 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
