“While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
        All seated on the ground.”

The “glory” that “shone around” at the end of it—­the doleful voice always repeating, “and glory shone around “—­made John as miserable as “Hark! from the tombs.”  It was all one dreary expectation of something uncomfortable.  It was, in short, “religion.”  You’d got to have it some time; that John believed.  But it lay in his unthinking mind to put off the “Hark! from the tombs” enjoyment as long as possible.  He experienced a kind of delightful wickedness in indulging his dislike of hymns and of Sunday.

John was not a model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what his wickedness consisted.  He had no inclination to steal, nor much to lie; and he despised “meanness” and stinginess, and had a chivalrous feeling toward little girls.  Probably it never occurred to him that there was any virtue in not stealing and lying, for honesty and veracity were in the atmosphere about him.  He hated work, and he “got mad” easily; but he did work, and he was always ashamed when he was over his fit of passion.  In short, you couldn’t find a much better wicked boy than John.

When the “revival” came, therefore, one summer, John was in a quandary.  Sunday meeting and Sunday-school he did n’t mind; they were a part of regular life, and only temporarily interrupted a boy’s pleasures.  But when there began to be evening meetings at the different houses, a new element came into affairs.  There was a kind of solemnity over the community, and a seriousness in all faces.  At first these twilight assemblies offered a little relief to the monotony of farm life; and John liked to meet the boys and girls, and to watch the older people coming in, dressed in their second best.  I think John’s imagination was worked upon by the sweet and mournful hymns that were discordantly sung in the stiff old parlors.  There was a suggestion of Sunday, and sanctity too, in the odor of caraway-seed that pervaded the room.  The windows were wide open also, and the scent of June roses came in, with all the languishing sounds of a summer night.  All the little boys had a scared look, but the little girls were never so pretty and demure as in this their susceptible seriousness.  If John saw a boy who did not come to the evening meeting, but was wandering off with his sling down the meadow, looking for frogs, maybe, that boy seemed to him a monster of wickedness.

After a time, as the meetings continued, John fell also under the general impression of fright and seriousness.  All the talk was of “getting religion,” and he heard over and over again that the probability was if he did not get it now, he never would.  The chance did not come often, and if this offer was not improved, John would be given over to hardness of heart.  His obstinacy would show that he was not one of the elect.  John fancied that he could feel his heart hardening, and he began to look with