By Mark Twain
Chapter 5
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
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 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 snatch
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.
http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/34/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer/5434/chapter-5/
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