Chapter 54

Chapter 54
Past and Present

Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in the
distant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy past.
Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem Hackett
(fictitious name). It carried me back more than a generation in a moment,
and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of life were not
the natural and logical results of great general laws, but of special orders,
and were freighted with very precise and distinct purposes--partly punitive
in intent, partly admonitory; and usually local in application.

When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday.
He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing.
Being loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil.
He was the only boy in the village who slept that night.
We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not needed the information,
delivered from the pulpit that evening, that Lem's was a case
of special judgment--we knew that, already. There was a ferocious
thunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn.
The winds blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along the roof
in pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the inky blackness
of the night vanished, the houses over the way glared out white
and blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shut
down again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, which seemed
to rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters.
I sat up in bed quaking and shuddering, waiting for the destruction
of the world, and expecting it. To me there was nothing strange
or incongruous in heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett.
Apparently it was the right and proper thing to do.
Not a doubt entered my mind that all the angels were grouped together,
discussing this boy's case and observing the awful bombardment
of our beggarly little village with satisfaction and approval.
There was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious way;
that was the thought that this centering of the celestial interest
on our village could not fail to attract the attention of the observers
to people among us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years.
I felt that I was not only one of those people, but the very one most
likely to be discovered. That discovery could have but one result:
I should be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the river
had been fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would be
only just and fair. I was increasing the chances against myself
all the time, by feeling a secret bitterness against Lem for having
attracted this fatal attention to me, but I could not help it--
this sinful thought persisted in