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 case was a case of special judgment – we knew that, already.
There was a ferocious thunderstorm that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn. The wind blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along the roof in pelting sheets and, at the briefest 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 infesting my breast in spite of me. Every time the lightning glared, I caught my breath, and judged I was gone. In my terror and misery, I meanly began to suggest other boys, and mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than mine, and peculiarly needed punishment – and I tried to pretend to myself that I was simply doing this in a casual way and without intent to divert the heavenly attention to them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself.
With deep sagacity, I put these mentions in the form of sorrowing recollections and left-handed sham-supplications that the sins of those boys might be allowed to pass unnoticed – “Possibly, they may repent.” “It is true that Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it – but maybe he did not mean any harm. And, although Tom Holmes says more bad words than any other boy in the village, he probably intends to repent – though he has never said he would. And, while it is a fact that John Jones did fish a little on Sunday, once, he didn’t really catch anything but only just one small useless mudcat; and maybe that wouldn’t have been so awful if he had thrown it back – as he says he did, but he didn’t. Pity but they would repent of these dreadful things – and maybe they will yet.”
But, while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps – who were, doubtless, directing the celestial attention to me at the same moment, though I never once suspected that – I had heedlessly left my candle burning. It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions. There was no occasion to add anything to the facilities for attracting notice to me – so I put the light out.
It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever spent. I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had committed, yet was sure that they had been set down against me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and did not trust such important matters to memory. It struck me, by and by, that I had been making a most foolish and calamitous mistake, in one respect; doubtless, I had not only made my own destruction sure by directing attention to those other boys, but had already accomplished theirs! Doubtless, the lightning had stretched them all dead in their beds by this time! The anguish and the fright which this thought gave me made my previous sufferings seem trifling by comparison.
Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn over a new leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect myself with the church the next day, if I survived to see its sun appear. I resolved to cease from sin in all its forms, and to lead a high and blameless life forever after. I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the sick; carry baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfil the regulation conditions, although I knew we had none among us so poor but that they would smash the basket over my head for my pains); I would instruct other boys in the right ways, and take the resulting trouncings meekly; I would subsist entirely on tracts; I would invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard – and finally, if I escaped the fate of those who early become too good to live, I would go for a missionary.
The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradually to sleep with a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for going to eternal suffering in that abrupt way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful disaster – my own loss.
But, when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those other boys were still alive, I had a dim sense that, perhaps, the whole thing was a false alarm; that the entire turmoil had been on Lem’s account and nobody else’s. The world looked so bright and safe that there did not seem to be any real occasion to turn over a new leaf. I was a little subdued during that day, and perhaps the next; after that, my purpose of reforming slowly dropped out of my mind, and I had a peaceful, comfortable time again, until the next storm.
From: Life on the Mississippi (1883) by Mark Twain (1835-1910).
The context of this passage is Clemens’s return visit to the Mississipi River area, in 1882, in preparation for writing this book. The incident recounted here is connected with revisiting his boyhood home of Hannibal, Missouri. Clemens was a convinced unbeliever as an adult – in fact, he scorned biblical Christianity – but this passage not only demonstrates a sharply-observed knowledge of how young boys think, but it also demonstrates that he was well aware of what the gospel was and of the basic tenets of Christianity – even as he exaggerates them for comic effect in this passage.
