LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

next disturbance was of a more exciting character. A vagrant wasp, after disporting itself in different parts of the church, made an inroad into the family pew, and fixed upon Uncle Charlie as its victim. Humphrey, attracted by the buzzing, turned round, and saw his uncle engaged in desperate conflict.

      Bobbing his head first to one side, and then to the other, now drawing himself suddenly back, and now as suddenly swerving forward, every now and then making a frantic grab in the air with the back of his hand, Uncle Charlie strove to escape from his assailant in vain.

      Humphrey tried hard to keep his countenance as he watched the encounter, but it would not do. The merry smile broke out from every corner of his face, and, in great alarm, he crammed his hands into his mouth to stifle the laughter he felt would, in another moment, break out.

      Uncle Charlie was already very angry at being disqualified from listening to a sermon he was enjoying by so paltry a cause as the attacks of a wasp, and now, when he saw his nephew's condition, he grew desperate.

      Seizing a hymn-book, he made a plunge at his tormentor, and brought it to the ground, where he crushed it to atoms with his heel; and with a sensation of great relief saw Humphrey's countenance return to an expression of becoming composure, and found himself in a condition to take up the thread of the discourse.

      Humphrey's attention was once more riveted on the sermon, and his little mind strove to follow the clergyman as he spoke of the white-robed thousands wandering by the jasper sea in the golden Jerusalem; that "great multitude which no man can number of all kindreds, and nations, and tongues;" uniting their songs in the same burst of glorious psalmody as the "voice of many waters," and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, "Alleluia; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."

      "'Eye hath not seen,'" concluded the preacher, as if in despair of finding words to express the inconceivable glory and beauty of the halls of Sion, "'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.' To Him, who bought them for us with his own blood, be glory for ever, and to countless ages."

      Then the organ broke forth, doors opened and shut, the school-boys clattered down from the organ loft, and the congregation streamed out of church; leaving the old clergyman standing in his pulpit, gazing thoughtfully at the retreating throng, and wondering how much of what he had endeavored to impress upon their hearts would take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards.

      Sir Everard Duncombe remained sitting some time after the service was over, looking at Humphrey's earnest face, and wondering what the boy was thinking of. When the clergyman had retired to the vestry, he rose, and led the way out.

      Softly blew the summer breezes on little Humphrey's face as he stepped out into the porch, and the calm beauty of the summer morning was in perfect harmony with the turn which the sermon had given to his thoughts. All around was the beautifully-wooded country, lying calm and still under the cloudless sky. Perhaps if his vague ideas could have taken shape, they would have formed themselves into some such expression as—"Can heaven be fairer than this?"

      But Humphrey's was not a nature that could long remain absorbed in thought, and he was soon skipping along the road in front of his father and uncle, and kicking up clouds of dust with his best Sunday boots.

      At the park gates they found Miles and Virginie. The latter joined the other servants in the road, and the two little brothers walked on together.

      "Did the clergyman take any of my texts to-day for his sermon?" asked the younger one eagerly, as he took hold of Humphrey's hand. (Miles was learning the beatitudes, and asked the question regularly every Sunday.)

      "No, not one of them. He got a text out of the very last bit of the whole Bible—'The Revelation.'"

      "That must be the bit Virginie never will read to me. She says I should not understand it. Do you understand the Revelations, Humphie?"

      "Yes," returned Humphrey, promptly.

      "Virginie doesn't," said Miles rather puzzled, "and she says very few grown-up people do."

      "Virginie is French," retorted Humphrey, "and the Revelations are written in English. Of course she can't understand them as well as I do. There goes a rabbit. Let's run after it."

      And Miles, perfectly satisfied with the explanation, followed his brother, panting into the fern.

      In the afternoon the gentlemen went again to church, and as Virginie was at liberty to do the same, the children were left under the care of the housemaid.

      Humphrey was learning a hymn, and, for once in his life, giving his whole attention to his task.

      Miles, sitting on the housemaid's lap, was turning over the leaves of the "Peep of Day," and gleaning his ideas of sacred characters from the illustrations of that well-known work. He stopped in great amazement before the representation of Lazarus rising from the tomb, and demanded an explanation.

      Jane, who had an idea that everything connected with death should be most carefully concealed from children, answered evasively that it was nothing, and tried to turn over the page, but boys are not so easily baulked.

      Had Miles been a girl, he would probably have been satisfied to pass over the picture without further inquiry; girls' minds take a very superficial grasp of a subject; they are content to get at the shell of knowledge, and to leave the kernel untasted. Being a boy, Miles raised his large, grave eyes to Jane's face with an inquiring expression.

      "Why don't you tell me?" he asked, laying a detaining hand on the leaf; "I want to know all about it. What is that great hole? and why is the man all sewed up in white?"

      Jane, driven into a corner, admitted that the hole was a grave.

      "But, lor! master Miles," added she, "you don't know nothing about them things, and if you want to know you must ask your pa!"

      "Of course I know people die," said Miles, simply, "because my mamma's dead; so you're quite wrong, Jane, to say I don't understand those sort of things. I know all about it. When people die they are packed up in a box and put into the ground, and then if they've been good, God will come some day and unpack them."

      Humphrey had joined the group just in time to hear the end of the explanation, and he met Jane's eye and smile with all the conscious superiority of his three years advance in religious knowledge.

      "If mother were here, Miles," he whispered, "she would explain to you much better than that. There was something she used to tell me about our dead body being like a seed, that is, put into the ground, but will turn into a beautiful flower some day. Only I can't remember it quite like she said it," he added, sighing, "I wish I could."

      "Oh, Humphie!" said little Miles eagerly, holding up the book, "can you remember what she used to say about this picture?"

      But Humphrey taxed his memory in vain. It was all so dim, so confused, he could not remember sufficiently clearly to tell the story, so Jane was called upon to read it.

      Now Jane left out her h's, and did not mind her stops, so the beautiful story of the raising of Lazarus must have lost much of its charm; but still the children listened with attention, for those who have nothing better must put up with what they have. Poor little opening minds, depending thus early on the instructions of an ignorant housemaid! forced to forego, in the first budding of youth, those lessons in Divine truth that came so lovingly, and withal so forcibly, from the lips of a tender mother; those lessons which linger on the heart of the full-grown man long after the lips that pronounced them are silenced for ever.

      Depend upon it, association has a great power, and those passages in the Bible which bring to children most clearly the image of their mother, are those which, in after life, are loved and valued most.

      And surely those childish memories owe something of their charm to the recollection of the quiet, well-modulated reading, the clear, refined enunciation; the repose of the attitude in the sofa or chair, the white hand that held the book, with, it may be, the flashing of the diamond ring in the light, as the fingers turned over the pages!

      Even as I write, I see rising from the darkness before me a vision of a mother and a child. I see the soft eyes meeting those of the little listener on

Скачать книгу