"Don't you wish we could have gone with them, George? I'll warrant you there's some grand fun up. I wonder what it is?"
"No matter what it is, Henry. We have only to do what is right, and what we know we ought to do first, and then we shall find ways enough to enjoy ourselves; and have more enjoyment, too, than we should if we neglected duty for pleasure."
"I suppose you are right," said Henry sadly; "but I can't help thinking there's more sport in going off with a lot of boys for a frolic than there is in being good, and helping the women fix up the church. It don't seem to me like boys' work, to be fussing with wreaths and bouquets."
"Ah my fine fellow! you are really getting very smart. What do you think of our fathers, and of Mr. A—— and Mr. S——, two of the most active business men in the place—and yet they take as much interest in having the church made beautiful for the divine offices as the women do. Don't you remember how Mr. A——, when he couldn't leave court during the trial of an important case, sent one of his students, and his man with a ladder, to help put up the wreaths last Christmas? Mighty smart for us boys to think it is too small business for us, to be sure! Then, as to the fun, we'll wait and see how the boys come out with their frolic. I have my own notion that there'll be more mischief than sport, and that we may hereafter be glad we had no part in it. Frank Blair is a pleasant, good-natured fellow; but he is a reckless chap too. He had learned a great many city tricks before they came here to live, and will do any thing for fun, without thinking of the consequences. Any way, we know there's nothing like duty first and play afterwards to make boys happy."
CHAPTER II.
RURAL PLEASURES.
The church was situated in the very shadow of a wood that skirts the pretty village of M——, in northern Vermont. When the two boys reached it, they found quite an assemblage of their school-fellows awaiting the arrival of the sacristan, who soon appeared, and sent some into the woods with axes and hatchets to cut the evergreens, dispatched others with pails for water, and kept George and Henry to help him in the church.
They had just finished arranging all in order and dusting the sanctuary, when their mothers and sisters arrived with the flowers, which they took to a little room adjoining the sacristy, where the pails of water were left. Very soon some of the boys came in with the evergreen trees; the beautiful trailing pines of several varieties, and graceful feathery foliage of brilliant green, together with a profusion of other wild-wood treasures, which they had collected. The village girls also came bringing wild flowers and other contributions for the decoration.
Young Catholics in country places need not be told how pleasantly the time passed with this company in the varied occupations of tying wreaths, arranging bouquets in the vases, putting up the festooned garlands, winding the pillars, and executing other devices, with which they are already so familiar as to need no information. But it is certain that the young people of cities, losing all these true and natural enjoyments, as well as the developments of taste and ingenuity to which they lead, lose a valuable aid to devotion. They who cannot participate in the adornment of the material temple for the worship of God, by bringing the simple offerings of the woodlands and the valleys for its embellishment, lose a very important incentive to the due preparation of the spiritual temple for his reception.
Before the arrival of the priest, the work of decoration was completed, and each pious heart was gladdened to see how beautiful the altar looked, smiling through a profusion of flowers, whose fragrance hovered around the tabernacle of the Lord like a breath from paradise, and embowered in wreaths prepared from the "glory of Libanus," together with tributes from "the fir-tree, the box-tree, and the pine," which youthful hands had collected to "beautify the place of his sanctuary, and to make the place of his feet glorious."
When all was finished, the cheerful crowd quietly sought their places in the church, to prepare for the holy sacrament of reconciliation.