Prairie Folks | Page 9

'Hell's Corners' everybody knew
that the Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were
warned against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert
the Dixons.
In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the school-house next day,
said:
"If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse
in my barn."
"I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity
on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye--a
twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly.
There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and
voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a
moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically
Western scene. The women were rigidly on one side of the
school-room, the men as rigidly on the other; the front seats were
occupied by squirming boys and girls in their Sunday splendor.
On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with

paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their
hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads.
Not a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately
between the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the
aisles about the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the
women in much the same way conversed about children and raising
onions and strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday
meeting.
"Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."
The audience thoroughly enjoyed the Elder's prayer. He was certainly
gifted in that direction, and his petition grew genuinely eloquent as his
desires embraced the "ends of the earth and the utterm'st parts of the
seas thereof." But in the midst of it a clatter was heard, and five or six
strapping fellows filed in with loud thumpings of their brogans.
Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on
the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last verse,
every individual voice wavered and all but died out in astonishment to
see William Bacon come in--an unheard-of thing! And with a clean
shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of place as a
cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced, as he
sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands; coatless
and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The girls tittered, of
course, and the boys hammered each other's ribs, moved by the unusual
sight. Milton Jennings, sitting beside Marietta, said:
"Well! may I jump straight up and never come down!"
And Shep Watson said: "May I never see the back o' my neck!" Which
pleased Marietta so much that she grew purple with efforts to conceal
her laughter; she always enjoyed a joke on her father.
But all things have an end, and at last the room became quiet as Mr.
Pill began to read the Scripture, wondering a little at the commotion.
He suspected that those dark-skinned, grinning fellows on the back seat
were the Dixon boys, and knew they were bent on fun. The physique of

the minister being carefully studied, the boys began whispering among
themselves, and at last, just as the sermon opened, they began to push
the line of young men on the long seat over toward the girls' side,
squeezing Milton against Marietta. This pleasantry encouraged one of
them to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing
great laughter and disturbance. The preacher stopped. His cool,
penetrating voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said:
"There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me. If they don't
keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." At this point a
green crab-apple bounded up the aisle. "I'm not to be bulldozed."
He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a
wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying:
"I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I
can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves."
Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human
character, or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they
would have kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push
again, and at last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place.
The preacher was in the midst of a sentence:
"An evil deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of mustard seed. It is small,
but it grows steadily, absorbing its like from the earth