湯姆歷險記Chapter 5 禮拜添花樣，大鉗甲蟲戲小狗

Chapter 5
      
    ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring, and
    presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. The Sunday-school children
    distributed themselves about the house and occupied pews with their parents, so as to be
    under supervision. Aunt Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her -- Tom being
    placed next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window and the
    seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd filed up the aisles: the aged and
    needy postmaster, who had seen better days; the mayor and his wife -- for they had a mayor
    there, among other unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair,
    smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her hill mansion the only
    palace in the town, and the most hospitable and much the most lavish in the matter of
    festivities that St. Petersburg could boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward;
    lawyer Riverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed
    by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then all the young clerks
    in town in a body -- for they had stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a
    circling wall of oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet;
    and last of all came the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother
    as if she were cut glass. He always brought his mother to church, and was the pride of all
    the matrons. The boys all hated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown
    up to them" so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as
    usual on Sundays -- accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys who had
    as snobs.

    The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more, to warn laggards
    and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the church which was only broken by the
    tittering and whispering of the choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and
    whispered all through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I
    have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely
    remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country. The minister gave
    out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in a peculiar style which was much
    admired in that part of the country. His voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily
    up till it reached a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost
    word and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:

    Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry beds of ease,

    Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' blood-y seas?

    He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church "sociables" he was always
    called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies would lift up their hands
    and let them fall helplessly in their laps, and "wall" their eyes, and shake
    their heads, as much as to say, "Words cannot express it; it is too beautiful, too
    beautiful for this mortal earth."

    After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into a
    bulletin-board, and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and things till
    it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of doom -- a queer custom which is
    still kept up in America, even in cities, away here in this age of abundant newspapers.
    Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of
    it.

    And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went into details: it
    pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the other churches of
    the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State; for the State
    officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for
    the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy
    seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and
    Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not
    eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and
    closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and
    favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good.
    Amen.

    There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down. The boy whose
    history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured it -- if he even did
    that much. He was restive all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer,
    unconsciously -- for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the
    clergyman's regular route over it -- and when a little trifle of new matter was
    interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions
    unfair, and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew
    in front of him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing
    its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part
    company with the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its
    wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat-tails;
    going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe. As
    indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for it they did not dare -- he
    believed his soul would be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was
    going on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the
    instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt detected the
    act and made him let it go.

    The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that
    was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod -- and yet it was an argument that
    dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company
    so small as to be hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after
    church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else
    about the discourse. However, this time he was really interested for a little while. The
    minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts
    at the millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a little child
    should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle were lost
    upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the principal character before the
    on-looking nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he wished
    he could be that child, if it was a tame lion.

    Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. Presently he
    bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was a large black beetle with
    formidable jaws -- a "pinchbug," he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box.
    The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed,
    the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went
    into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over.
    Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out of his reach. Other people
    uninterested in the sermon found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a
    vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the
    quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the drooping tail
    lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked around it; smelt at it from a safe
    distance; walked around it again; grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his
    lip and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to
    enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and
    continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded. His
    head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it.
    There was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of
    yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators shook with a gentle
    inward joy, several faces went behind fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy.
    The dog looked foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too,
    and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on it again;
    jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his fore-paws within an inch of
    the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till
    his ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself
    with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close to the floor,
    and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on
    it. Then there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the
    yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew
    down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his
    anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its
    orbit with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its
    course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of
    distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.

    By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with suppressed laughter,
    and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The discourse was resumed presently, but it
    went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the
    gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth,
    under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious
    thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the
    benediction pronounced.

    Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some
    satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety in it. He had but one
    marring thought; he was willing that the dog should play with his pinchbug, but he did not
    think it was upright in him to carry it off.