in stealth their scandalous pastime,
because they knew it was the most wicked thing they could do. If it had
been as sinless as playing marbles, they would n't have cared for
it. John sometimes drove past a brown, tumble-down farmhouse, whose
shiftless inhabitants, it was said, were 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 holy 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 probably nobody about him could have explained
Easter; and he escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas gifts.
Indeed, he never had any presents 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. 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 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 glory 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." 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 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
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; 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 wicke