Only twice was even Humphrey's attention distracted. The first time was when he saw his uncle take a pencil out of his pocket, and underline something in his Bible. This was altogether a novel proceeding; Humphrey had never seen it done before, and he felt it incumbent upon him to sidle along the pew-seat up to his uncle to investigate the matter.
Uncle Charlie gave him his Bible, and he saw that the text of the sermon was the passage marked.
He inwardly resolved, as he regained his corner by the shuffling process before mentioned, that he would in future bring a pencil to church and do likewise.
The next disturbance was of a more exciting character. A vagrant wasp, after disporting itself in different parts of the church, made an inroad into the family pew, and fixed upon Uncle Charlie as its victim. Humphrey, attracted by the buzzing, turned round, and saw his uncle engaged in desperate conflict.
Bobbing his head first to one side, and then to the other, now drawing himself suddenly back, and now as suddenly swerving forward, every now and then making a frantic grab in the air with the back of his hand, Uncle Charlie strove to escape from his assailant in vain.
Humphrey tried hard to keep his countenance as he watched the encounter, but it would not do. The merry smile broke out from every corner of his face, and, in great alarm, he crammed his hands into his mouth to stifle the laughter he felt would, in another moment, break out.
Uncle Charlie was already very angry at being disqualified from listening to a sermon he was enjoying by so paltry a cause as the attacks of a wasp, and now, when he saw his nephew's condition, he grew desperate.
Seizing a hymn-book, he made a plunge at his tormentor, and brought it to the ground, where he crushed it to atoms with his heel; and with a sensation of great relief saw Humphrey's countenance return to an expression of becoming composure, and found himself in a condition to take up the thread of the discourse.
Humphrey's attention was once more riveted on the sermon, and his little mind strove to follow the clergyman as he spoke of the white-robed thousands wandering by the jasper sea in the golden Jerusalem; that "great multitude which no man can number of all kindreds, and nations, and tongues;" uniting their songs in the same burst of glorious psalmody as the "voice of many waters," and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, "Alleluia; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."
"'Eye hath not seen,'" concluded the preacher, as if in despair of finding words to express the inconceivable glory and beauty of the halls of Sion, "'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.' To Him, who bought them for us with his own blood, be glory for ever, and to countless ages."