The Seeker

Table of

House of

pillars, its vast areas of white wall set with shutters of relentless green; its stout, red chimneys; its surprises of gabled window; its big front doo

ly to their notice. In morning and evening prayer, in formal homily, informal caution, spontaneous warning, in the sermon at church, and the lesson

n the presence of the younger child, and perhaps a thought too severe with the elder. But Clytie, who had said "

k in which her literary treasures were preserved. His rendition of a passage from one of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons became so

ned souls. Where howling, groaning, moaning, and gnashing of teeth make up the horrible concert. There is a place where demons fly swift as air, with whips of knotted burning

kitchen for a drink of water. Always he became thirsty here. And he would linger ove

ful of agony, the soul sweating in its utmost pores drops of blood, thy body from head to foot suffused with pain, thy bones cracking in the fire, th

, and felt glad indeed that he was a Presbyterian, instead of being in that dread

variably he failed at a point where the soul of the toper was going "down-down-DOWN-into the bottomless depths of HELL!" Here he became pitiful in his ineffectiveness, and Clytie had at last to admit that he would never be the elocutionist Allan was. "But, my Land!" she would say, at each o

acious of rhyme, so she successfully taught him certain metrical conceits tha

the Grea

must yo

ns the

ife mus

life

book a

ly practicable to longer warnin

ainty

burying-pl

orter the

s arrest no

ldren, to

ay such an

ing be

y early gr

th prep

Grandfather Delcher without a break, though he began the second

o teach both boys the

utting his hand upon the Ark to save it when the oxen stumbled. The little boys were much impressed by this when they discovered, after questioning, exactly what it meant to Uzza to have "a breach" made upon him. The unwisdom of touching an Ark of the Covenant, unde

was inclined to side wholly with Michal, David's wife, who looked through a window and despised him when she saw him "leaping and dancing before the Lord," uncovere

its door. It seemed to be an abode of dead joys-a place where they had gone to reign forever in fixed and solemn festival. And while he could not see God there, actually, neither in the horsehair sofa nor the bleak melodeon surmounted by tall vases of dyed grass, nor in the center-table with its cemeterial top, nor under the empty horsehair and green-rep chairs, set at expectant angles, nor in the cold, tall stove, ornately set with jewels of polished nickel, and surely not in the somewhat frivolous air-c

rded as for what it enabled one to avoid; a place whose very joys, indeed, would fill with dismay any but the absolutely pure in heart; a place of restricte

, when he must walk sedately to church with his hand in Clytie's, with scarce an envious glance at the proud, happy loafers, who, clean-shaven a

ask her permission, "Oh, it must be awful, awful wicked-becau

articularly when Milo Barrus, the village atheist, was

he will come to the Feet," she added, "even if it's on his very death-bed, with the cold sweat standing on his brow.

forever one image: the image of a mighty foot carved in marble, set on a pedestal at the bottom of a dark stairway. It had been severed at the ankle, and around the top was modestly chiselled a border of lace. It was a foot larger than his whole body, and he had passed eager, questioning hands over its whole surface, pressing it from heel to each perfect toe. Of course, this must be one of the Feet to which Milo Barrus might come; he wondered i

n composition, of which he never tired and of which he learned to repeat not a few. One of her pastoral

ire is a pr

o there

-sugar be

hat's de

now it all as fa

o hear the

s so ver

home you wi

Thompson

nd purposeless, though he never failed of joy in the mere verbal music of

romises fates

e made

the de

s someti

s of t

uare face, her fat cheeks that looked like russet apples, her very tiny black moustache, her smooth, oily blac

omesick in Edom that she was in a way to perish, so that Salmon took her to her home and

r sake whom

back to Je

Heaven. And then his mind was like the desert of shifting sands. There were so many things to be done and not done if one were to avert the wrath of this God that

ter of Blood. There were hymns, for example, that left him confused. The " fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins" sounded interesting. Vividly he saw the "sinners plunged beneath that flood" losing all their guilt

g one "whiter than snow." He was doubtful of this result, unless it was only poetry-writing which doesn't mean everything

acticable. As the sinners came out of this flood he thought they must look as Clytie did in her scarlet flan

the big yard where grew monarch elms and maples and a row of formal spruces; where the lawn on one side was bordered with beds of petunias and fuschias, tiger-lilies and dahlias; where were a great clump of white li

earnest but by no