The minister’s sermon on hypocrisy that afternoon was something terrible to hear, and sounded personal to the last degree. Another meal at Miss Mirandy Barr’s with a night on a pallet at Sister Clark’s prepared Bascom to enter upon another day with a chastened spirit, but there was no relenting on the part of Ma’ Jane. Between sermons he heard goodly sounds of cooking at her tent and, wandering near, smelled such odors as tore his very being asunder. But he was an outcast there, and might not hope to enter. He listened to the sermons in gloomy silence; his voice was not raised in the hymns.
But when the long day had worn itself out, and the night service was going on, he sat looking around on the scene from which it seemed that he was all at once shut out.
Over there in the brightest light he saw Ma’ Jane, her face lifted, her hands clasped in her lap. He saw how gray she was getting and how shabby. That best bonnet of hers had been bought fifteen years before, and she had washed the ribbon and retrimmed it many times. While he looked he saw the tears on her face too. The hands she raised to wipe them were rough and hard; how she must have worked!
The minister had turned towards him and looked into his eyes. What he saw there decided him—“Will Brother Bascom Barnard lead us in prayer?” And Brother Bascom Barnard fell on his knees, shaken with sobs.
“The Lord forgive us for bein’ miserable fools,” he cried, “an’ give us a chance to try again an’ see if we can’t do better next time, Amen!” It was a very complete prayer; after it was over Bascom found a hand on his arm, and there was Ma’ Jane looking up at him.
“I’ve got some chicken-pie saved up for you, Bascom,” she whispered. And they went away toward the tent, arm in arm, walking where the shadows of the trees lay thickest. “It looks like we’re goin’ to have a great meetin’,” he said, stumbling. “I’m awful glad you got a chance to come, Ma’ Jane.”
THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO
J. Ross Browne
Chief among the wonders of Palermo are the Catacombs of the Capuchin Convent, near to Porta d’Ossuna. It is said to be a place of great antiquity; many of the bodies have been preserved in it for centuries, and still retain much of their original freshness. Entering the ancient and ruinous court of the convent, distant about a mile from the city, I was conducted by a ghostly-looking monk through some dark passages to the subterranean apartments of the dead. It was not my first visit to a place of this kind, but I must confess the sight was rather startling. It was like a revel of the dead—a horrible, grinning, ghastly exhibition of skeleton forms, sightless eyes, and shining teeth, jaws distended, and bony hands outstretched; heads without bodies, and bodies without heads—the young, the old, the brave, the once beautiful and gay, all mingled in the ghastly throng. I walked through long subterranean passages, lined with the dead on both sides; with a stealthy and measured tread I stepped, for they seemed to stare at the intrusion, and their skeleton fingers vibrated as if yearning to grasp the living in their embrace. Long rows of upright niches are cut into the walls on each side; in every niche a skeleton form stands erect as in life, habited in a robe of black; the face, hands, and feet naked, withered, and of an ashy hue; the grizzled beards still hanging in tufts from the jaws, but matted and dry. To each corpse is attached a label upon which is written the name and the date of decease, and a cross or the image of the Saviour....
Who was the prince here? Who was the great man, or the proud man, or the rich man? The musty, grinning, ghastly skeleton in the corner seemed to chuckle at the thought, and say to himself, “Was it you, there on the right, you ugly, noseless, sightless, disgusting thing? Was it you that rode in your fine carriage, about a year ago, and thought yourself so great when you ordered your coachman to drive over the beggar? Don’t you see he is as handsome as you are now, and as great a man; you can’t cut him down now, my fine fellow! And you, there on the left. What a nice figure you are, with your fleshless shanks and your worm-eaten lips! It was you that betrayed youth and beauty and innocence, and brought yourself here at last to keep company with such wretches as I am. Why, there is not a living thing now, save the maggots, that wouldn’t turn away in disgust from you. And you, sir, on the opposite side, how proud you were the last time I saw you; an officer of state, a great man in power, who could crush all below you, and make the happy wife a widowed mourner, and bring her little babes to starvation; it was you who had innocent men seized and thrown into prison. What can you do now? The meanest wretch that mocks you in this vault of death is as good as you, as strong, as great, as tall, as broad, as pretty a piece of mortality, and a great deal nearer to heaven. Oh, you are a nice set of fellows, all mixing together without ceremony! Where are your rules of etiquette now; your fashionable ranks, and your plebeian ranks; your thousands of admiring friends, your throngs of jeweled visitors? Why, the lowliest of us has as many visitors here, and as many honest tears shed as you. Ha! Ha! This is a jolly place, after all; we are all a jolly set of republicans, and old Death is our President.”—From “Yusef, or the Journey of the Frangi.” Published by Harper & Brothers and used by their kind permission.