From Jest to Earnest — A Reader’s Guide

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Authors: Roe, Edward Payson, 1838-1888 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 133,181

Reading time 580 min

Text sections 15

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #6102

A winter sleigh-ride on the Hudson opens this 1870s novel, where a minister's rigid sermon provokes a young woman to challenge his theology by reading the story of Lazarus aloud, sparking a crisis of faith and feeling.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

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File: pg6102

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CHAPTER I. A PRACTICAL JOKE

CHAPTER II. THE VICTIM

CHAPTER III. PUZZLED AND INTERESTED

CHAPTER IV. A LITTLE PAGAN

CHAPTER V. PLAIN TALK

CHAPTER VI. A SLEIGH-RIDE AND SOMETHING MORE

CHAPTER VII. ANOTHER SPELL THAN BEAUTY'S

CHAPTER VIII. FINDING ONE'S LEVEL

CHAPTER IX. "THE OTHER SET"

CHAPTER X. HUMAN NATURE

CHAPTER XI. A POSSIBLE TRAGEDY

CHAPTER XII. MISS MARSDEN ASKS SOMBRE QUESTIONS

CHAPTER XIII. A LOVER QUENCHED

CHAPTER XIV. LOTTIE A MYSTERIOUS PROBLEM

CHAPTER XV. HEMSTEAD SEES "OUR SET"

CHAPTER XVI. HOW WOMAN MAKES OR MARS

CHAPTER XVII. MIDNIGHT VIGILS

CHAPTER XVIII. HEMSTEAD'S HEAVY GUN AND ITS RECOIL

CHAPTER XIX. THE PREACHER TAUGHT BY THE PAGAN

CHAPTER XX. THE DAWNING LIGHT

CHAPTER XXI. MISUNDERSTOOD

CHAPTER XXII. "YOU MUST WAIT AND SEE"

CHAPTER XXIII. A RATIONALIST OF THE OLD SCHOOL

CHAPTER XXIV. THE TERROR OF A GREAT FEAR

CHAPTER XXV. A TRUE KNIGHT

CHAPTER XXVI. ON A CRUMBLING ICE-FLOE

CHAPTER XXVII. THE MEETING AND GREETING

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE TRIAL OF LOVE

CHAPTER XXIX. HEMSTEAD'S ADVICE, AND LOTTIE'S COLORS

CHAPTER XXX. AROUND THE YULE-LOG

CHAPTER XXXI. UNDER THE MISTLETOE

CHAPTER XXXII. THE CHRISTMAS SUNDAY

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE END OF THE "JEST"

CHAPTER XXXV. MR. DIMMERLY CONCLUDES TO "MEDDLE"

CHAPTER XXXVI. A NIGHT IN THE SNOW

CHAPTER XXXVII. IN EARNEST

FROM JEST TO EARNEST.

On a cloudy December morning a gentleman, two ladies, and a boy stepped down from the express train at a station just above the Highlands on the Hudson. A double sleigh, overflowing with luxurious robes, stood near, and a portly coachman with difficulty restrained his spirited horses while the little party arranged themselves for a winter ride. Both the ladies were young, and the gentleman's anxious and almost tender solicitude for one of them seemed hardly warranted by her blooming cheeks and sprightly movements. A close observer might soon suspect that his assiduous attentions were caused by a malady of his own rather than by indisposition on her part.

The other young lady received but scant politeness, though seemingly in greater need of it. But the words of Scripture applied to her beautiful companion, "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance." She had been surfeited all her life with attention, and though she would certainly have felt its absence, as she would the loss of wealth, life-long familiarity with both led her to place no special value upon them.

Therefore during the half-hour's ride her spirits rose with the rapid motion, and even the leaden sky and winter's bleakness could not prevent the shifting landscape from being a source of pleasure to her city eyes, while the devotion of her admirer or lover was received as a matter of course.

The frosty air brought color into her companion's usually pale face, but not of an attractive kind, for the north-east wind that deepened the vermilion in the beauty's cheek could only tinge that of the other with a ghastly blue. The delicate creature shivered and sighed.

"I wish we were there."

"Really, Bel, I sometimes think your veins are filled with water instead of blood. It's not cold to-day, is it, Mr. De Forrest?"

"Well, all I can say with certainty," he replied, "is that I have been in a glow for the last two hours. I thought it was chilly before that."

"You are near to 'glory' then," cried the boy saucily, from his perch on the driver's box.

"Of course I am," said Mr. De Forrest in a low tone, and leaning towards the maiden.

"You are both nearer being silly," she replied, pettishly. "Dan, behave yourself, and speak when you are spoken to."

The boy announced his independence of sisterly control by beginning to whistle, and the young lady addressed as "Bel" remarked, "Mr. De Forrest is no judge of the weather under the circumstances. He doubtless regards the day as bright and serene. But he was evidently a correct judge up to the time he joined you, Lottie."

"He joined you as much as he did me."

"O, pardon me; yes, I believe I was present."

"I hope I have failed in no act of politeness, Miss Bel," said De Forrest, a little stiffly.

"I have no complaints to make. Indeed, I have fared well, considering that one is sometimes worse than a crowd."

"Nonsense!" said Lottie, petulantly; and the young man tried not to appear annoyed.

The sleigh now dashed in between rustic gate-posts composed of rough pillars of granite; and proceeding along an avenue that sometimes skirted a wooded ravine, and again wound through picturesque groupings of evergreens, they soon reached a mansion of considerable size, which bore evidence of greater age than is usual with the homes in our new world.

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The novel opens on a cloudy December morning as a party descends from an express train at a Hudson River station, settling into a double sleigh for a winter ride. The gentleman's anxious attentions toward one blooming young lady suggest his own inner malady rather than her indisposition, while her companion receives scant politeness. The landscape's bleakness cannot dampen the city-bred passengers' spirits, but the scene quickly establishes a pattern of uneven regard and unspoken tensions.

From this wintry beginning, the story pivots to a theological clash. A minister named Hemstead delivers a sermon so austere that a young woman, Lottie, protests its portrayal of God. She seizes a Bible and reads the story of Lazarus aloud, forcing Hemstead to confront his own rigid doctrines. The excerpt shows her reading with growing excitement, stopping at Christ's tears and groans, questioning why a divine being would weep when joy is imminent. Hemstead, in turn, recognizes that his preaching has omitted the balancing truth of divine sympathy.

A Sleigh-Ride and a Sermon's Recoil

The opening chapter, titled "A Practical Joke," introduces a social world where appearances and attentions are unevenly distributed. The gentleman's "anxious and almost tender solicitude" for one lady is undercut by the narrator's hint that it stems from his own malady, not her need. Meanwhile, the other young lady receives only "scant politeness," a disparity the narrator glosses with a scriptural allusion: "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given." This early imbalance sets up a pattern of misdirected concern and overlooked worth that recurs throughout the excerpts.

The sermon that provokes Lottie's rebellion is not quoted directly, but its effects are clear. Hemstead's preaching is described as "crude sermonizing" that exaggerates one truth while omitting its corrective. Lottie calls it "cool and inflexible elaboration of character" that ignores human weakness and shrinking. Her protest is not a rejection of faith but a demand for a gospel that acknowledges sorrow and sympathy. The scene in which she reads the Bible to Hemstead reverses expected roles: the minister becomes the pupil, and the skeptical young woman becomes the teacher.

Reading Lazarus Anew

The central episode in the excerpts is Lottie's impromptu Bible reading. She begins with a challenge: "Come, get a Bible, and let us read the whole story, and see if we cannot find something that will not make the word 'gospel' a mockery." Hemstead hands her the Bible humbly, and she reads in "sweet, unaffected, girlish tones." The narrator emphasizes Hemstead's intense excitement and awe, noting that he listens "as one who expected a new revelation."

Lottie stops at Jesus's words, "I am the resurrection and the life," and asks what they mean. Hemstead urges her to read on. When she reaches the shortest verse—"Jesus wept"—she ceases reading aloud and scans ahead, then asks why Christ wept and groaned when He knew Lazarus would soon live. Hemstead replies with tears, "There is One guiding you—guiding us both—who can answer that question better than I." Lottie then muses that if Christ is God, He is "keenly sympathetic, so tenderly alive to a scene of sorrow" that He weeps even knowing joy is coming. This moment crystallizes the novel's central tension: a faith that must reconcile divine power with human grief.

Contrasts in Character and Voice

The excerpts reveal a deliberate contrast between two modes of belief and personality. Hemstead is described as "earnest" with a "vivid fancy, and large faith," yet his initial sermonizing is cold and abstract. Lottie, by contrast, is "erratic" but possessed of "intense vitality" that can arouse even a sluggish nature. Her language is plain and bitter: she calls Hemstead's theology "unnatural and monstrous." Yet she is also capable of reading Scripture with unaffected sweetness, and her questions are sharp and personal.

The narrator's voice frequently undercuts characters' self-perceptions. The gentleman's solicitude is attributed to his own malady; Lottie's lifelong surfeit of attention has made her place "no special value" on it. These observations suggest a world where motives are mixed and appearances deceive. The novel's title, From Jest to Earnest, hints at a movement from superficiality to sincerity, and the excerpts show that movement beginning in a sleigh-ride and a Bible-reading that forces both characters to confront what they truly believe.

Readers attentive to the novel's opening will notice how the winter setting and the sleigh-ride's rapid motion mirror the characters' emotional and spiritual journeys. The excerpts offer no resolution—Lottie's reading breaks off before the story's end, and Hemstead's crisis is only beginning. The book's chapter titles, such as "A Night in the Snow" and "On a Crumbling Ice-Floe," suggest that physical peril will test the convictions formed in these early debates. The tension between jest and earnest, between cold doctrine and warm sympathy, drives the narrative forward.

That Hudson sleigh-ride lingered with me for years—the way doubt crept in beside the cold, how a story like Lazarus could loosen a faith built on sermons. It reminded me of quieter hours spent with Wanderers — Reading Notes, where margins hold the same gentle wonder, that soft pause before belief settles again.