it, too. It must have been the unconscious moving of novel reading
genius in me. For I forgot, as clearly as if it were not a possibility,
that the next day was Sunday. And so hurried off, before time, to bed,
to be alone with the burden on my heart.

"Backward, turn backward, O Time in your flight--
Make me a child again just for tonight."

There are two or three novels I should love to take to bed as of
yore--not to read, but to suffer over and to contemplate and to seek
calmness and courage with which to face the inevitable. Could there be
men base enough to do to death the noble Wallace? Or to break the heart
of Helen Mar with grief? No argument could remove the presentiment, but
facing the matter gave courage. "Let tomorrow answer," I thought, as the
piano-forte in the next room played "La Reve." Then fell asleep.

And when I awoke next morning to the full knowledge that it was Sunday,
I could have murdered the calendar. For Sunday was Dies Irae. After
Sunday-school, at least. There is a certain amount of fun to be to
extracted from Sunday-school. The remainder of those early Sundays was
confined to reading the Bible or storybooks from the Sunday-school
library--books, by the Lord Harry, that seem to be contrived especially
to make out of healthy children life-long enemies of the church, and to
bind hypocrites to the altar with hooks of steel. There was no whistling
at all permitted; singing of hymns was encouraged; no "playing"--playing
on Sunday was a distinct source of displeasure to Heaven! Are free-born
men nine years of age to endure such tyranny with resignation? Ask the
kids of today--and with one voice, as true men and free, they will
answer you, "Nit!" In the dark days of my youth liberty was in chains,
and so Sunday was passed in dreadful suspense as to what was doing in