CHAPTER XLIV.
CHURCH GOING.
The Sunday bells rang loud from river to river.

Loud and sharp they rang in the clear, still air of the summer morning, as if the voice of Everardus Bogardus, the old Dominie of New Amsterdam, were calling the people in many tones to be up and stirring, and eat breakfast, and wash the breakfast things, and be in your places early, with bowed heads and reverend minds, and demurely hear me tell you what sinners you always have been and always will be, so help me God--I, Everardus Bogardus, in the clear summer morning, ding, dong, bell, amen! So mused Arthur Merlin, between sleeping and waking, as the bells rang out, loud and low--distant and near--flowing like a rushing, swelling tide of music along the dark inlets of narrow streets--touching arid hearts with hope, as the rising water touches dry spots with green.

Come you, too, out of your filthy holes and hovels--come to church as in the days when you were young and had mothers, and you, grisly, drunken, blear-eyed thief, lisped in your little lessons--come, all of you, come! The day has dawned; the air is pure; the hammer rests--come and repent, and be renewed, and be young again.

The old, weary, restless, debauched, defeated world--it shall sing and dance.

You shall be lambs.