The Methodist Preacher and the Fishing Boy

1895

Boys in church, as is well known, are not infrequently the cause of great annoyance to clergymen. Some years ago a Methodist minister was delivering a sermon with a good deal of earnestness when his attention was attracted to a boy in the gallery. The youngster was leaning over the rail and apparently lowering something attached to a cord, which he occasionally pulled up, when he would throw it over again with more gusto than ever. Do what he would the preacher could not keep his eyes off that boy.

Shifting his position in the pulpit slightly, he had a better opportunity to see what was going on and observed that an old gentleman in a pew under the gallery had fallen asleep and was sitting with his head back and his mouth wide open. Seeing this, the boy had attached a cork to a string and was endeavoring to lower it into the old man's mouth. He came near succeeding several times, and as the cork gently swayed to and fro it occasionally tickled the sleeper's nose. At such times he would stir a little uneasily and brush it away with his hand, to the evident delight of the grinning youngster. The whole scene was so exceedingly comical that the minister came near laughing outright. At length he was obliged to beckon to the sexton and request him to put an end to the boy's fishing for the day or else send him somewhere else to do it.