And then Miss Cork sez severely—­a not noticin’ Miss Sanders speech at all, but a-goin’ back to Arvilly’s—­she loves to dispute with her, she loves to dearly—­

“You forgot to mention when you wuz talkin’ about Sabbath work connected with church-goin’ that it wuz to worship God, and it wuz therefore right—­no matter how wearisome it wuz, it wuz perfectly right.”

“Wall, I d’no,” sez Arvilly—­“I d’no but what some of the beautiful pictures and wonderful works of Art and Nature that will be exhibited at the World’s Fair would be as upliftin’ and inspirin’ to me as some of the sermons I hear Sundays.  Specially when Brother Ridley gits to talkin’ on the Jews, and the old Egyptians.

“It stands to reason that if I could see Pharo’s mummy it would bring me nearer to him, and them plagues and that wickedness of hisen, than Brother Ridley’s sermon could.

“And when I looked at a piece of the olive tree under which our Saviour sot while He wuz a-weepin’ over Jeruesalem or see a wonderful picture of the crucifixion or the ascension, wrought by hands that the Lord Himself held while they wuz painted—­I believe it would bring Him plainer before me than Brother Ridley could, specially when he is tizickey, and can’t speak loud.

“Why, our Lord Himself wuz took to do more than once by the Pharisees, and told He wuz breakin’ the Sabbath.  And He said that the Sabbath wuz made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

“And He said, ’Consider the Lilies’—­that is, consider the Lord, and behold Him in the works of His hands.

“Brother Ridley is good, no doubt, and it is right to go and hear him—­I hain’t disputed that—­but when he tries to bring our thoughts to the Lord, he has to do it through his own work, his writin’, which he did himself with a steel pen.  And I d’no as it is takin’ the idees of the Lord so much at first hand as it is to study the lesson of the Lilies He made, and which He loved and admired and told us to consider.

“The World’s Fair is full of all the beauty He made, more wonderful and more beautiful than the lilies, and I d’no as it is wrong to consider ’em Sundays or week days.”

“But,” sez Miss Yerden, “don’t you know what the Bible sez—­’Forget not the assemblin’ of yourselves together’?”

[Illustration:  Bub Lum.]

“Well,” piped up Bub Lum, aged fourteen, and a perfect imp—­

“I guess that if the Fair is open Sundays, folks that are there won’t complain about there not bein’ folks enough assembled together.  I guess they won’t complain on’t—­no, indeed!”

But nobody paid any attention to Bub, and Arvilly continued—­

“I believe in usin’ some common sense right along, week days and Sundays too.  It stands to reason that the Lord wouldn’t gin us common sense if He didn’t want us to use it.

“We don’t need dyin’ grace while we are a livin’, and so with other things.  There will be meetin’-housen left and ministers in 1894, most likely, and we can attend to ’em right along as long as we live.