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"Why, to meetin', of course." He hadn't been in a meetin'-house for two years, and we all knew it, and Miss Cork knew that we knew it hence the meach. "He don't go to meetin' here to Jonesville," sez Arville. It wuz real mean in her, but I spoze it wuz to pay Miss Cork off for her aggravatin'.
Sez Arville, "That is the very way I have heard wimmen talk who burned up their boys' cards, and checker-boards, and story-books, and drove their children away from home to find amusement.
"And then that temple there in Chicago, dreamed out and built by a woman the nicest office buildin' in the world! jest think of that in the World. And a woman to the bottom of it, and to the top too. Why," sez Arville, "I wouldn't miss the chance of seein' wimmen swing right out, and act as if their souls wuz their own, not for the mines of Golconda."
And then, when their boys turned out gamblers and drunkards, they would say that their consciences wuz clear. "But," says Arville, "that hain't the way the Lord done. He used Sundays and week days to tell stories to the multitude, to amuse 'em, draw 'em by the silken cord of fancy towards the true and the right, draw 'em away from the bad towards the good. And if I had ten boys "
She is real cuttin' sometimes, Arville is, but then Miss Cork loves to put on Arville, and twit her of her single state, and kinder act high-headed and throw Cornelius in her face, and act. Sez Arville "Where would Cornelius Jr. go if he didn't go to the Fair?" Cornelius Jr. drinks awful and is onstiddy, and Miss Cork hemmed and hawed, and finally said, in kind of a meachin' way
Sez Arville, "If our nation can countenance such doin's as I have spoke of, the man-killin' and brute-makin', all day Sundays, and not only permit it, but go into pardnership with it, and take part of the pay if it can do this Sundays, year after year, without bein' ashamed before the other nations, I guess it will stand it to have the Fair open."
Says Arville, "That is what Miss Balcomb said about her Ned when she wouldn't let him play games to home; she said she didn't care so much about it herself, but thought the neighbors would blame her; and Ned got to goin' away from home for amusement, and is now a low gambler and loafer. I wonder whether she would ruther have kep her boy safe, or made the neighbors easy in their minds.
"On week days it is a exaltin' and upliftin' and dreadful religious sight; but on Sundays it is a crime to even think on it. Sundays should be kep pure and holy and riz up, and I wouldn't have Cornelius desecrate himself and the Sabbath by goin' to the Fair not for a world full of gold." "Where would he go Sundays while he wuz in Chicago if he didn't go there?" sez Arville.
"I d'no," sez Arville, "whether it will take so much more work or not; it is most of it run by water-power and electricity, and water keeps on a-runnin' all day Sunday as well as week days. "Your mill-dam don't stop, Miss Cork, because it is Sunday."
Sez Miss Cork, "I wouldn't dast to talk in that way, Arville. To add or diminish one word of skripter is to bring an awful penalty." "I hain't a-goin' to add or diminish," says Arville. "I hain't thought on't. I am merely statin' what, in my opinion, would be the Lord's will on the subject." But right here the schoolmaster struck in.
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