The Worst Boy in Town

by John Habberton

The service began with an earnest prayer, to which responses were offered from most of the benches near the altar. Then a rich old German choral was finely rendered, after which Vater Offenstein proceeded to business. Jack understood a little of the exhortation, having studied German, and he ventured a silent prayer that its whole meaning might be taken in by Sam Mugley, the sadler shop apprentice, who understood German and all the ways of the evil one beside. The discourse was apparently a powerful one, for "Amen!" "Gott macht es!" "Liebes Herr und Heiland!" and various other responses escaped frequently from the faithful. Old Nokkerman, man-of-all-work at Matt Bolton's father's store, seemed particularly excited; he waved to and fro on his seat, his shock of long uncombed hair with a bald spot in its centre making him particularly noticeable. The old man's cranium did not, however, attract attention only from admirers of the picturesque, for suddenly a small but rapid ball of soft-chewed paper made a fair bull's eye on the circle of bare scalp, and flattened itself over considerable space. Old Nokkerman turned speedily to perceive only several rows of solemn-faced unregenerates, Jack's eye being the only one he could catch, so he shook his fist warningly at the general line of occupants of the back seats, and then resumed his blissful manifestations as quickly as if the religious ecstacy were a mere habit which could be assumed or laid aside at will. A hurried interchange of views took place in a whisper on the furthest seat back, with the result that Sam Mugley, the sadler shop apprentice, slyly drew a small tin putty-blower from an inner breast pocket, and aimed a ball of putty at old Nokkerman's cranial target. The shot missed its mark, being low and to one side, and struck Fritz Shantz a smart blow in the back of his neck. As Shantz was a butcher as well as a devout Methodist, he rose instantly with blood in his eye, and started for the back of the church, his mien being so terrible that one of the more cautious of the loafers hurried out of church and took to his heels, thus diverting suspicion from the guilty person, and laying up for himself a day of wrath which Shantz determined should not be long postponed.

Jack was really in sympathy with the worshippers, and was also indignant, with them, at the godless disturbers of the excellent tone of the meeting, but it was out of the power of any healthy boy with a keen sense of the ridiculous to avoid a little laughter at the peculiar ways of old Nokkerman and the butcher under their annoyances. And a little laughter in a boy of fourteen is quite likely to be something like the beginning of strife; it led to more and yet more, until Jack was too full to restrain his merriment, and it bubbled out of his eyes and all over his face. The brethren knew by experience that when disturbances began so early in the evening, the occasion demanded sharp eyes and prompt action, so several of the occupants of the "Amen" seats kept a pretty steady sidelong glance at the back benches, while one brother walked quietly out of church and notified a constable that trouble was expected.

Meanwhile, Vater Offenstein continued his exhortations, alternating between heavenly love and the brimstone of the unpopular extreme of the debatable land, and the excitable among the brethren and sisters responded more and more fervently, and Gottlieb Wiffterschneck sprang to his feet and jumped up and down shouting, "Ach, Herr Jesu!" when the horse doctor's boy, who had been biding his time outside the church just under one of the windows, carefully trained a huge syringe to bear upon the altar, and deluged Vater Offenstein's face with water, which, like the precious oil upon the head of Aaron, ran down upon his beard and garments, and shed considerable upon the Holy Book beside. This was too much for even good Vater Offenstein, so instead of repeating the sublime prayer of the dying Stephen he picked up a small wooden bench upon which short preachers usually knelt in the pulpit, and hurled it at the window, missing the open space and sending it through two panes of glass and the intervening sash. This provoked a laugh even from one or two of the faithful, so the occupants of the back benches released themselves from all restraint, and laughed aloud in a most unseemly manner, while Vater Offenstein wiped his face and hair with his coat, and quoted appropriate passages of Scripture most dreadfully between his teeth, translating some of them into English for the benefit of the race from which alone the annoyances of the brethren proceeded. A general quiet being thereby induced, the exhortation was resumed for a short time, and ended in an invitation to the penitent to go forward to the altar and be prayed for.

While the brethren sang a hymn, several sinners passed up the narrow aisle and Jack turned his head with the hope that he might see Sam Mugley, the saddler shop apprentice, join the band, but the wicked Sam was just in the act of blowing a second putty-ball, and Jack's head coming suddenly in range as it turned, the ball struck Jack fairly in one eye, causing the boy to emit a howl of anguish. In an instant Shantz the butcher had collared Jack and shaken him soundly, exclaiming,

"Dat iss vat a gute Amerigan boy iss, iss it?"

"Somebody hit me in the eye with something," screamed Jack, "and it hurts awfully. Oh!"

"Den dat iss too bad," said Shantz. "Dell me who it vass and I will break effery bone in hiss body."

But Jack could not tell, and several sympathizing brethren gathered about him and suggested that he should take a seat farther forward, and be where the bad boys could not annoy him. Although this suggestion, thanks to the mysterious ways of the unfathomable German mind, was equivalent to asking him to put himself more directly under fire, Jack gladly availed himself of it, so as to remove himself from an environment which was full of cause for suspicion.

By this time the assemblage was on its knees, listening to a prayer by Petrus von Schlenker. Petrus' prayer was very earnest, but it was also long; it was delivered with such rapidity that Jack could not understand a word of it, so the exercise became rather monotonous to him, and he opened his eyes and looked about. Under the single slat which formed the back of the bench, and directly in front of him, Jack beheld the broad and well-patched trowsers-seat of Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, and Satan, who long ago became noted for putting in an appearance when the Sons of God were in council (See Job, Chap. I), suggested to Jack that through such a mass of patches a bent pin might work its way for quite a distance without doing any serious damage to the wearer. Jack broke an anticipatory laugh square in two, and closed his eyes in prayer to be delivered from temptation, but when he opened his eyes again there were the patches, apparently a little more inviting than before. Jack did not exactly wish that some good brother on the bench behind Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel would think to crook a pin and place it on Nuderkopf's bench just as the latter arose to take his seat, but he wished, in case anyone should be prompted to do such a thing, that he, Jack, might have his head turned just then so as to observe the result of the operation. And still Petrus von Schlenker's prayer went on, and Jack's eyes remained open, and the boy was glad that he did not occupy the seat behind Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, lest he might be tempted. Suddenly there came to Jack something which would have been called an inspiration had its tendency been different. He remembered that he had a pin in the lapel of his own jacket, and it occurred to him that this pin might be bent so as to have a reliable base, and the point might be inserted in the seat of Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel's trowsers, where it would be in position to attend to business as soon as the worshippers resumed a sitting posture. Jack promptly whispered to himself "Get thee behind me, Satan," suiting the action to the word by removing the pin from the coat and dropping it on the floor. But there it was more tempting than it had been before; it lay there, bright, thick and strong, demanding that Jack should look at it. It was no common, soft pin, to collapse at the first sign of pressure, but tough enough to serve as a nail, if occasion required. Jack was really curious to know if so unprecedented an application of a pin could be successful, because, if he became a preacher, as he instantly resolved he would, he might some time preach in German in that very church, and then if such a trick were served upon any one, he would be able to detect the guilty person. Besides, the patch seemed to repose upon other patches, and probably the pin point could not more than pierce the cloth itself, where it would be when Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel knelt at the next prayer, and it would demonstrate what would be the effect of a similar operation upon a thinner pair of trowsers.

Jack picked up the pin and bent it with the greatest care, though it would have seemed to an exact scientist that the upright portion was unnecessarily long for a purpose merely experimental. He inserted it with the greatest nicety between the coarse threads of the homespun patch, and though he admitted that Petrus von Schlenker was considered a very good man, he determined that his prayer was too long to be efficacious. Suddenly the voluble Petrus said "Amen," the audience arose, Jack's heart bounced into his mouth, Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel began to sit down, the brethren started the noble choral beginning