Then there was no school in the neighborhood for the children, and they were out in the barn-yard feeding the pigs with lump sugar, and chasing the hens off the nest to see what was the prospect for eggs, and making little boats of their shoes, and sailing them in the pond, and milking the cow in the middle of the day, &c. Then if I dressed in the morning in linen coat, thin pants, and straw hat, I’d be sure to find the wind “dead east” when I got into the city; or if I put on broadcloth and fixins to match, it would be hotter than Shadrach’s furnace, all day--while the dense morning fog would extract the starch from my dicky and shirt-bosom, till they looked very like a collapsed flapjack. Then our meeting-house was a good two miles distant, and we had to walk, or stay at home; because my factotum (Peter) wouldn’t stay on the farm without he could have the horse Sundays to go to Mill Village to see his affianced Nancy. Then the old farmers leaned on my stone wall, and laughed till the tears came into their eyes, to see “the city gentleman’s” experiments in horticulture, as they passed by “to meetin’.” Well, sir, before summer was over, my wife and I looked as jaded as omnibus horses--she with chance “help” and floods of city company, and I with my arduous duties as _express man_ for my own family in particular, and the neighbors in general. And now here we are--“No. 9 Kossuth square.” Can reach anything we want, by putting our hands out the front windows. If, as the poet says, “_man made the town_,” all I’ve got to say is--he understood his business! THE AGED MINISTER VOTED A DISMISSION. [Illustration: “Your minister is getting ‘superannuated,’ is he? Well, call a parish meeting, and vote him a dismission.”]