tight-rope walking, which was given outside the tent-door as a bait to
lure pleasure-loving and frivolous townspeople within, and also as a
tantalization to the children of the saints who were not allowed to enter
the tent of the wicked. Fired by that bewildering and amazing performance,
he daily, after the wonderful sight, practised walking on rails, on fences,
on fallen trees, and on every narrow foothold which he could find, as a
careful preparation for a final feat and triumph of skill on his mother's
clothes-line. In an evil hour, as he sat one Sunday in the corner of his
father's pew, his eyes rested on the narrow ledge which formed the top of
the long foot-bench. Satan can find mischief for idle boys within church as
well as without, and the desire grew stronger to try to walk on that
narrow foothold. He looked at his father and mother, they were peacefully
sleeping; so also were the grown-up occupants of the neighboring pews;
the pew walls were high, the minister seldom glanced to right or left; a
thousand good reasons were whispered in his ear by the mischief-finder,
and at last he willingly yielded, pulled off his heavy shoes, and softly
mounted the foot-bench. He walked forward and back with great success
twice, thrice, but when turning for a fourth tour he suddenly lost his
balance, and over he went with a resounding crash--hats, psalm-books,
heavy bench, and all. He crushed into hopeless shapelessness his father's
gray beaver meeting-hat, a long-treasured and much-loved antique; he nearly
smashed his mother's kid-slippered foot to jelly, and the fall elicited
from her, in the surprise of the sudden awakening and intense pain, an
ear-piercing shriek, which, with the noisy crash, electrified the entire
meeting. All the grown people stood up to investigate, the children climbed
on the seats to look at the guilty offender and his deeply mortified
parents; while the minister paused in his sermon and said with cutting
severity, "I have always regretted that the office of tithingman has been
abolished in this community, as his presence and his watchful care
are sadly needed by both the grown persons and the children in this