I would not ask questions, but I wuz prepared for splendid lookin’ things and lots of ’em. Well, if you’ll believe me there wuzn’t a thing there that I expected to see, not a ornament or curtain or tossel, and nothin’ but jest common ground to walk on like our suller bottom or 167 dooryard. And long benches all through it as fur as the eye could reach almost.
The platform wuz big as most meetin’ housen, but bare and plain, and there wuz what seemed to be sheets hung up round the hull concern, though rolled up so we could see out all round us. There wuz only one way it come up to my idees, and that wuz the cubits. I should think it wuz jest about as many cubits long and broad as anything ever wuz or ever will be. They say it will hold five thousand folks, and I should judge they wuz all there that mornin’, and had brung their children and relations on both sides.
They wuz havin’ a song service when we went in, and to hear five thousand voices or so fillin’ that Tabernacle full of high and inspirin’ melody, wuz indeed a treat. It filled it so full that it oozed out of the sheets on all sides and soared up through the encirclin’ green trees, up, up towards the blue sky, and no knowin’ how much furder it did go upwards, clear up to Heaven like as not, for that place we have always been told is the home of music. It wuz sunthin’ to remember as long as you lived to hear that great flood of melody flow out and swash and sway round us, bearin’ us some distance away from ourselves. 168
My Josiah tuned up and sung jest as loud as any of ’em, but his singin’ would have sounded better if he had sung the tune the rest did. He sung the tune he had always been used to singin’ hims in, he is dretful sot on it, and don’t like to change. But as he seemed to enjoy it so much, and the great rush of melody wuz so powerful his voice wuz onnoticed. The him wuz, “How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord.”
Mr. Pomper wuz jest ahead on us, and thinkin’ he would see better, I spoze had got up on the bench, and jest as he shouted out with the rest, “How firm a foundation,” the bench broke and down he come, but in the big volume of sound, his yell of fright wuzn’t heard no more than the note of a mosquito in a cyclone.
In the intervals of silence Josiah sot and made comments to me on the surroundin’ seen, that alas made me know his mind wuzn’t riz up on such hites as mine wuz. He commented on the looks of the men around him, and cast the idee in my face that there wuzn’t any on ’em so good lookin’ as he wuz, or nigh so distinguished in their means. I felt sorry to think he wuz so blinded, though of course he looks good to me. And he talked about the wimmen and advanced the idee that they well might take pattern by his pardner in their looks and deportment. Josiah after all is a man of good sense.
“Mr. Pomper, thinkin’ he would see better, got up on the bench, and jest as he shouted out ‘How firm a foundation,’ the bench broke and down he come.” (See page 168)