We also tried manfully to "attend" to the sermons, which, considering the length and abstruseness of them, was, I think, creditable to us.

I fear we felt it to be so, and that about this time we began to be proud of the texts we knew, and of our punctilious propriety in the family pew, and of the resolve which we had taken in accordance with my proposal to Polly-- "Let us be very religious." One Saturday Miss Blomfield was a good deal excited about a certain clergyman who was to preach in our church next Sunday, and as the services were now a matter of interest to us, Polly and I were excited too.

I had been troubled with toothache all the week, but this was now better, and I was quite able to go to church with the rest of the family.
The general drift of the sermon, even its text, have long since faded from my mind; but I do remember that it contained so highly coloured a peroration on the Day of Judgment and the terrors of Hell, that my horror and distress knew no bounds; and when the sermon was ended, and we began to sing, "From lowest depths of woe," I burst into a passion of weeping.

The remarkable part of the incident was that, the rest of the party having sat with their noses in the air quite undistressed by the terrible eloquence of the preacher, Aunt Maria never for a moment guessed at the real cause of my tears.

But as soon as we were all in the carriage (it was a rainy evening, and we had driven to church), she said-- "That poor child will never have a minute's peace while that tooth's in his head.