It was essential he learned, that he should have a "conviction of sin." This he earnestly tried to have.Other people, no better than he, had it, and he wondered why he could n't have it.Boys and girls whom he knew were "under conviction," and John began to feel not only panicky, but lonesome.Cynthia Rudd had been anxious for days and days, and not able to sleep at night, but now she had given herself up and found peace.There was a kind of radiance in her face that struck John with awe, and he felt that now there was a great gulf between him and Cynthia.Everybody was going away from him, and his heart was getting harder than ever.He could n't feel wicked, all he could do.And there was Ed Bates) his intimate friend, though older than he, a "whaling," noisy kind of boy, who was under conviction and sure he was going to be lost.How John envied him! And pretty soon Ed "experienced religion." John anxiously watched the change in Ed's face when he became one of the elect.And a change there was.And John wondered about another thing.Ed Bates used to go trout-fishing, with a tremendously long pole, in a meadow brook near the river; and when the trout didn't bite right off, Ed would--get mad,"and as soon as one took hold he would give an awful jerk, sending the fish more than three hundred feet into the air and landing it in the bushes the other side of the meadow, crying out, "Gul darn ye, I'll learn ye." And John wondered if Ed would take the little trout out any more gently now.
John felt more and more lonesome as one after another of his playmates came out and made a profession.Cynthia (she too was older than John) sat on Sunday in the singers' seat; her voice, which was going to be a contralto, had a wonderful pathos in it for him, and he heard it with a heartache."There she is," thought John, "singing away like an angel in heaven, and I am left out." During all his after life a contralto voice was to John one of his most bitter and heart-wringing pleasures.It suggested the immaculate scornful, the melancholy unattainable.
If ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into a conviction of sin, John tried.And what made him miserable was, that he couldn't feel miserable when everybody else was miserable.He even began to pretend to be so.He put on a serious and anxious look like the others.He pretended he did n't care for play; he refrained from chasing chipmunks and snaring suckers; the songs of birds and the bright vivacity of the summer--time that used to make him turn hand-springs smote him as a discordant levity.He was not a hypocrite at all, and he was getting to be alarmed that he was not alarmed at himself.Every day and night he heard that the spirit of the Lord would probably soon quit striving with him, and leave him out.The phrase was that he would "grieve away the Holy Spirit." John wondered if he was not doing it.He did everything to put himself in the way of conviction, was constant at the evening meetings, wore a grave face, refrained from play, and tried to feel anxious.At length he concluded that he must do something.
One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which several of his little playmates had "come forward," he felt that he could force the crisis.He was alone on the sandy road; it was an enchanting summer night; the stars danced overhead, and by his side the broad and shallow river ran over its stony bed with a loud but soothing murmur that filled all the air with entreaty.John did not then know that it sang, "But I go on forever," yet there was in it for him something of the solemn flow of the eternal world.When he came in sight of the house, he knelt down in the dust by a pile of rails and prayed.He prayed that he might feel bad, and be distressed about himself.As he prayed he heard distinctly, and yet not as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs by the meadow spring.It was not discordant with his thoughts; it had in it a melancholy pathos, as if it were a kind of call to the unconverted.
What is there in this sound that suggests the tenderness of spring, the despair of a summer night, the desolateness of young love? Years after it happened to John to be at twilight at a railway station on the edge of the Ravenna marshes.A little way over the purple plain he saw the darkening towers and heard "the sweet bells of Imola."The Holy Pontiff Pius IX.was born at Imola, and passed his boyhood in that serene and moist region.As the train waited, John heard from miles of marshes round about the evening song of millions of frogs, louder and more melancholy and entreating than the vesper call of the bells.And instantly his mind went back for the association of sound is as subtle as that of odor--to the prayer, years ago, by the roadside and the plaintive appeal of the unheeded frogs, and he wondered if the little Pope had not heard the like importunity, and perhaps, when he thought of himself as a little Pope, associated his conversion with this plaintive sound.
John prayed, but without feeling any worse, and then went desperately into the house, and told the family that he was in an anxious state of mind.This was joyful news to the sweet and pious household, and the little boy was urged to feel that he was a sinner, to repent, and to become that night a Christian; he was prayed over, and told to read the Bible, and put to bed with the injunction to repeat all the texts of Scripture and hymns he could think of.John did this, and said over and over the few texts he was master of, and tossed about in a real discontent now, for he had a dim notion that he was playing the hypocrite a little.But he was sincere enough in wanting to feel, as the other boys and girls felt, that he was a wicked sinner.
He tried to think of his evil deeds; and one occurred to him; indeed, it often came to his mind.It was a lie; a deliberate, awful lie, that never injured anybody but himself John knew he was not wicked enough to tell a lie to injure anybody else.