alone. All the way there my mind wuz real riz up
thinkin' I wuz goin' to see sunthin' very grand lookin' and
scriptural, and I said over and over to myself a number of times with
deep respect and or, "Tabernacle! Tabernacle!"

Yes, I felt some as if I wuz the Queen of Sheba and Josiah wuz
Solomon, though I might have knowed, my pardner lacked the first
ingregient in Solomon's nater, wisdom. And I probable wuzn't so dressy
as Miss Sheba, 'tennyrate I hadn't no crown or septer, a brown straw
bunnet and umbrell meetin' my wants better, but not nigh so dashy
lookin'. But my feelin's all come from the name of the place we wuz
bound for, and the patriarchical, Biblical past my mind wuz rovin'
round in. Yes, my mind wuz rousted up and runnin' on the trimmin's of
the Ark and Temple. I thought like as not I should see purple curtains
hung on shinin' poles, jest so many cubits long and high, and gorgeous
carpets to walk on and ornaments and fringes and tossels.

I would not ask questions, but I wuz prepared for splendid lookin'
things and lots of 'em. Well, if you'll believe me there wuzn't a
thing there that I expected to see, not a ornament or curtain or
tossel, and nothin' but jest common ground to walk on like our suller
bottom or dooryard. And long benches all through it as fur as the eye
could reach almost.

The platform wuz big as most meetin' housen, but bare and plain, and
there wuz what seemed to be sheets hung up round the hull concern,
though rolled up so we could see out all round us. There wuz only one
way it come up to my idees, and that wuz the cubits. I should think it
wuz jest about as many cubits long and broad as anything ever wuz or
ever will be. They say it will hold five thousand folks, and I should
judge they wuz all there that mornin', and had brung their children
and relations on both sides.

They wuz havin' a song service when we went in, and to hear five
thousand voices or so fillin' that Tabernacle full of high and
inspirin' melody, wuz indeed a treat. It filled it so full that it
oozed out of the sheets on all sides and soared up through the
encirclin' green trees, up, up towards the blue sky, and no knowin'
how much furder it did go upwards, clear up to Heaven like as not, for
that place we have always been told is the home of music. It wuz
sunthin' to remember as long as you lived to hear that great flood of
melody flow out and swash and sway round us, bearin' us some distance
away from ourse