“'And make a joyful noise.,” The dog was turned out, and the choir did their best to make a joyful noise; but we boys were upset for the day, delivered over to the temptations of Satan, and plunged in waves and billows of hysterical giggle, from which neither winks nor frowns from Aunt Lois, nor the awful fear of the tithing-man, nor the comforting bits of fennel and orange-peel passed us by grandmother, could recover us. Everybody felt, to be sure, that here was a trial that called for some indulgence. Hard faces, even among the stoniest saints, betrayed a transient quiver of the risible muscles; old ladies put up their fans; youths and maidens in the singers' seat laughed outright; and, for the moment, a general snicker among the children was pardoned. But I was one of that luckless kind, whose nerves, once set in vibration, could not be composed. When the reign of gravity and decorum had returned, Harry and I sat by each other, shaking with suppressed laughter. Every thing in the subsequent exercises took a funny turn; and in the long prayer, when everybody else was still and decorous, the whole scene came over me with such overpowering force, that I exploded with laughter, and had to be taken out of meeting and marched home by Aunt Lois, as a convicted criminal. What especially moved her indignation was, that, the more she rebuked and upbraided, the more I laughed, till the tears rolled down my cheeks; which Aunt Lois construed into wilful disrespect to her authority, and resented accordingly. By Sunday evening, as we gathered around the fire, the re-action from undue gayety to sobriety had taken place; and we were in a pensive and penitent state. Grandmother was gracious and forgiving; but Aunt Lois still preserved that frosty air of reprobation which she held to be a salutary means of quickening our consciences for the future. It was, therefore, with unusual delight that we saw our old friend Sam come in, and sit himself quietly down on the block in the chimney corner. With Sam we felt assured of indulgence and patronage; for, though always rigidly moral and instructive in his turn of mind, he had that fellow-feeling for transgressors which is characteristic of the loose-jointed, easy-going style of his individuality. “Lordy massy, boys--yis,” said Sam virtuously, in view of some of Aunt Lois's thrusts, “ye ought never to laugh nor cut up in meetin'; that 'are's so: but then there is times when the best on us gets took down. We gets took unawares, ye see,--even ministers does. Yis, natur' will git the upper hand afore they know it.” “Why, Sam, _ministers_ don't ever laugh in meetin'! do they?” We put the question with wide eyes. Such a supposition bordered on profanity, we thought: it was approaching the sin of Uzzah, who unwarily touched the ark of the Lord. “Laws, yes. Why, heven't you never heard how there was a council held to try Parson Morrel for laughin' out in prayer-time?”