Being left to myself,up there,I went on picking out old houses in the distant town,and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy past.
Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem Hackett (fictitious name).It carried me back more than a generation in a moment,and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of life were not the natural and logical results of great general laws,but of special orders,and were freighted with very precise and distinct purposes--partly punitive in intent,partly admonitory;and usually local in application.
When I was a small boy,Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday.
He fell out of an empty flat-boat,where he was playing.
Being loaded with sin,he went to the bottom like an anvil.
He was the only boy in the village who slept that night.
We others all lay awake,repenting.We had not needed the information,delivered from the pulpit that evening,that Lem's was a case of special judgment--we knew that,already.There was a ferocious thunder-storm,that night,and it raged continuously until near dawn.
The winds blew,the windows rattled,the rain swept along the roof in pelting sheets,and at the briefest of intervals the inky blackness of the night vanished,the houses over the way glared out white and blinding for a quivering instant,then the solid darkness shut down again and a splitting peal of thunder followed,which seemed to rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters.
I sat up in bed quaking and shuddering,waiting for the destruction of the world,and expecting it.To me there was nothing strange or incongruous in heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett.
Apparently it was the right and proper thing to do.
Not a doubt entered my mind that all the angels were grouped together,discussing this boy's case and observing the awful bombardment of our beggarly little village with satisfaction and approval.
There was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious way;that was the thought that this centering of the celestial interest on our village could not fail to attract the attention of the observers to people among us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years.
I felt that I was not only one of those people,but the very one most likely to be discovered.That discovery could have but one result:
I should be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the river had been fairly warmed out of him.I knew that this would be only just and fair.I was increasing the chances against myself all the time,by feeling a secret bitterness against Lem for having attracted this fatal attention to me,but I could not help it--this sinful thought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me.
Every time the lightning glared I caught my breath,and judged I was gone.
In my terror and misery,I meanly began to suggest other boys,and mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than mine,and peculiarly needed punishment--and I tried to pretend to myself that I was simply doing this in a casual way,and without intent to divert the heavenly attention to them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself.
With deep sagacity I put these mentions into the form of sorrowing recollections and left-handed sham-supplications that the sins of those boys might be allowed to pass unnoticed--'Possibly they may repent.'
'It is true that Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it--but maybe he did not mean any harm.And although Tom Holmes says more bad words than any other boy in the village,he probably intends to repent--though he has never said he would.
And whilst it is a fact that John Jones did fish a little on Sunday,once,he didn't really catch anything but only just one small useless mud-cat;and maybe that wouldn't have been so awful if he had thrown it back--as he says he did,but he didn't.Pity but they would repent of these dreadful things--and maybe they will yet.'
But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps--who were doubtless directing the celestial attention to me at the same moment,though I never once suspected that--I had heedlessly left my candle burning.
It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions.There was no occasion to add anything to the facilities for attracting notice to me--so I put the light out.
It was a long night to me,and perhaps the most distressful one I ever spent.
I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had committed,and for others which I was not certain about,yet was sure that they had been set down against me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and did not trust such important matters to memory.It struck me,by and by,that I had been making a most foolish and calamitous mistake,in one respect:doubtless I had not only made my own destruction sure by directing attention to those other boys,but had already accomplished theirs!--Doubtless the lightning had stretched them all dead in their beds by this time!
The anguish and the fright which this thought gave me made my previous sufferings seem trifling by comparison.
Things had become truly serious.I resolved to turn over a new leaf instantly;I also resolved to connect myself with the church the next day,if I survived to see its sun appear.I resolved to cease from sin in all its forms,and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after.
I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school;visit the sick;carry baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfil the regulation conditions,although I knew we had none among us so poor but they would smash the basket over my head for my pains);I would instruct other boys in right ways,and take the resulting trouncings meekly;I would subsist entirely on tracts;I would invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard--and finally,if I escaped the fate of those who early become too good to live,I would go for a missionary.
