r children? See what groups of them! How
ruddy and plump are most! Some are roguish, and cut clandestine capers
at every chance. Others seem like wax figures, so perfectly proper are
they. Little hands go slyly through the pickets to pluck a tempting
flower. Other hands carry hymn-books or Bibles. But, carry what they
may, dressed as each parent can afford, is there anything the sun shines
upon more beautiful than these troops of Sunday children?

The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple. It was the
licensed noise of the day. In a long shed behind the church stood a
score and half-score of wagons and chaises and carryalls,--the horses
already beginning the forenoon's work of stamping and whisking the
flies. More were coming. Hiram Beers had "hitched up," and brought two
loads with his new hack; and now, having secured the team, he stood with
a few admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as
they came up.

"There's Trowbridge--he'll git asleep afore the first prayer's over. I
don't b'lieve he's heerd a sermon in ten years. I've seen him sleep
standin' up in singin'.

"Here comes Deacon Marble,--smart old feller, ain't he?--wouldn't think
it, jest to look at him! Face looks like an ear of last summer's sweet
corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he's got the juice in him yit! Aunt
Polly's gittin' old, ain't she? They say she can't walk half the
time--lost the use of her limbs; but it's all gone to her tongue. That's
as good as a razor, and a sight better 'n mine, for it never needs
sharpenin'.

"Stand away, boys, there's 'Biah Cathcart. Good horses--not fast, but
mighty strong, just like the owner."

And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs. Cathcart and
Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he dropped his head and
gave the Cathcart boys a look of such awful solemnity, all except one
eye, that they lost their sobriety. Barton alone remained sober as
a judge.

"Here comes 'Dot-and-Go-One' and his wife. They're my kind o'
Christians. She is a saint, at any rate."

"How is it with you, Tommy Taft?"

"Fair to middlin', thank'e. Such weather would make a hand-spike
blossom, Hiram."

"Don't you think that's a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday? P'raps you
mean afore it's cut?"

"Sartin; that's what I mean. But you mustn't stop me, Hiram. Parson
Buell 'll be lookin' for me. He never begins till I git there."

"You mean you always git there 'fore he begins."

Next, Hir