ut of Jerry Marble I never could imagine!
His was the kindest heart that ever bubbled and ran over. He was
elastic, tough, incessantly active, and a prodigious worker. He seemed
never to tire, but after the longest day's toil, he sprang up the moment
he had done with work, as if he were a fine steel spring. A few hours'
sleep sufficed him, and he saw the morning stars the year round. His
weazened face was leather color, but forever dimpling and changing to
keep some sort of congruity between itself and his eyes, that winked and
blinked and spilled over with merry good nature. He always seemed
afflicted when obliged to be sober. He had been known to laugh in
meeting on several occasions, although he ran his face behind his
handkerchief, and coughed, as if _that_ was the matter, yet nobody
believed it. Once, in a hot summer day, he saw Deacon Trowbridge, a
sober and fat man, of great sobriety, gradually ascending from the
bodily state into that spiritual condition called sleep. He was
blameless of the act. He had struggled against the temptation with the
whole virtue of a deacon. He had eaten two or three heads of fennel in
vain, and a piece of orange peel. He had stirred himself up, and fixed
his eyes on the minister with intense firmness, only to have them grow
gradually narrower and milder. If he held his head up firmly, it would
with a sudden lapse fall away over backward. If he leaned it a little
forward, it would drop suddenly into his bosom. At each nod, recovering
himself, he would nod again, with his eyes wide open, to impress upon
the boys that he did it on purpose both times.

In what other painful event of life has a good man so little sympathy as
when overcome with sleep in meeting time? Against the insidious
seduction he arrays every conceivable resistance. He stands up awhile;
he pinches himself, or pricks himself with pins. He looks up helplessly
to the pulpit as if some succor might come thence. He crosses his legs
uncomfortably, and attempts to recite the catechism or the
multiplication table. He seizes a languid fan, which treacherously
leaves him in a calm. He tries to reason, to notice the phenomena. Oh,
that one could carry his pew to bed with him! What tossing wakefulness
there! what fiery chase after somnolency! In his lawful bed a man cannot
sleep, and in his pew he cannot keep awake! Happy man who does not sleep
in church! Deacon Trowbridge was not that man. Deacon Marble was!

Deacon Marble wit