Standard Selections: A Collection and Adaptation of Superior Productions from Best Authors for Use in Class Room and on the Platform
General
Standard Selections: A Collection and Adaptation of Superior Productions from Best Authors for Use in Class Room and on the Platform
Recitations
The next thing I can remember is a horrible noise. I can't think of but
one thing in this world it was like, and that isn't in this world so
much. I mean the last trumpet, with the angel blowing as he blows in my
old primer. The next thing I remember is hearing Jill sit up in bed--for
I couldn't see him, it was so dark--and his piping out the other half of
Miss Togy's name just as he had left it when he went to sleep.
"Gy--Bogy!--Fogy!--Soaky!--Oh," said Jill, coming to at last, "I
thought--why, what's up?"
I was up, but I couldn't tell what else was for a little while. I went
to the window. It was as dark as a great rat-hole out-of-doors, all but
a streak of lightning and an awful thunder, as if the world was cracking
all to pieces.
"Come to bed!" shouted Jill, "you'll get struck, and then that will kill
me."
I went back to bed, for I didn't know what else to do, and we crawled
down under the clothes and covered ourselves all up.
"W-would--you--call--Aunt--John?" asked Jill. He was most choked. I came
up for air.
"No," said I, "I don't think I'd call Aunt John." I should have liked to
call her by that time, but then I should have felt ashamed.
"I s'pose she has got her hands full with Miss Croaky, anyway,"
chattered Jill, bobbing up and under again. By that time the storm was
the worst storm I had ever seen in my life. It grew worse and
worse--thunder, lightning, and wind--wind, lightning, and thunder; rain
and roar and awfulness. I don't know how to tell how awful it was.
In the middle of the biggest peal we'd had yet, up jumped Jill. "Jack!"
said he, "that comet!" I'd never thought of the comet till that minute;
I felt an ugly feeling and cold all over. "It is the comet!" said Jill.
"It is the day of judgment, Jack."
Then it happened. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to get my
head under the clothes. First there was a creak, then a crash, then we
felt a shake as if a giant pushed his shoulder up through the floor and
shoved us. Then we doubled up. And then we began to fall. The floor
opened, and we went through. I heard the bed-post hit as we went by.
Then I felt another crash; then we began to fall again; then we bumped
down hard. After that we stopped falling. I lay still. My heels were
doubled up over my head. I thought my neck would break. But I never
dared to stir, for I thought I was dead. By and by I wondered if Jill
were dead too, so I undoubled my neck a little and found some air. It
seemed just as uncomfortable to breathe without air when you were dead
as when you weren't.
I called out softly, "Jill!" no answer. "Jill!" not a sound. "O--Jill!"
But he did not speak, so then I knew Jill must be dead, at any rate. I
couldn't help wondering why he was so much deader than I that he
couldn't answer a fellow. Pretty soon I heard a rustling noise under my
feet, then a weak, sick kind of a voice, just the kind of a noise I
always supposed ghosts would make if they could talk.
"Jack?"
"Is that you, Jill?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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