“‘Oh! you’re all right I reckon, Mrs. Scooley; but you had better be a gittin’ along home, and not stand too long in the cold air, with so much of your vital organs exposed to the weather; the result may be fearful if not fatal!’ “That would ginnerally start her off pooty lively towards her shanty. They say the first time the Doctor saw her tongue he was surprised so much that he looked actewelly skeered. Says he: ‘I’ve been nigh unto eight and thirty years a practicin’ physician, and until this moment I flattered myself that I was familiar with all the ins and outs of the profession. But I begin to think I gin over the dissectin’ knife too soon, for here’s somethin’ that I was not prepared for.’ “But that’s not tellin’ you about the sermon, is it? but when I mentioned that Gil Bizby, I sort of wandered off arter him and his contrivances. Wal, as I was about to tell you, Gil and I were saunterin’ around Misertown one Sunday, and we saw any number of gals goin’ into the school-house where the preachin’ was carried on. So we concluded to step in and git a better look at some of ’em. I didn’t know many of the people round thar, but from what I heard I judged they were the meanest, close-fistedest set of sinners that ever had the gospel dispensed with amongst ’em. “I understood they had treated their minister plaguey mean when he fust come thar to look arter them. Thar was no regular place for him to stop, you see, and they agreed amongst themselves to take turns a keepin’ him until they could get a house up for him. He was one of those young, easy, green kind of fellers that had seemin’ly never been so far away from home before but what he could see the smoke of his father’s chimney, or smell his mother’s corn-dodgers burnin’. And they soon took advantage of it, and sort of played button with him, shovin’ him around from one to another as though he was too hot to hold. “He fust went to a feller by the name of Wigglewort. Ses Wig, ‘I’m really very sorry, Mr. Sermonslice, but we unfortunately have no accommodations for you at present. We have no place for you to sleep ’thout we put you in the barn, and the nights are ruther cold for that, besides the rats might annoy you. Sorry you happened to come just at this time, of all others the most embarrassin’. It’s not but what I would like to have you stop with us; I would indeed, Mr. Sermonslice, consider it an honor to have you.’ “The minister, takin’ his books under his arm, started out into the night as though his life depended upon the most prompt kind of action. He wasn’t within hailin’ inside of two minutes. He went over and succeeded in gettin’ lodgin’s with a feller named Joe Grimsby, who lived over by Frog Marsh. [Illustration: JOE GRIMSBY.]