and if he had worn
a crown, she would have considered it very appropriate.

After a long prayer, during which all the people stood up, Elder Lovejoy
read a long, long psalm, and the people rose again to hear it sung. They
turned their backs to the pulpit, and faced the singers.

But there was a great surprise to-day. A strange sound mingled with the
voices singing; it was the sound of a bass-viol. The people looked at
one another in surprise, and some with frowns on their faces. Never had
an instrument of music of any sort been brought into that little church
before; and now it was Deacon Turner's brother, the blacksmith, who had
ventured to come there with a fiddle!

Good Elder Lovejoy opened his eyes, and wiped his spectacles, and
thought something must be done about it; they could not have "dance
music" in that holy place. Deacon Turner and a great many others thought
just so too; and at noon they talked to the wicked blacksmith, and put a
stop to his fiddle.

But nothing of this was done in church time. Elder Lovejoy preached a
very long sermon, in a painfully sing-song tone; but Patty thought it
was exactly right; and when she heard a minister preach without the
sing-song, she knew it must be wrong. She could not understand the
sermon, but she stretched up her little neck towards the pulpit till it
ached, thinking,--

"Well, mamma says I must sit still, and let other people listen. I
won't make any _disturbment_."

Mrs. Lyman looked at her little daughter with an approving smile, and
Deacon Turner, that dreadful tithing-man up in the gallery, thought his
lecture had done that "flighty little creetur" a great deal of good--or
else it was his dollar, he did not know which.

Patty sat still for a whole hour and more, counting the brass nails in
the pews, and the panes of glass in the windows, and keeping her eyes
away from Daddy Wiggins, who always made her want to laugh. At last the
sermon was over, and the people had just time enough to go to their
homes for a cold dinner before afternoon service, which began at one
o'clock.

Sunday did seem like a long day to little folks; and do you wonder? They
had no Sabbath school or Sabbath school books; and the only part of the
day which seemed to be made for them was the evening. At that time they
had to say their catechisms,--those who had not said them the night
before.

Did you ever see a Westminster Catechism, with its queer little
pictures? Then you can have