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"You see," said the stick, "there were as pretty little children once as you could wish to see, and might have been so still if they had been only left to grow up like human beings, and then handed over to me; but their foolish fathers and mothers, instead of letting them pick flowers, and make dirt-pies, and get birds' nests, and dance round the gooseberry bush, as little children should, kept them always at lessons, working, working, working, learning week-day lessons all week-days, and Sunday lessons all Sunday, and weekly examinations every Saturday, and monthly examinations every month, and yearly examinations every year, everything seven times over, as if once was not enough, and enough as good as a feast till their brains grew big, and their bodies grew small, and they were all changed into turnips, with little but water inside; and still their foolish parents actually pick the leaves off them as fast as they grow, lest they should have anything green about them."
It excites your wonder not a little to find people, who talk gravely and heartily of the excellence of sermons and of church-going, sometimes fall asleep under it all. And you wonder if they really like preaching so well why they do not buy some of the minister's old manuscripts, and read them over on week-days, or invite the clergyman to preach to them in a quiet way in private.
Why, kid, it's always like this, day an' night Sundays an' week-days. See that thirty-car freight slidin' in four, no, five tracks off? She's all mixed freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight trains. That's why we're cuttin' out the cars one by one."
I remember wondering whether it was never Sabbath-day over the fence, in the next field; whether the field was not a kind of heathen field, since we could only go into it on week-days. The wild flowers over there were perhaps Gentile blossoms. Only the flowers in the garden were well-behaved Christians. It was Sabbath in the house, and possibly even on the doorstep; but not much farther.
But her stockings and her Bible shared together the afternoons of her week-days. On the Sundays there would only be the Bible, and then she would pass many hours of the day asleep. On every other Sunday morning she still walked to church and back, going there always alone. There was no one now to accompany her.
Christmas Day that year fell on a Friday one of the three week-days tacitly allotted to Cai, who may therefore be forgiven that he chose to reckon it as coming within the ordinary routine. He gave chase in no small choler. "Look here," he protested, panting; "haven't you made some mistake? This is Friday." "Christmas Day," answered 'Bias, wheeling about. "I can't help that. 'Tis Friday."
Pierce came to the White House sorrow-stricken by the sad death of her only child, but she bravely determined not to let her private griefs prevent the customary entertainments. During the sessions of Congress there was a state dinner once a week, to which thirty-six guests were invited, and on other week-days half-a-dozen guests partook of the family dinner, at which no wine was served.
He is my Sunday luxury. I do not read him on the week-days for fear I should get him by heart, and every Sunday I start as though I were dipping into a new book." "Ah! then you still care for beauty. I used to feel positive physical luxury years agone while I read Keats, but now it seems as if the thought of beauty came between me and the grave. I am, like all the failures, a student of deformity.
"Jacob had two wives," he said; and he chanted on, quoting imperfectly from Dr. Watts's Scripture Catechism, "And Jacob was a good man, therefore his brother hated him." "No, no, Jem," said I, "that was Abel. Jacob was Isaac's younger son, and " "Hush! Hush! Hush!" said my mother. "You're not to do Sunday lessons on week-days. What terrible boys you are!"
He brooded over this difficulty, and finally decided that the ceremony should take place on one of these week-days between Christmas and New Year's, when Jennie would be at her work. This proposal he broached to his wife, and, receiving her approval, he made his next announcement. "It has no name," he said.
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