July 17, 2025 • 16 mins
Dive into Warners engaging and humor-filled memoir as he shares his experiences growing up on a farm in Charlemont, Massachusetts. Narrated by Mark Penfold, this podcast will transport you back to a simpler time and place.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter sixteen of Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Mark Penfold, Chapter sixteen, John's Revival. The New England country
boy of the last generation never heard of Christmas. There
(00:22):
was no such day in his calendar. If John ever
came across it in his reading, he attached no meaning
to the word. If his curiosity had been aroused and
he had asked his elders about it, he might have
got the dim impression that it was a kind of
poppish holiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked
as card playing or being a democrat. John knew a
(00:44):
couple of desperately bad boys who were reported to play
seven up in a barn on the hay Mow, and
the enormity of this practice made him shudder. He had
once seen a pack of greasy playing cards, and it
seemed to him to contain the quintessence of sin. If
he had desired to defy all divine law and outrage
all human society, he felt that he could do it
(01:05):
by shuffling them. And he was quite right. The two
bad boys enjoyed in stealth their scandalous past time, because
they knew it was the most wicked thing they could do.
If it had been as sinless as playing marbles, they
wouldn't have cared for it. John sometimes drove past a brown,
tumble down farmhouse whose shiftless inhabitants, it was said, were
(01:25):
card playing people. And it is impossible to describe how
wicked that house appeared to John. He almost expected to
see its shingles stand on end. In the old New England,
one could not in any other way so express his
contempt of all holly and orderly life as by playing
cards for amusement. There was no element of Christmas in
John's life any more than there was of Easter, and
(01:47):
probably nobody about him could have explained Easter. And he
escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas gifts. Indeed, he never
had any presence of any kind, either on his birthday
or any other day. He expected nothing that he did
not earn or make in the way of trade with
another boy. He was taught to work for what he received.
(02:08):
He even earned, as I said, the extra holidays of
the day after the Fourth and the day after Thanksgiving
of the free grace and gifts of Christmas, He had
no conception. The single and melancholy association he had with
it was the quaking hymn which his grandfather used to
sing in a cracked and quavering voice while shepherds watched
(02:28):
their flocks by night, all seated on the ground. The
glory that shone around at the end of it, the
doleful voice always repeating and glories shone around, made John
as miserable as Hark from the Tombs. It was all
one dreary expectation of something uncomfortable. It was, in short, religion,
(02:51):
You'd got to have it some time, that John believed.
But it lay in his unthinking mind to put off
the Hark from the Tombs enjoyment as long as as possible.
He experienced a kind of delightful wickedness in indulging his
dislike of hymns and of Sunday. John was not a
model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what his
(03:11):
wickedness consisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor much
to lie, and he despised meanness and stinginess, and had
a chivalrous feeling toward little girls. Probably it never occurred
to him that there was any virtue in not stealing
and lying for honesty and veracity were in the atmosphere
about him. He hated work, and he got mad easily,
(03:33):
but he did work, and he was always ashamed when
he was over his fit of passion. In short, you
couldn't find a much better wicked boy than John when
the revival came. Therefore, one summer, John was in a
quandary Sunday meeting and Sunday school. He didn't mind. They
were a part of regular life and only temporarily interrupted
a boy's pleasures. But when there began to be evening
(03:56):
meetings at the different houses, a new element came into affairs.
There as a kind of solemnity over the community and
a seriousness in all faces. At first, these twilight assemblies
offered a little relief to the monotony of farm life,
and John liked to meet the boys and girls, and
to watch the older people coming in dressed in their
second best. I think John's imagination was worked upon by
(04:18):
the sweet and mournful hymns that were discordantly sung in
the stiff old parlors. There was a suggestion of sunday
and sanctity too, in the odor of caraway seed that
pervaded the room. The windows were wide open also, and
the scent of june roses came in with all the
languishing sounds of a summer night. All the little boys
had a scared look, but the little girls were never
(04:39):
so pretty and demure as in this their susceptible seriousness.
If John saw a boy who did not come to
the evening meeting, but was wandering off with his sling
down the meadow looking for frogs, maybe that boy seemed
to him a monster of wickedness. After a time, as
the meetings continued, John fell also under the general impression
of fright and syria viousness. All the talk was of
(05:02):
getting religion, and he heard over and over again that
the probability was if he did not get it now,
he never would. The chance did not come often, and
if this offer was not improved, John would be given
over to hardness of heart. His obstinacy would show that
he was not one of the elect John fancied that
he could feel his heart hardening, and he began to
(05:22):
look with a wistful anxiety, into the faces of the
Christians to see what were the visible signs of being
one of the elect John put on a good deal
of a manner that he didn't care, and he never
admitted his disquiet by asking any questions or standing up
and meeting to be prayed for. But he did care.
He heard all the time that all he had to
(05:43):
do was to repent and believe. But there was nothing
that he doubted, and he was perfectly willing to repent.
If he could think of anything to repent of. It
was essential. He learned that he should have a conviction
of sin. This he earnestly tried to have other people
know better than he had it, and he wondered why
he couldn't have it. Boys and girls whom he knew
(06:04):
were under conviction, and John began to fill not only
panicky but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been anxious for days
and days and not able to sleep at night, But
now she had given herself up and found peace. There
was a kind of radiance in her face that struck
John with awe, and he felt that now there was
a great gulf between him and Cynthia. Everybody was going
(06:25):
away from him, and his heart was getting harder than ever.
He couldn't fill wicked. All he could do and there
was Ed Bates, his intimate friend, though older than he,
a wailing, noisy kind of boy who was under conviction
and sure he was going to be lost. How John
envied him, and pretty soon Ed experienced religion. John anxiously
(06:47):
watched the change in Ed's face when he became one
of the elect and a change there was, And John
wondered about another thing. Ed Bates used to go trout
fishing with a tremendously long pole in a meadow brook
near the river. When the trout didn't bite right off,
Ed would get mad, and as soon as one took hold,
he would give an awful jerk, sending the fish more
(07:07):
than three hundred feet into the air and landing it
in the bushes the other side of the meadow, crying out,
go darn ye, I'll learn ye. And John wondered if
Ed would take the little trout out any more gently.
Now John felt more and more lonesome as one after
another of his playmates came out and made a profession. Cynthia,
she too was older than John, sat on Sunday in
(07:28):
the singer's seat. Her voice, which was going to be
a contralto, had a wonderful Patos in it for him,
and he heard it with a heartache. There she is,
thought John, singing away like an angel in heaven, and
I am left out. During all his after life, a
contralto voice was to John one of his most bitter
and heart ringing pleasures. It suggested the immaculate, scornful, the melancholy, unattainable,
(07:53):
if ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into
a conviction of sin. John tried, and what made him
misery was that he couldn't feel miserable when everybody else
was miserable. He even began to pretend to be so.
He put on a serious and anxious look like the others.
He pretended he didn't care for play. He refrained from
chasing chipmunks and snaring suckers. The songs of birds and
(08:16):
the bright vivacity of the summer time that used to
make him turn handsprings smote him as a discordant levity.
He was not a hypocrite at all, and he was
getting to be alarmed that he was not alarmed at himself.
Every day and night he heard that the spirit of
the Lord would probably soon quit striving with him and
leave him out. The phrase was that he would grieve
away the Holy Spirit. John wondered if he was not
(08:39):
doing it. He did everything to put himself in the
way of conviction, was constant at the evening meetings, wore
a grave face, refrained from play, and tried to feel anxious.
At length, he concluded that he must do something. One night,
as he walked home from a solemn meeting at which
several of his little playmates had come forward, he felt
that he could force the crimes. He was alone on
(09:01):
the sandy road. It was an enchanting summer night. The
stars danced overhead, and by his side, the broad and
shallow river ran over its stony bed with a loud
but soothing murmur that filled all the air with entreaty.
John did not then know that it sang, but I
go on forever. Yet there was in it for him
something of the solemn flow of the eternal world. When
(09:24):
he came in sight of the house, he knelt down
in the dust by a pile of rails and prayed.
He prayed that he might feel bad and be distressed
about himself. As he prayed, he heard distinctly, and yet
not as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs
by the meadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts.
It had in it a melancholy pathos, as if it
(09:45):
were a kind of call to the unconverted. What there
is in this sound that suggests the tenderness of spring,
the despair of the summer night, the desolateness of young love.
Years after, it happened to John to be at twilight
at a railway station on the edge of the Ravenna Marshes,
a little way over the Purple Plain. He saw the
darkening towers and heard the sweet bells of Imola. The
(10:08):
Holy Pontiff, Pious the Ninth was born at Imola and
passed his boyhood in that serene and moist region. As
the train waited, John heard from miles of marshes round
about the evening song of millions of frogs, louder and
more melancholy and entreating than the vesper call of the bells,
And instantly his mind went back, For the association of
(10:29):
sound is as subtle as that of odor, to the
prayer years ago by the roadside, and the plaintive appeal
of the unheeded frogs, And he wondered if the little
pope had not heard the like importunity, and perhaps when
he thought of himself as a little pope, associated his
conversion with this plaintive sound. John prayed, but without feeling
any worse, and then went desperately into the house and
(10:51):
told the family that he was in an anxious state
of mind. This was joyful news to the sweet and
pious household, and the little boy was urged to feel
that he was a sinner, to repent and to become
that night a Christian. He was prayed over and told
to read the Bible and put to bed, with the
injunction to repeat all the texts of Scripture in hymns
he could think of. John did this and said over
(11:14):
and over the few texts he was master of, and
tossed about in a real discontent now, for he had
a dim notion that he was playing the hypocrite a little.
But he was sincere enough in wanting to feel as
the other boys and girls felt, that he was a
wicked sinner. He tried to think of his evil deeds,
and one occurred to him. Indeed, it often came to
his mind. It was a lie, a deliberate, awful lie
(11:37):
that never injured anybody but himself. John knew he was
not wicked enough to tell a lie to injure anybody else.
This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before
John's class was to recite in geography, his pretty cousin,
a young lady he held in great love and respect,
came in to visit the school. John was a favorite
with her, and she had come to hear him recite.
(11:58):
As it happened, John felt shaky in the geographical lesson
of that day, and he feared to be humiliated in
the presence of his cousin. He felt embarrassed to that
degree that he couldn't have bounded Massachusetts. So he stood
up and raised his hand and said to the school, ma'am, Please, ma'am,
I've got the stomach ache. May I go home. And
John's character for truthfulness was so high, and even this
(12:21):
was ever a reproach to him, that his word was
instantly believed, and he was dismissed without any medical examination.
For a moment, John was delighted to get out of
school so early, but soon his guilt took all the
light out of the summer sky and the pleasantness out
of nature. He had to walk slowly, without a single
hop or jump as became a diseased boy. The sight
(12:42):
of a woodchuck at a distance from his well known
hole tempted John, but he restrained himself lest somebody should
see him and know that chasing a woodchuck was inconsistent
with the stomach ache. He was acting a miserable part,
but it had to be gone through with. He went
home and told his mother the reason he had left school,
but he added that he felt some better now. The
(13:02):
some didn't save him. Genuine sympathy was lavish on him.
He had to swallow a stiff dose of nasty picra,
the horror of all childhood, and he was put in
bed immediately. The world never looked so pleasant to John,
but to bed he was forced to go. He was
excused from all chores. He was not even to go
after the cows. John said he thought he ought to
(13:24):
go after the cows, much as he hated the business.
Usually he would now willingly have wandered over the world
after cows. And for this heroic offer, in the condition
he was, he got credit for a desire to do
his duty, and this unjust confidence in him added to
his torture, and he had intended to set his hooks
that night for eels. His cousin came home and sat
(13:45):
by his bedside and condoled with him. His school ma'am
had sent word how sorry she was for him. John
was such a good boy. Ah, this was dreadful, he
groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper.
It would be very dangerous to eat a more. The
prospect was appalling. Never was there such a long twilight.
Never before did he hear so many sounds outdoors that
(14:06):
he wanted to investigate. Being ill without any illness was
a horrible condition, and he began to have real stomach
ache now, and it ached because it was empty. John
was hungry enough to have eaten the New England primer.
But by and bye sleep came and John forgot his
woes in dreaming that he knew where Madagascar was just
as easy as anything. It was this lie that came
(14:28):
back to John the night. He was trying to be
affected by the revival, and he was very much ashamed
of it and believed he would never tell another. But
then he fell thinking whether with the picra and the
going to bed in the afternoon and the loss of
his supper he had not been sufficiently paid for it.
And in this unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off
in sleep. And the truth must be told that in
(14:49):
the morning John was no nearer to realizing the terrors
he desired to fill. But he was a conscientious boy
and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of
the season. He not only put himself away from them all,
but he refrained from doing almost everything that he wanted
to do. There came at that time a newspaper, a
secular newspaper, which had in it a long account of
(15:10):
the Long Island races, in which the famous horse Lexington
was a runner. John was fond of horses, he knew
about Lexington, and he had looked forward to the result
of this race with keen interest. But to read the
account of it, how he felt, might destroy his seriousness
of mind, and in all reverence and simplicity, he felt
it be a means of grieving away the Holy Spirit.
(15:32):
He therefore hid away the paper in a table drawer,
intending to read it when the revival should be over.
Weeks after, when he looked for the newspaper, it was
not to be found, and John never knew what time
Lexington made, nor anything about the race. This was to
him a serious loss, but by no means so deep
as another feeling that remained with him. For when his
little world returned to its ordinary course, and long after,
(15:55):
John had an uneasy apprehension of his own separateness from
other people in his inner sensibility to the revival. Perhaps
the experience was a damage to him, and it is
a pity that there was no one to explain that religion,
for a little fellow like him, is not a scheme.
End of Chapter sixteen. Recording by Mark Penfold
Chapter sixteen of Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Mark Penfold, Chapter sixteen, John's Revival. The New England country
boy of the last generation never heard of Christmas. There
(00:22):
was no such day in his calendar. If John ever
came across it in his reading, he attached no meaning
to the word. If his curiosity had been aroused and
he had asked his elders about it, he might have
got the dim impression that it was a kind of
poppish holiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked
as card playing or being a democrat. John knew a
(00:44):
couple of desperately bad boys who were reported to play
seven up in a barn on the hay Mow, and
the enormity of this practice made him shudder. He had
once seen a pack of greasy playing cards, and it
seemed to him to contain the quintessence of sin. If
he had desired to defy all divine law and outrage
all human society, he felt that he could do it
(01:05):
by shuffling them. And he was quite right. The two
bad boys enjoyed in stealth their scandalous past time, because
they knew it was the most wicked thing they could do.
If it had been as sinless as playing marbles, they
wouldn't have cared for it. John sometimes drove past a brown,
tumble down farmhouse whose shiftless inhabitants, it was said, were
(01:25):
card playing people. And it is impossible to describe how
wicked that house appeared to John. He almost expected to
see its shingles stand on end. In the old New England,
one could not in any other way so express his
contempt of all holly and orderly life as by playing
cards for amusement. There was no element of Christmas in
John's life any more than there was of Easter, and
(01:47):
probably nobody about him could have explained Easter. And he
escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas gifts. Indeed, he never
had any presence of any kind, either on his birthday
or any other day. He expected nothing that he did
not earn or make in the way of trade with
another boy. He was taught to work for what he received.
(02:08):
He even earned, as I said, the extra holidays of
the day after the Fourth and the day after Thanksgiving
of the free grace and gifts of Christmas, He had
no conception. The single and melancholy association he had with
it was the quaking hymn which his grandfather used to
sing in a cracked and quavering voice while shepherds watched
(02:28):
their flocks by night, all seated on the ground. The
glory that shone around at the end of it, the
doleful voice always repeating and glories shone around, made John
as miserable as Hark from the Tombs. It was all
one dreary expectation of something uncomfortable. It was, in short, religion,
(02:51):
You'd got to have it some time, that John believed.
But it lay in his unthinking mind to put off
the Hark from the Tombs enjoyment as long as as possible.
He experienced a kind of delightful wickedness in indulging his
dislike of hymns and of Sunday. John was not a
model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what his
(03:11):
wickedness consisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor much
to lie, and he despised meanness and stinginess, and had
a chivalrous feeling toward little girls. Probably it never occurred
to him that there was any virtue in not stealing
and lying for honesty and veracity were in the atmosphere
about him. He hated work, and he got mad easily,
(03:33):
but he did work, and he was always ashamed when
he was over his fit of passion. In short, you
couldn't find a much better wicked boy than John when
the revival came. Therefore, one summer, John was in a
quandary Sunday meeting and Sunday school. He didn't mind. They
were a part of regular life and only temporarily interrupted
a boy's pleasures. But when there began to be evening
(03:56):
meetings at the different houses, a new element came into affairs.
There as a kind of solemnity over the community and
a seriousness in all faces. At first, these twilight assemblies
offered a little relief to the monotony of farm life,
and John liked to meet the boys and girls, and
to watch the older people coming in dressed in their
second best. I think John's imagination was worked upon by
(04:18):
the sweet and mournful hymns that were discordantly sung in
the stiff old parlors. There was a suggestion of sunday
and sanctity too, in the odor of caraway seed that
pervaded the room. The windows were wide open also, and
the scent of june roses came in with all the
languishing sounds of a summer night. All the little boys
had a scared look, but the little girls were never
(04:39):
so pretty and demure as in this their susceptible seriousness.
If John saw a boy who did not come to
the evening meeting, but was wandering off with his sling
down the meadow looking for frogs, maybe that boy seemed
to him a monster of wickedness. After a time, as
the meetings continued, John fell also under the general impression
of fright and syria viousness. All the talk was of
(05:02):
getting religion, and he heard over and over again that
the probability was if he did not get it now,
he never would. The chance did not come often, and
if this offer was not improved, John would be given
over to hardness of heart. His obstinacy would show that
he was not one of the elect John fancied that
he could feel his heart hardening, and he began to
(05:22):
look with a wistful anxiety, into the faces of the
Christians to see what were the visible signs of being
one of the elect John put on a good deal
of a manner that he didn't care, and he never
admitted his disquiet by asking any questions or standing up
and meeting to be prayed for. But he did care.
He heard all the time that all he had to
(05:43):
do was to repent and believe. But there was nothing
that he doubted, and he was perfectly willing to repent.
If he could think of anything to repent of. It
was essential. He learned that he should have a conviction
of sin. This he earnestly tried to have other people
know better than he had it, and he wondered why
he couldn't have it. Boys and girls whom he knew
(06:04):
were under conviction, and John began to fill not only
panicky but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been anxious for days
and days and not able to sleep at night, But
now she had given herself up and found peace. There
was a kind of radiance in her face that struck
John with awe, and he felt that now there was
a great gulf between him and Cynthia. Everybody was going
(06:25):
away from him, and his heart was getting harder than ever.
He couldn't fill wicked. All he could do and there
was Ed Bates, his intimate friend, though older than he,
a wailing, noisy kind of boy who was under conviction
and sure he was going to be lost. How John
envied him, and pretty soon Ed experienced religion. John anxiously
(06:47):
watched the change in Ed's face when he became one
of the elect and a change there was, And John
wondered about another thing. Ed Bates used to go trout
fishing with a tremendously long pole in a meadow brook
near the river. When the trout didn't bite right off,
Ed would get mad, and as soon as one took hold,
he would give an awful jerk, sending the fish more
(07:07):
than three hundred feet into the air and landing it
in the bushes the other side of the meadow, crying out,
go darn ye, I'll learn ye. And John wondered if
Ed would take the little trout out any more gently.
Now John felt more and more lonesome as one after
another of his playmates came out and made a profession. Cynthia,
she too was older than John, sat on Sunday in
(07:28):
the singer's seat. Her voice, which was going to be
a contralto, had a wonderful Patos in it for him,
and he heard it with a heartache. There she is,
thought John, singing away like an angel in heaven, and
I am left out. During all his after life, a
contralto voice was to John one of his most bitter
and heart ringing pleasures. It suggested the immaculate, scornful, the melancholy, unattainable,
(07:53):
if ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into
a conviction of sin. John tried, and what made him
misery was that he couldn't feel miserable when everybody else
was miserable. He even began to pretend to be so.
He put on a serious and anxious look like the others.
He pretended he didn't care for play. He refrained from
chasing chipmunks and snaring suckers. The songs of birds and
(08:16):
the bright vivacity of the summer time that used to
make him turn handsprings smote him as a discordant levity.
He was not a hypocrite at all, and he was
getting to be alarmed that he was not alarmed at himself.
Every day and night he heard that the spirit of
the Lord would probably soon quit striving with him and
leave him out. The phrase was that he would grieve
away the Holy Spirit. John wondered if he was not
(08:39):
doing it. He did everything to put himself in the
way of conviction, was constant at the evening meetings, wore
a grave face, refrained from play, and tried to feel anxious.
At length, he concluded that he must do something. One night,
as he walked home from a solemn meeting at which
several of his little playmates had come forward, he felt
that he could force the crimes. He was alone on
(09:01):
the sandy road. It was an enchanting summer night. The
stars danced overhead, and by his side, the broad and
shallow river ran over its stony bed with a loud
but soothing murmur that filled all the air with entreaty.
John did not then know that it sang, but I
go on forever. Yet there was in it for him
something of the solemn flow of the eternal world. When
(09:24):
he came in sight of the house, he knelt down
in the dust by a pile of rails and prayed.
He prayed that he might feel bad and be distressed
about himself. As he prayed, he heard distinctly, and yet
not as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs
by the meadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts.
It had in it a melancholy pathos, as if it
(09:45):
were a kind of call to the unconverted. What there
is in this sound that suggests the tenderness of spring,
the despair of the summer night, the desolateness of young love.
Years after, it happened to John to be at twilight
at a railway station on the edge of the Ravenna Marshes,
a little way over the Purple Plain. He saw the
darkening towers and heard the sweet bells of Imola. The
(10:08):
Holy Pontiff, Pious the Ninth was born at Imola and
passed his boyhood in that serene and moist region. As
the train waited, John heard from miles of marshes round
about the evening song of millions of frogs, louder and
more melancholy and entreating than the vesper call of the bells,
And instantly his mind went back, For the association of
(10:29):
sound is as subtle as that of odor, to the
prayer years ago by the roadside, and the plaintive appeal
of the unheeded frogs, And he wondered if the little
pope had not heard the like importunity, and perhaps when
he thought of himself as a little pope, associated his
conversion with this plaintive sound. John prayed, but without feeling
any worse, and then went desperately into the house and
(10:51):
told the family that he was in an anxious state
of mind. This was joyful news to the sweet and
pious household, and the little boy was urged to feel
that he was a sinner, to repent and to become
that night a Christian. He was prayed over and told
to read the Bible and put to bed, with the
injunction to repeat all the texts of Scripture in hymns
he could think of. John did this and said over
(11:14):
and over the few texts he was master of, and
tossed about in a real discontent now, for he had
a dim notion that he was playing the hypocrite a little.
But he was sincere enough in wanting to feel as
the other boys and girls felt, that he was a
wicked sinner. He tried to think of his evil deeds,
and one occurred to him. Indeed, it often came to
his mind. It was a lie, a deliberate, awful lie
(11:37):
that never injured anybody but himself. John knew he was
not wicked enough to tell a lie to injure anybody else.
This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before
John's class was to recite in geography, his pretty cousin,
a young lady he held in great love and respect,
came in to visit the school. John was a favorite
with her, and she had come to hear him recite.
(11:58):
As it happened, John felt shaky in the geographical lesson
of that day, and he feared to be humiliated in
the presence of his cousin. He felt embarrassed to that
degree that he couldn't have bounded Massachusetts. So he stood
up and raised his hand and said to the school, ma'am, Please, ma'am,
I've got the stomach ache. May I go home. And
John's character for truthfulness was so high, and even this
(12:21):
was ever a reproach to him, that his word was
instantly believed, and he was dismissed without any medical examination.
For a moment, John was delighted to get out of
school so early, but soon his guilt took all the
light out of the summer sky and the pleasantness out
of nature. He had to walk slowly, without a single
hop or jump as became a diseased boy. The sight
(12:42):
of a woodchuck at a distance from his well known
hole tempted John, but he restrained himself lest somebody should
see him and know that chasing a woodchuck was inconsistent
with the stomach ache. He was acting a miserable part,
but it had to be gone through with. He went
home and told his mother the reason he had left school,
but he added that he felt some better now. The
(13:02):
some didn't save him. Genuine sympathy was lavish on him.
He had to swallow a stiff dose of nasty picra,
the horror of all childhood, and he was put in
bed immediately. The world never looked so pleasant to John,
but to bed he was forced to go. He was
excused from all chores. He was not even to go
after the cows. John said he thought he ought to
(13:24):
go after the cows, much as he hated the business.
Usually he would now willingly have wandered over the world
after cows. And for this heroic offer, in the condition
he was, he got credit for a desire to do
his duty, and this unjust confidence in him added to
his torture, and he had intended to set his hooks
that night for eels. His cousin came home and sat
(13:45):
by his bedside and condoled with him. His school ma'am
had sent word how sorry she was for him. John
was such a good boy. Ah, this was dreadful, he
groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper.
It would be very dangerous to eat a more. The
prospect was appalling. Never was there such a long twilight.
Never before did he hear so many sounds outdoors that
(14:06):
he wanted to investigate. Being ill without any illness was
a horrible condition, and he began to have real stomach
ache now, and it ached because it was empty. John
was hungry enough to have eaten the New England primer.
But by and bye sleep came and John forgot his
woes in dreaming that he knew where Madagascar was just
as easy as anything. It was this lie that came
(14:28):
back to John the night. He was trying to be
affected by the revival, and he was very much ashamed
of it and believed he would never tell another. But
then he fell thinking whether with the picra and the
going to bed in the afternoon and the loss of
his supper he had not been sufficiently paid for it.
And in this unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off
in sleep. And the truth must be told that in
(14:49):
the morning John was no nearer to realizing the terrors
he desired to fill. But he was a conscientious boy
and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of
the season. He not only put himself away from them all,
but he refrained from doing almost everything that he wanted
to do. There came at that time a newspaper, a
secular newspaper, which had in it a long account of
(15:10):
the Long Island races, in which the famous horse Lexington
was a runner. John was fond of horses, he knew
about Lexington, and he had looked forward to the result
of this race with keen interest. But to read the
account of it, how he felt, might destroy his seriousness
of mind, and in all reverence and simplicity, he felt
it be a means of grieving away the Holy Spirit.
(15:32):
He therefore hid away the paper in a table drawer,
intending to read it when the revival should be over.
Weeks after, when he looked for the newspaper, it was
not to be found, and John never knew what time
Lexington made, nor anything about the race. This was to
him a serious loss, but by no means so deep
as another feeling that remained with him. For when his
little world returned to its ordinary course, and long after,
(15:55):
John had an uneasy apprehension of his own separateness from
other people in his inner sensibility to the revival. Perhaps
the experience was a damage to him, and it is
a pity that there was no one to explain that religion,
for a little fellow like him, is not a scheme.
End of Chapter sixteen. Recording by Mark Penfold
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