Library Collections: Document: Full Text

I was once one of a group of guests at a church service in a reformatory for young girl offenders. The palms of David had been chosen for the reading, apparently as least likely to offend the religious sensibilities of Catholic, Protestant or Jew, and the psalm which became branded on my memory was the fifty-fifth. As I listened to the girls' glib responses, the sentimental tears came into my eyes. Was it possible that these little castaways from a great city did not see that David had written the psalm about them? "I have seen violence and strife in the city," they chanted. "Deceit and guile depart not from her streets. For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it. Neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a man, mine equal, my guide and my acquaintance". . . .

The words were too appropriate. I hesitated to look up to see the tragic response which I expected. But did I observe any? Not in the least. The unconscious victims snapped off the final curse, "But Thou, O Lord, shalt bring them down into destruction. Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days," and slammed their Bibles into the racks with the dispatch of those who long for dinner. How strange, I reflected, that they do not realize their own tragedy. And then, glancing at the row of well-bred, well-fed friends beside me, I wondered whether we should have noticed any great relevancy if, instead of the fifty-fifth, the psalm had happened to be the second, with its wild verse, "He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision." Should we have felt at all uncomfortable, or lost our appetites? Not we. We, as well as they, were too well-trained in our code to take the words of an overexcited poet seriously. We, too, would have cast covert glances at the clock, smoothed out our ruffles, and closed our Bibles with a yawn. Why assume that any social tragedy includes us among its chorus? Why get upset? How do we know which of His creatures are so sublimely ludicrous that they make even the Lord laugh?