Table of Contents

too beautiful for this mortal earth.” After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr.
Sprague turned himself into a bulletin board and read off “notices” of meetings
and societies and things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack
of doom-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 is to 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 went into
details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the
other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State;
for the State officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States;
for Congress; for the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor
sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the
heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light
and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the
heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the
words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in
fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful 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, he only endured
itif he even did that much. He was restive, all through it; he kept tally of the
details of the prayer, unconsciously-for he was not listening, but he knew the
ground of old, and the clergyman’s regular route over it-and when a little trifle
of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented
it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a
fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by
calmly rubbing its hands together; embracing its head with its arms and
polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with the body,
and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its
hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat tails; going
through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe. As
indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom’s hands itched to grab for it they did not
dare-he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing
while the prayer was going on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to
curve and steal forward; and the instant the “Amen” was out the fly was a
prisoner of war. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go.

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an
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 brimstone and thinned the
predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.
Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many
pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse.
However, this time he was really interested for a little while. The minister made
a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world’s hosts at
the millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a little