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way down the ladder to the platform where the ticking clockworks smelled of machine oil, and then down a staircase to the vestry. Here she brushed her skirts, patted her high-piled curls, and walked down the hill. With a dignified step, she strolled past the front of the Gideon house and turned the corner on Quarry Pond Road to observe the ménage from the side. But there were too many tall bushes. Darting a glance left and right, Ingeborg slipped in among the lilacs. The path to the privy was still out of sight. Boldly, she pushed branches aside, until at last she could see the back door, the path, and the latticed bower enclosing the outhouse.
    But then she had a fright. An orange cat, a clawing cat, a cat that was not her fluffy gray pussy, leaped out of the bushes and landed on her shoulder. Ingeborg screamed and sprawled full length across the path just as Josiah Gideon emerged from the outhouse.
    Gallantly, he helped her to her feet. “Madam,” he said, throwing wide the privy door, “I beg you to be my guest.”

NOW
    The Lost Steeple

    Lost, lost is the music! Lost
    All the prayers and the people!

Lost Is the Music
    I ’ve been thinking,” said Mary, thumping down her empty beer glass on the kitchen table.
    â€œDangerous habit,” said Homer. “What about?”
    â€œAbout the great unwashed. I mean in history.”
    â€œThe great unwashed?” Homer snickered and wrenched open another bottle. “I worry more about the great washed. I hate the way everybody nowadays is so clean. They brush their teeth and gargle away their foul breath, and shampoo their hair until it’s squeaky-clean, and all the women shave their legs and all the men frustrate the urge of every whisker on their chins to emerge into the light, and that isn’t all. After purifying their bodies, they attack their brains with wire brushes and cleansing powder until everything of interest has been scrubbed away.”
    â€œBut, Homer, that’s exactly what I mean. When you think about history—”
    â€œUnless, of course, it’s sexual intercourse,” Homer went on, correcting himself. “That stuff never goes away.”
    â€œSexual intercourse?” Mary looked blank, then hurtled on. “Okay, but I’ve been thinking about history. Cleanliness wasn’t so rife in the past. Listen, Homer, what about all those great dead people? You know, the Shakespeares and Johann Sebastian Bachs and the Walt Whitmans and the Wordsworths of times gone by. They weren’t squeaky-clean. They didn’t have the plumbing for it, or maybe they didn’t even feel the need.”
    â€œThoreau was clean,” objected Homer primly. “At Walden, he bathed in the pond every day.”
    â€œWell, good for Henry, but what about the others? We look at these great icons from afar, but what if we came close, really close, very, very close? What would they be like? Think of the foul latrines and the greasy bedding. Think of the dirty feet and the unwashed bodies. Think of the bad breath and the spitting, the stinking underwear, the rotting garbage and the excrement thrown into the street. Think of the privies! You know, Homer, there were still a few privies in Concord when I was a little girl.”
    Homer flinched. “I see what you mean. The great and glorious unwashed.” Shuddering, he changed the subject. “Guess what? I’ve slipped again.”
    â€œSlipped? Oh, you mean—”
    â€œThe bestseller list. I’ve sunk to fifth place.”
    â€œWell, fifth place isn’t so bad. You just have to get the new book out in a hurry. Wait a sec, Homer; you’ve got to see this.” Mary reached for her notebook and flapped the pages back and forth. “It’s sort of mysterious and exciting. Maybe you could work it in. Did you ever hear of a lost church around here anywhere?”
    â€œA lost church?” Homer grinned. “How could a church