im jest as plain as they could in
Old Testament times; oh, yes, jest as plain exactly; Abraham and all
them, yew know! And Brother Mark Barlow generally means to go to Sunday
school. He says he thinks it's so interestin'; but it's sich an awful
ways. Don't yew think it is? Oh, yes, it's a dreadful ways! He don't
always. But yew remember that Saturday we had sich a dreadful storm? oh,
wasn't it dreadful! Oh, yes! Well, the next day, that was Sunday, Brother
Mark Barlow said he heard the Lord sayin' to him, jest as plain as day;
'Mark Barlow, don't you go to Sunday school to-day! You stay home and
pick up laths!' and he did, and oh, he got a dreadful pile! most ten
dollars worth; but I think it's so nice, don't yew, to have direct
dealin's with the Almighty!"

The Barlows, by the way, were regarded with a sort of contemptuous
toleration by the Wallencampers in general, on account of their thrift
and penuriousness, the branded qualities of sordid and unpoetic natures.

I was sorry when the brief hour of the noon intermission was over, and I
had to go back to school.

But at night the Ark became alive. Soon after supper, Mr. Barlow arrived
and "Brother Mark Barlow" and Lovell. Then the little room began to fill
rapidly. We adjourned to the "parlor" and the melodeon.

"Oh, I do think them plaster Paris picters are so beautiful, don't yew?"
said Mrs. Barlow, enraptured over a statuette or two of that truly vague
description, which adorned the mantelpiece. But she became perfectly
lost in delight when Lovell began to sing.

Lovell's was the one execrable voice among the Wallencampers--if anything
so weak could be designated by so strong a term--and his manner of
keeping time with his head was clock-like in its regularity and painfully
arduous; yet, out of that pristine naughtiness which found a hiding-place
in the hearts of the Wallencamp youth, Lovell was frequently encouraged
to come to the front during their musicals, and if not actually beguiled
into executing a solo, was generously applauded in the performance of
minor parts. There was comfort, however, in the reflection that if Lovell
had indeed possessed the tuneful gift of a Heaven-elected artist, he
could not have been so supremely confident of the merit of his own
performances, nor could his mother have been more delighted at their
brilliancy. She sat with hands clasped in her lap and gazed at her manly
offspring.

"Oh, I do think it's so beautiful!" she murmur