Vesty of the Basins | Page 3

but vociferous refrain of "He will carry you
through," and entered in time to take our seats for the class.
Elder Skates stood with a lesson paper in his hand, from which he
asked questions with painful literalness and adherence to the text.
The audience, having no lesson paper or previous preparation of the
sort, and not daring to enter into these themes with that originality of
thought and expression displayed in their former conversation,
answered only now and then, with the pale air of hitting at a broad
guess.
"Is sin the cause of sorrow?" said Elder Skates.

No reply.
"Is sin the cause of sorrow?" he repeated faithfully.
At this point, one of a row of small boys on the back seat, no more
capable of appreciating this critical period of the Sunday-school than
the broad-faced sculpin fish which he resembled, took an alder-leaf
from his pocket and, lifting it to his mouth, popped it, with an
explosion so successful and loud that it startled even himself.
His guardian (aunt), who sat directly in front of him, though deaf, heard
some echo of this note; and seeing the sudden glances directed their
way, she turned and, observing the look of frozen horror and surprise
upon his features, said severely, "You stop that sithing" (sighing).
Delighted at this full and unexpected escape from guilt and its
consequences, the sculpin embraced his fellow-sculpins with such
ecstasy that he fell off from his seat, upon the floor.
His aunt, turning again, and having no doubt as to his position this time,
lifted him and restored him to his place with a determination so
pronounced that the act in itself was clearly audible.
"You set your spanker-beam down there now, and keep still!" she said.
Elber Skates took advantage of this providential disturbance to slide on
to the next question:
"How can we escape trouble?"
No reply.
"How can we escape trouble?" he meekly and patiently repeated.
"Good Lord, Skates!" said Captain Pharo, and put his hand in his
pocket for his pipe, but bethought himself, and withdrew it, with a deep
sigh.
Elder Skates had looked at him with hope, but now again mechanically

reiterated:
"How--can--we--escape--trouble?"
"We can't! we can't no way in this world!" said Captain Pharo. "Where
in h--ll did you scrape up them questions, Skates? Escape trouble? Be
you a married man, Skates? I'd always reckoned ye was! Poo! poo!
Hohum! Wal--wal--never mind--
[Illustration: Music fragment: 'Or the morn-ing flow'r. The blight--'"]
He bethought himself again of his surroundings, spat far out of the
window as a melancholy resource, and was silent.
Elder Skates, alarmed and staggered, looked softly down his list of
questions for something vaguely impersonal, widely abstract, and now
lit upon it with a smile.
"What is the meaning of 'Alphy and Omegy'?" he said--and waited,
weary but safe.
But at the second repetition of this inscrutable conundrum, a lank and
tall girl of some fifteen summers, arose and said, not without something
of the sublime air becoming a solitary intelligence: "It's the great and
only Pot-entate."
Elder Skates showed no sign of having been hit to death, but gazed
vaguely at each one of his audience in turn, and then turned with dazed
approval to the girl.
"Very good. Very good indeed," said he. "How true that is! Let us try
and act upon it during the week, according to our lights.
Providence--nor nothin' else--preventin', we will have our
Sunday-school here as usual next Sunday, and I hope we shall all try
and keep up religion. Is there anybody willing to have the 'five-cent
supper' this week, in order to raise funds for a united burying-ground?
We have been long at work on this good cause, but, I'm sorry to say,
interest seems to be flaggin'. Is there anybody willin' to have the

five-cent supper this week?"
"I can, I suppose," said the woman who had been willing to sing
without tune. "But I can't give beans no longer. I can give beet greens
and duck."
"I don't think it was any wonder we was gettin' discouraged," said
another now resuscitated voice. "Zely had the last one, and Fluke for
devilment gets a lot of the Artichokes over early ter help the cause. Wal,
you might know there wa'n't no beans left for the Capers and Basins,
and Zely was dreadful mortified, for there was several Crooked
Rivers."
"Cap'n Nason Teel says," continued that individual's wife, "that the
treasury 's fell behind; he says there ain't nothin' made in five-cent
suppers, Artichokes or no Artichokes--in beans and corn-beef; he says
we've got to give somethin' that don't cost nothin'. Beet greens and
duck don't cost nothin', and if that 's agreeable, I'm willin'."
"All the same, beet greens and duck is very good eatin', I think,"
proposed