86 I GO A- FISHING. 



of the inflowing tide bubbled over the lips that gave them 

 utterance, when the flames of the chariots of fire made 

 them more audible in heaven than on earth, when their 

 broken syllables scarce prevailed to overcome the sobs 

 and moans of earthly agony — syllables that were heard 

 yonder, though the moans were loudest here. Yea, they 

 are sanctified by notes of triumph that have been answered 

 by notes of angelic welcome. 



There was nothing noteworthy in the sermon. The 

 clergyman preached specially to young children, from the 

 text " Children, obey your parents," and I derived some 

 good from it, though I scarcely took into my wandering 

 brain one sentence of the whole. The good came in this 

 wise. In the front pew, directly under the pulpit, sat a 

 small boy, alone in one end of the pew, and he received 

 the short, terse sentences of the minister as if each were 

 a musket-ball. You could see him start back at each, 

 and then he looked up wistfully once in a while and fixed 

 his clear eyes on the wall above the pulpit, and seemed 

 to brace himself for the next shot, but when it came it al- 

 ways took him down with unerring force, and he shrank 

 into his corner again. That front pew was a magic mir- 

 ror wherein was visible a scene of far-away years. Longer 

 ago than even the gray hairs in my beard would seem to 

 indicate I saw a boy seated just so, and listening to a ser- 

 mon in the old meeting-house; and the text was "Train 

 up a child in the way he should go." Subtle and inex- 

 plicable power of memory that should bring back out of 

 the grave of years such an incident, long forgotten, yet 

 now clear as the sunshine in the middle aisle. At once 

 when the vision came the present vanished out of mind. 

 We were no longer men in the hill-side church, but we 

 were boys in a distant village, and the dead were living, 



