to be most excellent; yet
a certain uneasiness of mind prevented my enjoying the meal as
thoroughly as under other circumstances I might have done. My uneasiness
came of a mingled sense of responsibility and ignorance. I felt that it
was the proper thing for me to see that my nephews spent the day with
some sense of the requirements and duties of the Sabbath; but how I was
to bring it about, I hardly knew. The boys were too small to have
Bible-lessons administered to them, and they were too lively to be kept
quiet by any ordinary means. After a great deal of thought, I determined
to consult the children themselves, and try to learn what their parents'
custom had been.

"Budge," said I, "what do you do Sundays when your papa and mama are
home? What do they read to you,--what do they talk about?"

"Oh, they swing us--lots!" said Budge, with brightening eyes.

"An' zey takes us to get jacks," observed Toddie.

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Budge; "jacks-in-the-pulpit--don't you know?"

"Hum--ye--es; I do remember some such thing in my youthful days. They
grow where there's plenty of mud, don't they?"

"Yes, an' there's a brook there, an' ferns, an' birch-bark, an' if you
don't look out you'll tumble into the brook when you go to get birch."

"An' we goes to Hawksnest Rock," piped Toddie, "an' papa carries us up
on his back when we gets tired."

"An' he makes us whistles," said Budge.

"Budge," said I, rather hastily, "enough. In the language of the poet

"'These earthly pleasures I resign,'

and I'm rather astonished that your papa hasn't taught you to do
likewise. Don't he ever read to you?"

"Oh, yes," cried Budge, clapping his hands, as a happy thought struck
him. "He gets down the Bible--the great _big_ Bible, you know--an' we
all lay on the floor, an' he reads us stories out of it. There's David,
an' Noah, an' when Christ was a little boy, an' Joseph, an'
turnbackPharo'sarmyhallelujah--"

"And what?"

"TurnbackPharo'sarmyhallelujah," repeated Budge. "Don't you know how
Moses held out his cane over the Red Sea, an' the water went way up one
side, an' way up the other side, and all the Isrulites went across? It's
just the same thing as _drown_oldPharo'sarmyhallelujah--don't you
know?"

"Budge," said I, "I suspect you of having heard the Jubilee Singers."

"Oh, and papa and mama sings us all those Jubilee songs--there's 'Swing
Low,' an' 'Roll Jordan,' an' 'Steal Away,' an' 'My Way's Cloudy,' an'
'Get on Boar