g,
"In Adam's fall we sinned all," and extending through three or four
pages of pictorial and poetic embellishment. Next was the death of John
Rogers, who was burned at Smithfield; and for a while we could entertain
ourselves with counting all his "nine children and one at the breast,"
as in the picture they stand in a regular row, like a pair of stairs.
These being done, came miscellaneous exercises of our own invention,
such as counting all the psalms in the psalm book, backward and forward,
to and from the Doxology, or numbering the books in the Bible, or some
other such device as we deemed within the pale of religious employments.
When all these failed, and it still wanted an hour of meeting time, we
looked up at the ceiling, and down at the floor, and all around into
every corner, to see what we could do next; and happy was he who could
spy a pin gleaming in some distant crack, and forthwith muster an
occasion for getting down to pick it up. Then there was the infallible
recollection that we wanted a drink of water, as an excuse to get out to
the well; or else we heard some strange noise among the chickens, and
insisted that it was essential that we should see what was the matter;
or else pussy would jump on to the table, when all of us would spring to
drive her down; while there was a most assiduous watching of the clock
to see when the first bell would ring. Happy was it for us, in the
interim, if we did not begin to look at each other and make up faces, or
slyly slip off and on our shoes, or some other incipient attempts at
roguery, which would gradually so undermine our gravity that there would
be some sudden explosion of merriment, whereat Uncle Phineas would look
up and say, "_Tut, tut_," and Aunt Kezzy would make a speech about
wicked children breaking the Sabbath day. I remember once how my cousin
Bill got into deep disgrace one Sunday by a roguish trick. He was just
about to close his Bible with all sobriety, when snap came a grasshopper
through an open window, and alighted in the middle of the page. Bill
instantly kidnapped the intruder, for so important an auxiliary in the
way of employment was not to be despised. Presently we children looked
towards Bill, and there he sat, very demurely reading his Bible, with
the grasshopper hanging by one leg from the corner of his mouth, kicking
and sprawling, without in the least disturbing Master William's gravity.
We all burst into an uproarious laugh. But it came t