American fiction -- 19th century; Christmas stories, American
I must tell you first about the Church where the children who bought the
Font went to Sunday school. St. Luke’s we call it, and it stands on the
corner where two streets cross each other, in a little village which we
will call Carrollton. That is not its real name, you know, but I will
call it that, and then go on to tell you how the church is built of
stone, with a spire from which the paint has been worn off by time, and
the rains which beat against it from the west. The window, too, on that
side, has been broken by the wind, and boards are nailed across the top
where the stained glass used to be. But the window will be mended in
time; the old spire will be repainted; the ivy at the corner will reach
higher and higher, until the tendrils will cling perhaps to the very
roof; the fence will be built around that plot of grass, which looks so
fresh this morning; and then the church will be as nice and neat as it
was the day it was completed and consecrated to God. It is very pretty
now inside, and the fine-toned organ in the gallery makes sweet music on
a Sunday when they chant the “Gloria in Excelsis” and sing “Peace on
earth, good-will to men.” That organ has played the Christmas songs
which tell of a Saviour born, and the joyful Easter carols, which
proclaim a Saviour risen. It has pealed a merry strain as bridal parties
went up the aisle to the altar bedecked with flowers, and then its notes
have been sad,—oh, so sad!—as strong men carried coffins up the aisle
and laid them on the table. Two of them little coffins, with a dead boy
in each,—boys who once came to the Sunday school, but who will never
come again, or join their voices in the hymns the children sing and the
prayers they say.
To the left of the chancel, looking toward the organ, is a little
enclosure, or room where the singers used to sit, but which is now used
for the infant class;—the nursery which feeds the larger Sunday school.
It is nearly seven years since the class was first organized, and,
during that time, there have been in it one hundred different children.
Three of these are dead,—three little boys,—and they lie up in the quiet
graveyard where the white stones show so prettily through the dark
evergreens. Berkie was the first to die,—blue-eyed, pale-faced Berkie,
who used to sit so quietly all through the Sunday school, with an
earnest expression on his thoughtful face and in his great blue eyes, as
if he were already looking away from this world into the one where he
was going so soon. There is a picture on the wall before me of Berkie,
with many other members of his class, and I never look at it without a
sigh, as I recall the dear little boy who used to run so gladly to meet
me, and listen so attentively to the stories I told him of Jesus; and
then I think of that innumerable host of white-robed children
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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