“Oh, yes,” sez Miss Cork.  “On week days it is a exaltin’ and upliftin’ and dreadful religious sight; but on Sundays it is a crime to even think on it.  Sundays should be kep pure and holy and riz up, and I wouldn’t have Cornelius desecrate himself and the Sabbath by goin’ to the Fair not for a world full of gold.”

“Where would he go Sundays while he wuz in Chicago if he didn’t go there?” sez Arville.

She is real cuttin’ sometimes, Arville is, but then Miss Cork loves to put on Arville, and twit her of her single state, and kinder act high-headed and throw Cornelius in her face, and act.

Sez Arville—­“Where would Cornelius Jr. go if he didn’t go to the Fair?”

Cornelius Jr. drinks awful and is onstiddy, and Miss Cork hemmed and hawed, and finally said, in kind of a meachin’ way—­

“Why, to meetin’, of course.”

He hadn’t been in a meetin’-house for two years, and we all knew it, and Miss Cork knew that we knew it—­hence the meach.

“He don’t go to meetin’ here to Jonesville,” sez Arville.

[Illustration:  “He don’t go to meetin’ here.”]

It wuz real mean in her, but I spoze it wuz to pay Miss Cork off for her aggravatin’.

And she went on, “I live right acrost the road from Fasset’s saloon, and I see him and more’n a dozen other Jonesvillians there most every Sunday.

“Goin’ to Chicago hain’t a-goin’ to born a man agin, and change all their habits and ways to once, and I believe if Cornelius Jr. didn’t go to the Fair he would go to worse places.”

“Well,” sez Miss Cornelius Cork, “if he did, I wouldn’t have to bear the sin.  I feel that it is my duty to lift my voice and my strength aginst the Sunday openin’ of the Fair, and even if the boys did go to worse places, my conscience would be clear; the sin wouldn’t rest on my head.”

Sez Arville, “That is the very way I have heard wimmen talk who burned up their boys’ cards, and checker-boards, and story-books, and drove their children away from home to find amusement.

“They wanted the boys to set down and read the Bible and sam books year in and year out, but they wouldn’t do it, for there wuz times when the young blood in ’em riz up and clamered for recreation and amusement, and seein’ that they couldn’t git it at home, under the fosterin’ care of their father and mother, why, they looked for it elsewhere, and found it in low saloons and bar-rooms, amongst wicked and depraved companions.  And then, when their boys turned out gamblers and drunkards, they would say that their consciences wuz clear.

“But,” says Arville, “that hain’t the way the Lord done.  He used Sundays and week days to tell stories to the multitude, to amuse ’em, draw ’em by the silken cord of fancy towards the true and the right, draw ’em away from the bad towards the good.  And if I had ten boys—­”

“Which you hain’t no ways likely to have,” says Miss Cork; “no, indeed, you hain’t.”