Jared Pellet in after times could have told you it was not damp, in spite of the words of Sampson Purkis, the beadle, who said that there were "sympsons" of it, else why did the steel fastenings of the poor-boxes grow rusty? unless--but thereby hangs a tale. Jared could have told you the place was not damp by the organ, for would not the stops have stuck, and the notes refused to speak, had there been moisture? But at this period he was in ignorance, for, incited thereto by his wife, his daughter Patty, Mr Timson, the churchwarden, and Monsieur Canau, professor of the violin, Jared Pellet was about to offer himself as a candidate for the vacant post of organist, to perform which task he had now settled himself at a table--some four or five small faces that had come peeping in at the door having been warned off by divers very alarming looking frowns and shakes of the head. But it was no easy task to write a letter at Jared Pellet's. True, there had been a pennyworth of the best "cream laid," and envelopes to match, obtained for the occasion; but the ink in the penny bottle was thick, and when thinned with vinegar to prevent it from coming off the nibs upon the paper in beads, it looked brown and bitty. Then the pen spluttered, partly from rust, partly from having been turned into a tool for raising the tongues of silent harmonium notes. So fresh pens and ink had to be procured, when Jared wrote one application, and smeared his name, and then said, "Tut-tut-tut!" He wrote a second, but that did not look well, for there was a hair in the pen, and he put two n's in candidate. He then wrote a third, but only to find that he had done so with the paper upside down, when he exclaimed-- "There never was a letter yet that didn't get more and more out of tune--I mean didn't get worse--the more you tried." Patty did not speak, only looked sympathetic, and as if she would gladly have written the letter herself. But Jared tried once more, and this time a proper missive was written, passed round, and approved by both Mrs Pellet and her daughter. Then the postage stamp was affixed to the envelope with paste, for Jared had managed to lick off all the gum; and at last, when the important document had been safely posted, its writer recollected half a score things he ought to have said, and after fidgeting all the evening, went off despairingly to bed, feeling certain that the post of organist could never be his. Volume 1, Chapter III. ORGANIC.