Read Online Steeplechase by Jane Langton - Free Book Online Page B

get itself lost?”
    She sucked her pencil. “I know it sounds strange.”
    â€œYou mean it just pointed its steeple at the horizon and took off, galumphing away in the night?”
    â€œHeaven knows. I was bumbling around in the archives of the Concord Library and I found something strange. I wouldn’t have paid any attention to one crazy letter, but there were two of them. Look, here’s the first one. It was just a wisp of torn paper in a file. No date, no return address, no signature. I made a copy. Look.”
    Homer looked. The handwriting was old-fashioned but precise. It started in the middle of a sentence:
    â€¦ picnicking with my dear friends from Concord, Honoria and Mary Ann. Now Mother you know what alwayz happens at picnics it began to pore pitchforks so we went into the empty church and I found a hym book under a bench so I took it because nobody comes there now.
    Homer shook his head. “This is your lost church? But, Mary, it could be anyplace. Her dear friends were from Concord, but maybe the letter was written from someplace else entirely. And maybe it was the other Concord, the one in New Hampshire.”
    â€œYes, that’s what I thought. But then I found this.” Mary turned a page. “This one has a date.”
    July 17, ’69
    Dearest Honey ,
    Our Poetry Social met yesterday and my little offering was well received! In fact (forgive me, dearest, for bragging) our President praised it as worthy of Oliver Wendell Holmes himself! Think of that !
    THE LOST CHURCH
    Deep in the forest primeval
    And shrouded in shrubbery ,
    A prey to woodworm and weevil ,
    The empty church stands.
    No sermon of good or of evil
    Resounds from that pulpit.
    No minister’s eloquent hands
    Are lifted in blessing.
    How many a swift grain of sand
    Has drained from the glass
    Since last these walls echoed
    With hymn music grand?
    Lost, lost is the music! Lost
    All the prayers and the people !
    Lost, tempest-tossed
    And forever abandoned ,
    The little lost church and the steeple.
    â€œWhat do you think?” said Mary. “Isn’t it sweet?”
    â€œThe little lost church,” said Homer dreamily. “Maybe it was the church of churches, the temple of temples, the perfect union of truth and majesty. I’ll bet it was translated.”
    â€œTranslated? Oh, you mean—”
    â€œSwept up to heaven.” Homer lifted his hands in wonder. “It was too good for this world, so now it’s up there in paradise, an alabaster cathedral, with Socrates and Jesus taking turns in the pulpit.”

1868
    The News from Fairyland

The Mind of Horace

    W hen Alexander, Ida, and Horace came home from Nashoba, Eudocia was waiting with baby Gussie in her arms. Ida stepped down from the buggy and took the baby. Eudocia lifted Horace down and said, “Were you my good boy?”
    â€œOf course he was,” said Ida.
    â€œI saw a big tree,” said Horace. He spread his arms wide. “As big as a giant.”
    â€œOh, yes,” said his grandmother, unbuttoning his jacket. “I know that big tree.”
    Jake peered over the side of the basket as the balloon wafted over Walden Pond. “You see Hector anyplace, Jack?”
    â€œHe’s a-comin’, Jake,” said Jack. “See him down there in the wagon, galloping that old horse? Whoopsie, Jake! Look at that. Wheel fell off the wagon.”
    Jake looked down at the disaster on the Walden Road and said mildly, “It’s all right, Jack. Horse ain’t dead. Hector’ll catch up by and by.”
    â€œYou do love him a little?” Ida whispered to Alexander as she lay beside him in the big bed that had once belonged to her mother and father.
    â€œOf course,” said Alexander, “just as I love his mother. And after all, who was it who helped bring Horace into the world?”
    Ida smiled as she rested in the crook of her husband’s arm. It was true that Horace had been born