THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned – on a Sunday.  He fell out of an empty flatboat, 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 as ferocious thunderstorm that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn.

Twain/Mississippi