On Sunday morning in that beautiful autumn weather, Mr. Thingumbob—who did pretty much as he pleased too told the church about it. All that week the children were to have it their own way. Nobody was to do anything but the children. As a special favor to himself he wanted to have them do just as they pleased all that week and next Sunday, and he’d be responsible.
When I first heard the story I thought the children and he must have loved each a great deal, for him to make such an offer. And I guess they did.
Let’s see. Monday was his reception evening and he wanted nobody to come but the children. So they all came, and played big people, and asked about his health and how he enjoyed his summer vacation, and talked of business, and said their children (doll-children you know) had the measles and the whooping-cough, and what luck they had in shooting (with a bow-gun) and how they hoped he’d call soon and all that. Such a time! How funny it did seem, too.
And then there was Tuesday evening, and Mr. Thingumbob had a literary circle who met in the church parlor. So all the children went, and all the big people were to have stayed away—but I know some who peeked. And Mr. Thingumbob told them about the little boy, Tom Chatterton, up in St. Mary Radcliffe church, and the boxes with the old papers, and how this small chap wrote poetry and how he pretended to copy it from the old papers, and how great learned men went to words over it and some said ‘He did’ and some said ‘He didn’t’ and some called him a ‘forger’ and some called him a ‘genius,’ and how he got tired of it all, and how he took a drink of arsenic and water and died when he was hardly grown to be a man.—For that was just what the big folks expected to talk about.
And then there was Wednesday evening, and that was Prayer-meeting. And the big grown-up people all stayed away and the little folks all came. How they did sing! And what a pleasant talk they had that night too—about the little Boy that heard the doctors and asked them questions until his mother thought he had run away and got lost. And Mr. Thingumbob sat right down in the middle of them and they got all around him and he was the only big man there was there.
And then there was Thursday night—when the church people used to go to their Mission Chapel and help the poor people to sing and pray and find out how they did and what they wanted. So they all went together—all the larger children of Queer church, that is—and saw the mission people. And True Gravelines felt so badly for a poor little girl that she gave her her warm gloves. And Tommy What’s-his-name let another fellow have his brand-new jack-knife because he hadn’t got any at all of his own. And there wasn’t one of them that didn’t give the Mission people pennies, or promise things to them, like the big folks.
And on Friday afternoon they had a sewing-society and the girls came and sewed—dear, dear, what sewing it was!—and they brought lunch along and the boys came to tea, and it was just like a pic-nic. And Mr. Thingumbob was there too. And afterwards they played “Hy-Spy” in the church up-stairs, down the aisles and in the galleries and back of the organ—and True Gravelines, for real and certain, hid under the pulpit! And then they set back all the chairs in the Sunday-school room and played “Fox and Geese” and “Thread the Needle” and ever so many other things that I don’t know the names of—only I do know that they were bound to act all the while like gentlemen and ladies, and they surely did.
And then came Saturday and they forgot all about being big men and women, and went off to play and let Mr. Thingumbob alone so he could write his sermon. But he said he didn’t want to write his sermon, he wanted to talk it, and he asked True what he should talk about. And she told him she wanted to hear about the little girl that was sick and died and that Some One took by the hand and made her well. So he said he would, and he promised to use real short weenty-teenty words—“Because” said True, “there’s some that’s only little bits of things and they won’t understand.”
And then Sunday came. And all the big people took back seats. And all the little people went in to play big people, and opened their bibles and their hymn-books, and stood up, and sat down, and sang, and leaned their heads forward in prayer-time, and did just what they saw their papas and mammas do. And one boy, Peter Gradgrind, he went to sleep, because he said that was the way his father did. And Mr. Thingumbob laughed when he heard that.
And that was a real short service. It was all there, every bit of it. But the sermon was only a quarter of an hour long and all the rest was in the same proportion.