CHAPTER V
ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began toring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon.The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house andoccupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. AuntPolly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her--Tom being placednext the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the openwindow and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowdfiled up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen betterdays; the mayor and his wife--for they had a mayor there, among otherunnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair,smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, herhill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable andmuch the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburgcould boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyerRiverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of thevillage, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked youngheart-breakers; then all the young clerks in town in a body--for theyhad stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall ofoiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet;and last of all came the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedfulcare of his mother as if she were cut glass. He always brought hismother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. The boys allhated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them"so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, asusual on Sundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he lookedupon boys who had as snobs.
The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more,to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon thechurch which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of thechoir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered allthrough service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred,but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago,and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was insome foreign country.
The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, ina peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country.His voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reacheda certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmostword and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:
Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry BEDS of ease,
Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' BLOODY seas?
He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church "sociables" he wasalways called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladieswould lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps,and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "Wordscannot express it; it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortalearth."
After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself intoa bulletin-board, and read off "notices" of meetings and societies andthings till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack ofdoom--a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities,away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there isto justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and wentinto details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of thechurch; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself;for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the UnitedStates; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for thePresident; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossedby stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel ofEuropean monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the lightand the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hearwithal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed witha supplication that the words he was about to speak might find graceand favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time agrateful harvest of good. Amen.
There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation satdown. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer,he only endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive allthrough it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously--for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and theclergyman's regular route over it--and when a little trifle of newmatter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole natureresented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In themidst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front ofhim and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together,embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously thatit seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender threadof a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legsand smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat-tails; goingthrough its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectlysafe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab forit they did not dare--he believed his soul would be instantly destroyedif he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. But with theclosing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and theinstant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His auntdetected the act and made him let it go.
The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously throughan argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod--and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstoneand thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to behardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; afterchurch he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knewanything else about the discourse. However, this time he was reallyinterested for a little while. The minister made a grand and movingpicture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at themillennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and alittle child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral ofthe great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of theconspicuousness of the principal character before the on-lookingnations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that hewished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion.
Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed.Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It wasa large black beetle with formidable jaws--a "pinchbug," he called it.It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was totake him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle wentfloundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt fingerwent into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helplesslegs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it wassafe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon foundrelief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodledog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness andthe quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle;the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walkedaround it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again;grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made agingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another;began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetlebetween his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last,and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little bylittle his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. Therewas a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell acouple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboringspectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behindfans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog lookedfoolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart,too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began awary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle,lighting with his fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making evencloser snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till hisears flapped again. But he grew tired once more,
after a while; triedto amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an antaround, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that;yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Thenthere was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up theaisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house infront of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before thedoors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with hisprogress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbitwith the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferersheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung itout of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away anddied in the distance.
By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating withsuppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. Thediscourse was resumed presently,