proud of. Why, in half an hour's time I was wondering how I could make the virtuous jobs last. Already my chest swelled, as I see myself pointed to on the street as a model boy.

My first stagger at being the Village Pride come off next day—Sunday. It would take a poet to describe how much I didn't like Sunday, and a large, black-whiskered poet, at that. Man! Sitting in that little old church of a warm day, with the bees bumbling outside, and all kinds of smells coaxing, coaxing me to the woods, and a kind of uneasy, dry feeling of the skin, that only the water-hole by the cider-mill could cure. Then to know, too, that the godless offspring of the unregenerate were at that minute diving from the dam—chow!—into the slippery cool water—and me the best diver in the crowd....

I wriggled, squirmed my fingers into knots, and let my fancy roam. Roaming fancy was my one amusement in church.

We had the kind of minister who roars one minute and whispers the next. I always imagined he shouted as loud as he dared, short of waking the baby. I never was done being surprised, after he'd hissed the conclusion through his teeth in a way that should have sent chills down your backbone, to hear him rattle off a bunch of notices as fast as he could talk.

I couldn't get interested in the sermon, so my mind wandered. At times an elephant sneaked through the back door and blew a barrel of water down the preacher's back. Then there was the monkey. He skipped gaily from pew to pew, yanking the women's bonnets off, pulling the men's hair, hanging from the roof-beams by his tail, and applying a disrespectful thumb to his nose. That elephant and monkey got to be as real as anything. Sometimes they'd jump into life when I wasn't thinking of 'em at all.

This Sunday, however, I made a manful stand against temptation. As soon as the elephant peeked through the door, I took a long breath and forced him out. I didn't let the monkey much more 'n bob his head over Deacon Anker's pew, although one of my pet delights was when he grabbed the deacon's top-knot and twisted it into a rope.

And my reward for an honest try was to listen to as lovely a tale of treachery and unladylike behavior as I can remember. The sermon was about a Mrs. Jael. She took in one of the enemy, fed him fine, and while he was asleep, grabbed a hammer and a railroad spike and nailed him to the floor by his head. Whilst I was revolving in my mind how, and on what person, I could best apply these teachings, another thought occurred to me.

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