The following Sunday three of the Carthage preachers attacked the tango. One of them used for his text Matthew xiv:6, and the other used Mark vi:22. Both told how John the Baptist had lost his head over Salome's dancing. Doctor Brearley chose Isaiah lix:7 "Their feet run to evil ... their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths."
Mr. and Mrs. Pepperall and Ollie sat under Doctor Brearley. Prue had slept too late to be present. Doctor Brearley blamed so many of the evils of the world on the tango craze that if a visitor from Mars had dropped into a pew he might have judged that the world had been an Eden till the tango came. But then Doctor Brearley had always blamed old things on new things.
It was a ferocious sermon, however, and the wincing Pepperalls felt that it was aimed directly at them. When Doctor Brearley denounced modern parents for their own godlessness and the irreligion of their homes, William took the blame to himself. On his way home he announced his determination to resume the long-neglected family custom of reading from the Bible.
After the heavy Sabbath dinner had been eaten—Prue was up in time for this rite—he gathered his little flock in the parlor for a solemn while. It had been his habit to choose the reading of the day at random—he called it "letting the Lord decide." The big rusty-hinged Bible fell open with a loud puff of dust several years old. Papa adjusted his spectacles and read what he found before him:
"Nehemiah x: 'Now those that sealed were, Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush ...'" He began to breathe hard. He was lost in an impenetrable forest of names, and he could not pronounce one of them. He sneaked a peek ahead, dimly made out "Bunni, Hizkijah, Magpiash and Hashub," and choked.
It looked like sacrilege, but he ventured to close the Book and open it once more.
This time he happened on the last chapter of the Book of Judges, wherein is the chronicle of the plight of the tribe of Benjamin, which could not get women to marry into it. The wife famine of the Benjamites was not in the least interesting to Mr. Pepperall, but he would not tempt the Lord again. So he read on, while the children yawned and shuffled, Prue especially.
Suddenly Prue sat still and listened, and papa's cough grew worse. He was reading about the "feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly," and how the elders of the congregation ordered the children of Benjamin to go and lie in wait in the vineyards.
"'And see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh....
"'And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them....