Livy darling, I attended church this morning in a warm drizzling rain.

It was the West & boyhood brought back again, vividly. It was as if twenty-five years had fallen away from me like a garment & I was a lad of eleven again in my Missouri village church of that ancient time.2explanatory note There was the high pulpit, with the red plush pillow for the Bible; the hair sofa behind it, & the distinguished visiting minister from the great town a hundred miles away—gray hair pushed up & back in the stern, intellectual Jacksonian way—spectacles on forehead—ponderous reflection going on behind them, such as the village would expect to see indexed there; & likewise an imperfectly hidden consciousness of being the centre of public gaze & interest. There were the stiff pews; the black velvet contribution-purses attached to long poles, flanking the pulpit; the tall windows and Venetian blinds; the wonderfully slender scattering congregation; the gallery, with ascending seats, opposite the pulpit; six boys scattered through it, with secret spit-ball designs on the bald-headed man dozing below; the wheezy melodeon in the gallery-front; & Ⓐemendation the old maid behind it in severe Ⓐemendation simplicity of dress; the gay young soprano beside her in ribbons & curls & feathers; the quiet alto; the grim middle-aged bass; the smirking, ineffable tenor (tenors are always conceited.)

A short prayer by the local minister

The choir hurled its soul into a “voluntary”—one of those things where the melodeon pumps, & strains, & groans & wails a bit, & then the soprano pipes a reedy solo, the alto drops in a little after, then the bass bursts in, & then the pealing tenor—then a wild chase, one trampling on the heels of the other—then a grand discordant confusion that sets one’s teeth on edge—& finally a triumphant “LO Oh, praise the Lord!” L - o - r - d!” in a unison of unutterable anguish,—& the crime is consummated. It was Herod’s slaughter of the babes set to music.

Then there was a hymn. It was read by the local minister. He put a full stop, with strong emphasis & falling inflection, in the middle & at the end of every line—thus:

“Come, thou fount. Of every blessing. Tune my heart. To sing thy praise. Streams of mercy. Never ceasing. Call for songs. Of endless praise.”3explanatory note

Presently he gave out another hymn, beginning—

“O for a sweet, inspiring ray—”4explanatory note

And it was old times over again, the way the choir raved & roared & rent & flayed around that victime, & hauled it & rent & flayed it. You should have heard the tenor do the first line—

“Ow fra suh-weet insp-hiring rye.”

Now I believe that such execution, honestly & sincerely done, is approved in heaven. And what large comprehension of Heaven’s all-suffering charity the thought affords.

The distinguished minister took his text—he was the agent of a great missionary board—& proceeded to read his moving, argumentative, statistical appeal for money, to the thirty people in the house on this rainy, unpropitious day. That is, he did this after the local minister had read sixteen “notices” of Sunday-school & Bible class, & church, & sewing-society & other meetings; but I could not see that anybody listened to them. However, they never do. The pulpit cannot filch the newspaper’s province in these progressive times.

With the first sentence of the sermon the three or four old white headed men & women bent forward to listen intently; the deaf man put his hand up to his ear; a deacon’s eye-lids drooped; a young girl near me stole a furtive look at a photograph between the leaves of her hymn-book; a little wee girl gaped & stretched, & then nestled against her mother’s shoulder in a way which said “He never will said, “We got to stay here ever so long, now;” one boy got out a peanut Ⓐemendation& contemplated it, as if he had an idea of contemplatin cracking it under cover of some consumptive’s cough the first time he got a chance; another boy began to catch imaginary flies; the boys in the gallery began to edge together, with evil in their eyes; & the engaged couple in front of me began to whisper & laugh behind a hymn-book, & then straighten up & look steadily at e the minister & pinch each other clandestinely. You have seen this couple often. She was a bright, pretty girl of nineteen, & he had his first moustache. These two did nothing but skylark Ⓐemendationall through the sermon, & I really took just as much comfort in it as if I had been a young Ⓐemendation& a party to it. Only—it was such a pity to think that trouble must come to that poor child, & her face wither, & her back bend, & the gladness go out of her eyes. I harbored not a critical thought against her for her un-churchlike Ⓐemendationbehavior. Lord! it was worship! It was the tribute of overflowing life, & youth, health, ignorance of care—it was the tribute of free, unscared, unscarred, unsmitten nature to the good God that gave it! I think it must have been recorded in heaven, above even the choir’s “voluntary.” And when these two giddy creatures stood up & bowed the head when the blessing was invoked, I made easy shift to believe that the as fair a share of the benediction descended upon their them from the Throne as upon me, who had been decorous & reverent & had only picked flaws in the minister’s logic & damned his grammar.

The sermon missionary appeal concluded, the sexton & the decon deacon went around, while the choir wailed, & collected seventy cents for the carrying of glad tidings of great joy to the lost souls of Further India.

Livy my darling, I am getting well rested up, to-day; & now, it being the middle of the afternoon, I am going regularly to bed, & shall rest, & read just what I please—the very first day wherein I have not worked & studied for lo, these many weeks—seven, it is, counting the week of lecture-work at home before I first started out. I tell you I never want to go su Ⓐemendationthrough such a terrific siege again, my sweetheart. Ⓐemendation

Love—oceans of it—to you; & to the cubbie & to mother; 5explanatory note & I do hope I shall hear tomorrow that the boy is doing well & that you are resting & recuperating fast after your hard troubles. Be Ⓐemendationbright & happy—accept the inevitable with a brave heart, since grieving cannot mend it but only makes it the harder to bear, for both of us. All in good time we shall be together again—& then—!