynne. No solacing verses, no lyres or urns or weeping willows lighten these gravestones. They are decorated with the winged skulls and dancing skeletons of a stern, hard-headed day. ST. CLEMENT’S. The delicately carved and encrusted tower of St. Clement’s holds itself aloof in the midst of apartments, warehouses, and raucous traffic. The birds understand its serenity of spirit and fly in and out familiarly. And far below the door stands open to the street, wide-flung, as if to say, Behold, I have set before thee an open door.’’ St. Clement’s is spiritually an ancient abbey or a monastery chapel, though it is not old. When the facile electric lights are snapped on, the spell is broken, the floor is obviously imitation-tiled, the stone walls are only surfaced cement, and the place is a fraud. But, half-dark, the church has miraculously the spirit of the Gothic. Sharply contrasted with the resplendent sunshine of the street, it is cool and dark as a cave inside. The high arches fade out and disappear as the eye strains after them. All the lines of the church, long and straight, slim and tall, accent its personality. The stained windows, uniform and impersonal, are all that relieve the stone walls. Sometimes the sun falls across them, sweetening and warming their cold blues and reds and greens. The church stands like a rock of ages, heedless of the weak humanity that walks about inside and around it; it is strong with all the high strength of independence and austerity. Near the door the gray walls are lighted, but gradually they show darker and darker, until the farther end of the church is quite black. The tapestry behind the altar shines mystically from the depths of the shadow, and the candles make faint glittering points in the gloom. This is a refuge from the world, sacred and inviolable — secure as ever Notre Dame that memorable day when at high noon the hunchback snatched the gypsy girl from under the sword of the executioner, leaped into the church, and shouted in one tremendous voice with the crowd of Paris, Sanctuary!

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CUiiAcUzi, ol [SUSAN RICHERT] KING’S CHAPEL. If King’s Chapel could stand today as its architect drew it, the tower completed and the colonnade left off, it would be a typical colonial church, like the Park Street or the Old North, or like any of the white clapboarded elm-shaded meeting houses which raise their fragile spires to New England skies. But perhaps it is better as it is — grim and black and solid as a bank. For, so sheltered, the interior is all the more completely breathtaking. A white church always seems something of a miracle. But this has a radiance of more than painted walls and unstained windows — the dazzling radiance of an ' inward and spirit- ual grace.’ Obviously this church was not so much designed as inspired. Every detail has the mark of essential fitness — the delicate Corinthian columns, the canopied Governor’s pew, the paneled pulpit with its winding stairs, the two altar candles, tall and white and steady; the church has a thousand ways to win your heart. And the sun, streaming in through the swirled glass of the deep-set windows, lies on the high box pews and the stone flagged floor as once it caressed Washington, decorous in black velvet asittouched broad-shouldered Ol iver Wendell Holmes. Th eir way of life has long since passed, but it lingers on here where they sat, where time stands still, dreaming in the late afternoon sunshine. Close outside are the thick clustered stones of the burying ground. It was in the first year of the town’s settlement that Isaac Johnson bought this ground and hurried down to Salem to comfort his frail pretty wife with plans for their new home which should be as much like the one she had left in England as he could make it. But when he came again from Boston, Lady Arbella lay buried in Salem. A few months later Johnson himself died and was buried at his own request in the spot I had marked out for our house.’’ And after him came many others — gentle John Winthrop, fiery John Cotton, unsung William Dawes, and, more immortal than any of these, Elizabeth Pain, who wore on her breast, wherever she went.

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AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL. Churches differ as any personalities. Some are at their best when they are empty some are less restrained in the presence of a few wor- shippers and some should be visited during a service. The African Methodist Episcopal is one of these last. Outside, the red brick building stands flat and nondescript and self- contained; inside it is harsh and ugly and worn. Only when the people come in does it wake to amazing life. It lives only one day a week, but how it lives that one day! The people crowd in, thronging and jostling, to fill the big church in no time — tall bucks, broad capa- cious women, shrunken old men, and lanky children. And the place resounds with their shrill greetings, their hearty singing, and their deep abiding laughter. Sometimes during the service we catch a glimpse, in the parted lips and wide rolling eyes, of the gorgeous pageant of glittering angels and shadowy devils they see, of the wonder and the hope and the delicious fear they feel. But it seems no more than an inter- lude — the sociability ' s the thing. And they lean forward to whisper and nod and wait impatiently for the end of the service when they can burst forth again untrammeled, gather in groups and shout greetings, and giggle replies and shake hands. They shake hands with everyone, two and three times around. One of the women appointed to greet strangers found us and shook hands with a strong whole-hearted grip. Eyes shining and teeth gleaming, she said the most simple gracious words we have heard in any church, Thank you for help- ing us worship. TRINITY. Guide books to Boston like to speak superciliously of Trinity as a thing out of style and therefore better dead. Built in mid-Victorian days and esteemed then, it is now understood, they say, to be heavy, rambling, and over-ornamented. We cannot well defend it against them. All that they say of it is true enough, but we happen to like it that way. Trinity is usually considered a memorial to Phillips Brooks, its genius and inspiration;