Emily explained matters to me one day in this way: “You see, Mr. Brockwell, he gets riled up because I chew gum while he’s reading gospel, but it’s really his own fault; if he’d only read one chapter, like an ordinary Christian man! My father, now, was a deacon, and he never read mor’n one chapter at a time at family service; but Mr. Brockwell, when he gets a smiting people hip and thigh, and a raining down plagues and things; why, there’s no stop to him; he goes right along over ever so many chapters--and I don’t take to the stoning and the killing--and so I go off to sleep, unless I chew gum right hard. Why, never once since we’ve been married has Mr. Brockwell been satisfied with the ‘Fall of Jericho’ for one reading. On he goes, and tackles that city of ‘Ai,’ and I always feel sorry when that line comes about the ‘men and _women_ that were slaughtered bein’ twelve thousand.’ But, land sakes! it’s all sweeter than honey to Mr. Brockwell--’specially the hanging of the king, and piling stones on his body for the beginning of an altar--nasty, bad-smelling idea I call it. _But_ when Mr. Brockwell begins with them ‘seven trumpets of rams’ horns’ I begin to chew hard, for I know there’s a lot to be gone over before praying begins. If he’d read oftener about Hannah and little Samuel I’d keep awake. Ain’t that a nice little Samuel on the mantel--his left foot’s broken, but kneeling like that you’d never know it, unless you turn him around.” That being the sort of tangent Mrs. Emily was apt to go off on during a conversation. The old man might have lived without working at that time, but he held idleness as sinful, so he, without any feeling of shame, acted as night watchman in a large building down town. One winter there were many burglaries, and his employer grew a bit uneasy, knowing his was a tempting establishment and remembering that Thomas Brockwell was an elderly man. So he asked his watchman if he would not like to have some one to help him during the rest of the winter. And Brockwell was hot with anger and answered that he could take care of his employer’s property, but he didn’t want to protect some young nincompoop besides. “I am able to take care of any burglars that come my way. A man of the Lord can always lick a law-breaker,” and looking at the really splendid old body of his watchman, the gentleman had laughingly declared he “believed old Brockwell would be up to two or three younger men!” and let him go his obstinate, lonely way, and like many another word spoken in jest, these words proved true.