Summary
A dew-damp Sabbath dawns on a Midwestern whistle-stop; Edgar, all cowlick and conviction, trots toward the white-steepled schoolhouse clutching a lesson book like a buckler. Between picket fences he collides with the girl whose eyelashes seem tuned to church-bell resonance, but his moment of wonder is ambushed by the town’s velvet-jacketed tormentor, the boy who already smokes like a grown rake. Scripture hour arrives; the teacher unfurls the saga of David’s sling, and suddenly the rafters quake with Edgar’s daydream—he is the ruddy shepherd, the chalkboard becomes a battlefield, the inkwells swell to Goliath’s shield, and every classmate—beloved, rival, even the stern spinster at the pump-organ—are hostages in a life-sized diorama of peril. When called to recite, Edgar’s answer meanders through Philistine armor and lands in comic heresy; the scandalized congregation sentences him to the dais of shame, a scaffold where every stare brands him ‘delinquent prodigy.’ There, in a hallucination worthy of Doré, he plummets through floorboards into a sulphur-tinged underworld, clutching his spelling primer like a life-vest. Yet the descent is brief; pie—two slabs of molasses-sweet consolation—restores equilibrium, and by twilight Edgar struts home whistling, reconciled to rivals, sweetheart, and the cosmos itself.
Synopsis
On the way to Sunday school, Edgar meets the lady of his heart--and his hated rival. The Sunday-school lesson on David and Goliath so intrigues Edgar that he sees himself as David, saving the entire school, sweetheart and rival included, from Goliath's sword. Edgar's answer to the teacher's question proves his straying thoughts. As a result he is placed on the platform, where he sees himself descending to the "lower regions" as the "worst boy in the school." Edgar's Sunday adventures end with him at peace with the world, after two helpings of pie.
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