"A watch-meeting?" I queried. "What is a watch-meeting?"
Aunt Jane turned her face toward me, and through the darkness I felt her look of deep reproach. "Child," she said gravely, "do you mean to tell me that you don't know what a watch-meetin' is, and you livin' in a Christian country all your life? Next thing you'll be tellin' me you don't know what a prayer-meetin' is. However, I don't know as you're to blame. Your grandfather and grandmother went to watch-meetin', and your mother knows what it is, but I reckon watch-meetin's are as much out o' fashion these days as purple caliker dresses and turkey-tail fans. In my day, child, folks went to church New-year's eve and sung and prayed the old year out and the new year in, and that's a watch-meetin'."
"How interesting!" I exclaimed.
Aunt Jane chuckled softly. "Yes, it was mighty interestin'," she said, "and there was one watch-meetin' I'll never forgit as long as I live. But you come into the house. This ain't the weather for old folks or young folks either to be standin' out on the porch."
We went in, and I laid a stick of wood on the andirons in the open fireplace. A momentary splendor lit the room as the gray moss and lichens caught fire and the swift flames ran from one end of the log to the other and then died out, while the smoke from the kindling wood rose in the huge chimney.
"There's never a New-year's eve that I don't think o' that watch-meetin'," Aunt Jane continued, "and I set here and laugh to myself over the times we used to have in the old Goshen church. Jest hand me my knittin', child, and I'll tell you about that meetin'. It's jest as easy to talk as it is to think."
The room was lighted only by the faint glow from the fireplace, but Aunt Jane needed no lamp or candle to guide her through the maze of stitches in the heel of the gray stocking. I sat with folded hands and wondered at the deft fingers that wove the yarn into the web of the stocking, and at the deft brain that, from the thread of old memories, could weave the web of a story in which was caught and held the spirit of an older day.
"The night o' that watch-meetin'," began Aunt Jane, "was jest such a night as this, cold and clear and still; and if you're wrapped up well and have a good warm quilt over your knees, why, it's nothin' but a pleasure to ride a mile or so to the church. A watch-meetin' is different from any other church-meetin'. It generally comes on a week-day, it ain't preachin' and it ain't prayer-meetin', and you don't have to remember to keep the day holy; so you can laugh and talk goin' and comin' and before the meetin' begins. Next to a May-meetin' a watch-meetin's about the pleasantest sort of a church-meetin' there is.
"Now, as you didn't know what a watch-meetin' is, it ain't likely you know what a May-meetin' is, either. There, now! I knew you wouldn't. Well, child, that all comes o' livin' in town. Town's a fine place to go to once in a while, but there's a heap o' disadvantages about livin' there all the time. A May-meetin' is the first Sunday in May, when we all take big baskets o' dinner to the church and eat outdoors under the trees after preachin's over. And now let me git back to my story or, the first thing you know, I'll be tellin' about a May-meetin' instead of a watch-meetin'. But I thought I'd better explain it to you right now, honey, so's you won't be mortified this way again. There's some things everybody's expected to know, and this is one of 'em.
"I ricollect jest how the old church looked the night o' that watch-meetin'. It was soon after we'd got the new organ, and the shine hadn't wore off the new cyarpet yet, and the lamps was burning bright on the stands each side o' the pulpit and on the organ. Some o' the young folks had hung branches o' pine and cedar around the walls and over the winders, and you could hear the hickory wood cracklin' and poppin' in the stove at the back o' the church, and there was all the Goshen folks sittin' in their pews: Sam and Milly, and Hannah and Miles, and Maria and Silas, and Uncle Jim and Sally Ann, and Parson Page down in front o' the pulpit leanin' back in his chair with his chin restin' on his hand and his other hand proppin' up his elbow. The young folks of course was in the back part o' the church, where they could talk and laugh without bein' seen by their parents; and little Sam Amos and two or three more o' the Goshen boys, along with Martin Luther Wilson, was sittin' down on the pulpit steps, where they could see everything that was to be seen and hear everything that was to be heard."