ch as were Millerites.
I reasoned that they and their houses would somehow disappear while we
should remain. So every morning I climbed a little hill to see if
Sylvanus White's house was standing. He was the leading believer in the
end of the world among our neighbors, a prosperous farmer living in a
large, frame house. I heard my mother say that he had no children, and
it did not make much difference to him what happened. I pondered this
remark of my mother trying to think what she meant. I got no farther
than the curious conclusion that all the Millerites were grown up people
without children, and, by a natural deduction, that my mother and
sisters and myself were safe from the end of the world. But I was not
altogether satisfied. In my heart, so much did I delight in having
something going on, that I wanted to see the great event, which I
pictured to myself, remembering the words, flame, smoke and thunder, as
something like the mimic Indian fights I had once seen represented on
the annual training day of the militia men; only this promised to be on
a grander scale.

It is well known that children play at death and funerals without
sorrow; so I played the destruction of the world with great delight. I
made my world of small boxes for houses, one over the other, and on top
of all, a crippled kite which represented Farmer White, as I had heard
that he had prepared a white robe in which to ascend. I wanted of course
some people in my doomed world besides Farmer White. I manufactured
quite an assemblage out of one thing and another and gave them names,
mostly of older boys whom I disliked, my Sunday-school teacher, who gave
me a bad half hour every week, and my uncle Slocomb who was always
telling my mother I would never be a man if she did not stop indulging
me so much. I added a few pretended animals of corn cobs, a dead snake,
a live frog; and, as these did not seem the real thing, I tied my dog
and cat and a lame chicken close to the sacrificial heap. I surrounded
the whole with sticks, paper and pine cones and then came the exciting
moment when I "touched her off," as boys say. What fun, what glee I
experienced at that moment, no one can know, who does not keep in his
bosom a fragment of his boyish heart. Creation may please the gods, but
it cannot equal the boy's pleasure in destruction, especially by fire. I
only needed a few spectators and I soon had them. The flames began to
singe the dog and cat, and fricassee t