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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.
The Sunday-school children distributed
themselves about the house and occupied
pews with their parents, so as to be under
supervision.
Aunt Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary
sat with her--Tom being placed next the
aisle, in order that he might be as far
away from the open window and the
seductive outside summer scenes as
possible.
The crowd filed up the aisles: the aged
and needy postmaster, who had seen better
days; the mayor and his wife--for they had
a mayor there, among other unnecessaries;
the justice of the peace; the widow
Douglass, fair, smart, and forty, a
generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-
do, her hill mansion the only palace in
the town, and the most hospitable and much
the most lavish in the matter of
festivities that St. Petersburg could
boast; the bent and venerable Major and
Mrs. Ward; lawyer Riverson, the new
notable from a distance; next the belle of
the village, followed by a troop of lawn-
clad and ribbon-decked young heart-
breakers; then all the young clerks in
town in a body--for they had stood in the
vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a
circling wall of oiled and simpering
admirers, till the last girl had run their
gantlet; and last of all came the Model
Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful
care of his mother as if she were cut
glass.
He always brought his mother to church,
and was the pride of all the matrons.
The boys all hated 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, as usual on Sundays--
accidentally.
Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked
upon 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 the church which was only
broken by the tittering and whispering of
the choir in the gallery.
The choir always tittered and whispered
all through 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 in some foreign country.
The minister gave out the hymn, and read
it through with a relish, in a 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 reached a
certain point, where it bore with strong
emphasis upon the topmost word 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 was always called
upon to read poetry; and when he was
through, the ladies would 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,
"Words cannot express it; it is too
beautiful, 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 *** 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
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 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 child should lead them.
But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of
the great spectacle were lost upon the
boy; he only thought of the
conspicuousness of the principal character
before the on-looking nations; his face
lit with the thought, 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 was a 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 to take
him by the finger.
A natural fillip followed, the beetle went
floundering into the aisle and lit on its
back, and the hurt finger went into 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 out of his reach.
Other people uninterested in the sermon
found relief in the beetle, and they eyed
it too.
Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling
along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer
softness and the quiet, weary of
captivity, sighing for change.
He spied the beetle; the drooping tail
lifted and wagged.
He surveyed the prize; walked around 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
a gingerly *** at it, just missing it;
made another, and another; began to enjoy
the diversion; subsided to his stomach
with the beetle between his paws, and
continued his experiments; grew weary at
last, and then indifferent and absent-
minded.
His head nodded, and little by little his
chin descended 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 yards away, and lit on its back
once more.
The neighboring spectators shook with a
gentle inward joy, several faces went
behind fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was
entirely happy.
The dog looked foolish, 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 a wary
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 even closer snatches at it with his
teeth, and jerking his head till his ears
flapped again.
But he grew tired once more, after a
while; tried to amuse himself with a fly
but found no relief; followed an ant
around, with his nose close to the floor,
and quickly wearied of that; yawned,
sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and
sat down on it.
Then there was a wild yelp of agony and
the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the
yelps continued, and so did the dog; he
crossed the house in front of the altar;
he flew down the other aisle; he crossed
before the doors; he clamored up the home-
stretch; his anguish grew with his
progress, till presently he was but a
woolly comet moving in its orbit with the
gleam and the speed of light.
At last the frantic sufferer sheered from
its course, and sprang into its master's
lap; he flung it out of the window, and
the voice of distress quickly thinned away
and died in the distance.
By this time the whole church was red-
faced and suffocating with suppressed
laughter, and the sermon had come to a
dead standstill.
The discourse was resumed presently, but
it went lame and halting, all possibility
of impressiveness being at an end; for
even the gravest sentiments were
constantly being received with a smothered
burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some
remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had
said a rarely facetious thing.
It was a genuine relief to the whole
congregation when the ordeal was over and
the benediction pronounced.
Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful,
thinking to himself that there was some
satisfaction about divine service when
there was a bit of variety in it.
He had but one marring thought; he was
willing that the dog should play with his
pinchbug, but he did not think it was
upright in him to carry it off.