Voicesby Vic Jameson Remember now thy Creator The words were right there, on the upper part of the wall, in eye-catching size. There on a wall in the hall of the Administration Building of the little college. You could see them whenever you walked through the door. In fact you could hardly not see them, which probably was the intention of whoever had put them there. The words are from Ecclesiastes, but nothing on the walls said so. No reference to that compendium of one-liners in the Good Book that you come to right after Proverbs and just before the Song of Solomon. Another wall in the college’s Administration Building displayed another message from Ecclesiastes: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or at least some of those words. Fifty or so years have passed since I last looked at the words on the wall in the hall of that small college, and fifty years will dim a lot of memory’s details. Especially precise words. I have been writing of those words in the past tense, but it might be more correct to deal with them in the present. For all I know they are still there. I have not been a good and faithful alumnus; I have not been back to check on those oddities on the wall in the hall in many, many years. The improbable words surely were put there to serve a good and noble purpose. If I ever knew what it was, the knowledge has left me now.
A reality note needs to be inserted here: Let us be clear that not all of what follows will be just exactly what Ecclesiastes said. Or did. In fact there was not just one author named Ecclesiastes, but rather several who used it as a sort of one-size-fits-all identification. So if in reading what follows you realize you never found some of it in the Bible, you’re right.
For the sake of our story, picture this: A tallish, handsome young man stands in the doorway to the Administration Building at that small aforementioned college. Although his attire is closer to that of Cairo than Wall Street, it is not so different from others of his generation as to attract special attention. He pauses, looks inside, and sees the words on the walls. He reads them silently. Then reads them again, aloud. And yet again. Still nobody pays him any attention. This is an American college, after all, and abnormal behavior is often the norm. His name, by the way, is Ecclesiastes. The same as his twenty-seventh-or-so great grandfather. His more complete name is Elmer Ecclesiastes, which explains why he uses only his surname most of the time. He may not have finished college yet, but he knows what his famous forebear wrote. His first thought upon seeing the writings on the walls is, “The government is not going to like those religious-type statements on th wall, this being a state college and all. And they might have rules. And if they connect their rules with those words and the words with my ancestor and him with me, I’m in big trouble.” I didn’t say young Ecclesiastes was a straight-line thinker. But he was a creative young man, and as are many of his age, a mite rebellious. If his first thought was tinged with fear, his second was well flavored with revolt: “They (with no specificity as to who ‘they’ might be) don’t even give my ancestor credit. Just put his stuff on the wall of some hall, and that’s all.” He would not have such people messing with his ancestor’s writings and rights. He would fight back, even though he was not quite sure what or whom he was fighting back against. And he set about to correct the injustice done his great-great-etc. grandsire: “If they want to use his work without payment or even credit, I’ll give them some reading to do.” It was a moment of great inspiration. He would fight fire with fire. Time passed. Darkness came. Most students were studying, some of them books and others of them studying—well, never mind. Those outdoors might have seen, had they been paying attention, a tall and handsome young man walking quietly around a couple of buildings, inexpensive paint and brush in hand. As it was he went unnoticed. This was a college campus, after all, and students carrying paint and brushes were far from the oddest oddities to be seen. He did his work quietly and quickly. When he was done, an exterior wall on North Hall bore a message: Wisdom is as good and on the doorway to the library: Wine gladdens life. Sharp-eyed readers would notice that each quotation was followed by a bit of small, tidy type identifying the true source of the saying. Young E.E. would not be guilty of omitting credit, as his newfound enemies had done. When students and faculty stirred the next morning the inscriptions began to be noticed and talked about. Students who had not uttered a word in class all semester spoke up in excitement and speculation. Professors devised solemn theories as to their origin and purpose. Townspeople walked the campus daily to see and wonder at what was going on at that institution they had so frequently ignored. Then another night and day, and more words appeared: Send out your bread upon the waters and Light is sweet and on the third morning a puzzling item was seen on the side of the gymnasium: Whoever breaks through a wall The editor of the town newspaper heard of the writings and wrote about them. Theories multiplied. Omens were suggested, as were Hidden Meanings. A few older citizens remembered equally mysterious happenings of this sort in ’23, or was it ’24. And despite all the efforts official and amateur, the identity of the secret scribbler was not discovered. As abruptly as they had begun, the writings-on-the-walls ceased to appear. Things returned to normal. Other phenomena came and went. Autumn faded into Winter which blossomed into Spring, and no more mysterious sayings appeared. Except one. On the morning of graduation day a janitor on his way to clean the President’s office found these words neatly painted on the door: of making many books there is no end, and below that in the smallest letters of all: The end of the matter. The small college where all these things were reported is in an arid part of our nation. It does not rain often in that area, and when rain does come it is nearly always torrential and accompanied by strong winds. Thus when the rains came soon after young Ecclesiastes made his statements to the world with cheap paint, the downpour obliterated all he had written. So we have no records, no proof other than hearsay, that he had ever written them at all. I don't know whether the prophetic words still can be found on the Administration Building walls. But I do know they still can be found in another place, in the Good Book, right there between Provers and the Song of Solomon.
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