CHAPTER V
ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring,and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. TheSunday-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 placed nextthe aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open windowand the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd filed upthe aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days;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, her hillmansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and muchthe most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg couldboast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer Riverson, thenew notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed bya troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then allthe young clerks in town in a body--for they had stood in the vestibulesucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of oiled and simperingadmirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet; and last of all camethe Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother asif she were cut glass. He always brought his mother to church, and wasthe pride of all the matrons. The boys all hated him, he was sogood. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them" so much. Hiswhite handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual onSundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boyswho 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, in apeculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. Hisvoice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached acertain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost wordand 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' _blood_-y 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 sat down.The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, heonly endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive all through it;he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously--for he was notlistening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regularroute over it--and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded,his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he consideredadditions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly hadlit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit bycalmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, andpolishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company withthe body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scrapingits wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if theyhad been coat-tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as ifit knew it was perfectly safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom'shands itched to grab for it they did not dare--he believed his soul wouldbe instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was goingon. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and stealforward; and the instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner ofwar. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go.
The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through anargument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod--andyet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone andthinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardlyworth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church healways knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anythingelse about the discourse. However, this time he was really interestedfor a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of theassembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lionand the lamb should lie down together and a little child should leadthem. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectaclewere lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of theprincipal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with thethought, and he said to himself that he wished 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. Itwas 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 finger wentinto the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs,unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe outof his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found relief inthe beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog cameidling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and thequiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; thedrooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked aroundit; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grewbolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerlysnatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoythe diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws,and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferentand absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chindescended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp,a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yardsaway, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectatorsshook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans andhand-kerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked foolish,and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and acraving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack onit again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with hisfore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches atit with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. Buthe grew tired once more,
after a while; tried to amuse himself with afly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose closeto the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot thebeetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then there was a wild yelp of agonyand the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and sodid the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flewdown the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up thehome-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he wasbut a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed oflight. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and spranginto its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice ofdistress quickly thinned away and died 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.The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, allpossibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravestsentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst ofunholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parsonhad said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the wholecongregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.
Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there wassome satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of varietyin it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dogshould play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright inhim to carry it off.