THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER - online book

Original Illustrated Version By Mark Twain

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	IN CHURCH.			57
	argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod—and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon ; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse. However, this time he was really interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicu-ousness of the principal character before the on-looking nations; his face
	lit with the thought, and he said to him­self that he wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion. Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. Pres­ently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws — a " pinch-bug," he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there work­ing its helpless legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was
	safe out of his reach. Other people un-
			A SIDE SHOW.
	interested in the sermon, found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of