The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time by Samuel Ben White Page B

would one day work up the nerve to have another conversation. Until then, at least he was in the same room with her. Once or twice she caught him stealing glances her way, but she never said anything or acted as if she cared, though she had given him a polite smile once.
    Worship services at the small congregation began approximately two hours after sunrise, which gave the working people of the church—almost all the members were of the "lower class"—time to do their chores before coming to worship. Once there, the men and women divided into two groups for Bible study and the children were set aside for schooling. The schooling was of the "Alphabet and Mathematics" variety as many of the children worked full time on the farm during the week and were not able to attend the town's real school for more than three months in a year. Even though the schooling was of a somewhat secular nature, all the reading and writing assignments were heavily influenced by—if not taken directly from—the Bible. When Garison allowed as how he knew something about mathematics, he was given the task of teaching numbers to the children and soon had them ahead of the children who were attending the town school for full semesters. He had even found that a couple of the students were especially adept at mathematics and was tutoring them evenings during the week when possible.
    If anyone remembered his strange attire of his first day, they never said anything about it, for he was proving himself a valuable member of the community. There were other people in town who had come to the new world for a fresh start and people generally took to a man who could carry his weight and was no trouble. So Garison was becoming known as both a hard-worker and a church-going man and his stature in the community began to rise.
    Following the Sunday School, which lasted anywhere from an hour to two, all the brothers and sisters (as they referred to each other) would gather in the barn—or outside on especially pretty days—for their time of worship. They sang hymn after hymn—accompanied by whatever instruments had been brought—took the Lord's Supper each week, and then listened to a sermon. The sermon was brought each week by the men of the congregation who exposed a different scripture to hermeneutical light for anywhere from two to three hours with varying degrees of oratorical skill. On the one Sunday a month when the circuit preacher came through, sermons often preceded lunch for a couple hours, then a common meal was shared, then the sermon was preached to its conclusion for another hour or sometimes three.
    If someone were "converted" on a Sunday morning, the service could then have another hour tacked on as they all went down to the Potomac for the baptism. Owing to their practice of baptizing by complete immersion, the little church had come to be known as the Baptists, though their theology was distinctly non-Calvinist.
    Following the service (if there were still daylight left), and leading to severe looks from the other two churches in town who believed Sunday after church should be a solemn time, the presbyterian off-shoots would linger for hours singing both worship and secular songs while the children played at "tag" and "Johnny-on-the-pony" and a new game Garison had introduced called "football." Garison had purchased a top-notch India rubber ball in Alexandria and had been teaching all the local children the game during the week but his congregational friends were getting special instruction. Due to the fact that the ball was harder than the footballs he was used to, and weighed considerably more, he had purposefully neglected to teach the children about "heading." He had found some old fishing nets and, with the help of a couple teen-age boys one Saturday night, had even erected regulation size goals near the barn where they worshipped.
     
    One Sunday, in the evening after church, but before Garison begun teaching the children the game of