Up rose Parson Summeral; and up went Trip's nose, vibrating with intense attention.
The parson began in his high-cracked voice to intone the hymn,—
“Sing to the Lord aloud,”
when Trip broke into a dismal howl.
The parson went on to give directions to the deacon, in the same voice in which he had been reading, so that the whole effect of the performance was somewhat as follows:—
“'Sing to the Lord aloud.'
“(Please to turn out that dog),—
“'And make a joyful noise.,”
The dog was turned out, and the choir did their best to make a joyful noise; but we boys were upset for the day, delivered over to the temptations of Satan, and plunged in waves and billows of hysterical giggle, from which neither winks nor frowns from Aunt Lois, nor the awful fear of the tithing-man, nor the comforting bits of fennel and orange-peel passed us by grandmother, could recover us.
Everybody felt, to be sure, that here was a trial that called for some indulgence. Hard faces, even among the stoniest saints, betrayed a transient quiver of the risible muscles; old ladies put up their fans; youths and maidens in the singers' seat laughed outright; and, for the moment, a general snicker among the children was pardoned. But I was one of that luckless kind, whose nerves, once set in vibration, could not be composed. When the reign of gravity and decorum had returned, Harry and I sat by each other, shaking with suppressed laughter. Every thing in the subsequent exercises took a funny turn; and in the long prayer, when everybody else was still and decorous, the whole scene came over me with such overpowering force, that I exploded with laughter, and had to be taken out of meeting and marched home by Aunt Lois, as a convicted criminal. What especially moved her indignation was, that, the more she rebuked and upbraided, the more I laughed, till the tears rolled down my cheeks; which Aunt Lois construed into wilful disrespect to her authority, and resented accordingly.