sat "the spilled-over old lady". My sister
had first called her the spilled-over old lady, because she seemed to
have been crowded out by the six old ladies in the pew behind, and to
have been permanently soured by the slight. Her hair was done up in a
tight, emphatic pug, her profile suggested vinegar--or perhaps it was
her complexion. At any rate, when I looked at her I thought of
vinegar. I wondered if she ever ate peppermints, and if they tasted
the same to her as to other people.

Presently I leaned forward and extracted a hymn book from the rack
attached to the back of the pew in front. This rack contained, besides
hymn books, a pair of old gloves done into a wad wrong side out, two
fans, "leaflets" of all sorts, and little envelopes for the
collection. Most of the "leaflets" were appeals for charity, I fancy.
At any rate, many of them were full of pictures of poor little city
children suffering from all sorts of diseases, and oppressed me
horribly. But I could always rely on the hymn book. My first
consciousness that there is any difference between prose and poetry
except in the matter of rhyme came from reading the hymn book, from
Whittier's,--

I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.

I had no idea what kind of a palm a fronded palm is, but I fancied it
something much grander and taller than other palms; and the whole hymn
filled my mind with a large, expansive imagery, breathed over my
little spirit an ineffable serenity. This hymn I now read while the
minister talked away behind his minor-prophet whiskers;--this, and
Wesley's,--

A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify;
A never-dying soul to save,
And fit it for the sky.

This stanza always made me want to get up and shout. I read and
re-read it, repeating it, with noiseless lips. The tune it went to
seemed inadequate, the more so as in our church tunes were always
dragged to the limit of non-conformist dolorousness. The stanza seemed
to me, even then, happy, hopeful, staccato, jubilant. I wonder what I
should have thought had I known its author was a Methodist? Could good
come out of Nazareth, after all? Instead, I fell to wondering about
the after life in the sky. Heaven I pictured as a city builded on a
cloud. If, on a very clear day, the cloud should dry up what, I
speculated, would the angels walk on? Then it occurred to me that