Chapter 41

WE HEAR A GREAT TEMPERANCE SERMON, BUT JOSIAH STILL HANKERS FOR CONEY ISLAND

Ever since I had been to the Thousand Island Park, my mind had roamed onto that idee of the Tabernacle with a sort of or. It is a big impressive word and one calculated to impress a stranger and sojourner. And so when we made up our minds to attend to it I almost instinctively put on my best alpacky dress (London brown) and I also run a new ribbin into my braize veil and tied it round my bunnet so it would hang in graceful folds adown the left side of my frame, I also put on my black mitts and my mantilly with tabs; of course I carried my faithful umbrell.

I looked well. Faith had a bad headache, I guess the job of gittin' that information into Mr. Pomper's head had tuckered her out, so I and my pardner sot off alone. All the way there my mind wuz real riz up thinkin' I wuz goin' to see sunthin' very grand lookin' and scriptural, and I said over and over to myself a number of times with deep respect and or, "Tabernacle! Tabernacle!"

Yes, I felt some as if I wuz the Queen of Sheba and Josiah wuz Solomon, though I might have knowed, my pardner lacked the first ingregient in Solomon's nater, wisdom. And I probable wuzn't so dressy as Miss Sheba, 'tennyrate I hadn't no crown or septer, a brown straw bunnet and umbrell meetin' my wants better, but not nigh so dashy lookin'. But my feelin's all come from the name of the place we wuz bound for, and the patriarchical, Biblical past my mind wuz rovin' round in. Yes, my mind wuz rousted up and runnin' on the trimmin's of the Ark and Temple. I thought like as not I should see purple curtains hung on shinin' poles, jest so many cubits long and high, and gorgeous carpets to walk on and ornaments and fringes and tossels.

I would not ask questions, but I wuz prepared for splendid lookin' things and lots of 'em. Well, if you'll believe me there wuzn't a thing there that I expected to see, not a ornament or curtain or tossel, and nothin' but jest common ground to walk on like our suller bottom or dooryard. And long benches all through it as fur as the eye could reach almost.

The platform wuz big as most meetin' housen, but bare and plain, and there wuz what seemed to be sheets hung up round the hull concern, though rolled up so we could see out all round us. There wuz only one way it come up to my idees, and that wuz the cubits. I should think it wuz jest about as many cubits long and broad as anything ever wuz or ever will be. They say it will hold five thousand folks, and I should judge they wuz all there that mornin', and had brung their children and relations on both sides.

They wuz havin' a song service when we went in, and to hear five thousand voices or so fillin' that Tabernacle full of high and inspirin' melody, wuz indeed a treat. It filled it so full that it oozed out of the sheets on all sides and soared up through the encirclin' green trees, up, up towards the blue sky, and no knowin' how much furder it did go upwards, clear up to Heaven like as not, for that place we have always been told is the home of music. It wuz sunthin' to remember as long as you lived to hear that great flood of melody flow out and swash and sway round us, bearin' us some distance away from ourselves.

My Josiah tuned up and sung jest as loud as any of 'em, but his singin' would have sounded better if he had sung the tune the rest