Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro _blood_
-y 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
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