The Rev. Mr. ——, from another county, who had filled the pulpit of the Village Church more frequently in past years than was quite agreeable to the congregation, chanced to spend the Sunday in the neighborhood, and was invited to preach. He arose to announce the opening hymn just as St. George Randolph lifted his head from his private devotions. The expression of ineffable disgust, when he discovered who was to officiate that forenoon, was unmistakable and indescribable. Then he deliberately went through the pantomime of sharpening a pencil, a forefinger doing duty as the pencil, three fingers of the right hand holding an imaginary pen-knife. The sharpening done, he blew the imaginary refuse into the air with a disdainful puff. We all witnessed the operation, and the dullest could not miss the meaning. More than one was unable to join in the song of praise selected by the only man who was unconscious of the by-play. In the forty-five years of his active pastorate, my husband but twice violated pulpit and pew proprieties so far as to exchange meaning and amused glances with me. That was one of the times. As for Wirt Henry, nothing but an agonized ray from his wife’s eye kept him from disgracing himself. Having testified to the nature and sincerity of his sentiments with respect to the obnoxious interloper, as he considered him, our local wit turned a cold shoulder toward the pulpit and buried himself in the pages of a small, much-worn volume he drew from his pocket, never vouchsafing another glance at desk or occupant during the service. The little book was a collection of devotional readings he carried with him everywhere. His mother had given it to him when he went abroad. From her, too, he had learned to kneel by his bed each night and pray, as he had done at her knee in infancy. He never remitted the habit. I used to wonder, with a hard heartache, if he kept it up during that dark, dreadful age in the asylum. Less than three years after my first sight of him, the deaf, dumb and lunatic heir of the vast Randolph estate joined the mother he had not forgotten, nor ceased to love and venerate in the long night that had no star of hope, and which was to know no dawning this side of heaven. XXXIII PLANTATION PREACHING—COLORED COMMUNICANTS—A “MIGHTY MAN IN PRAYER” IN the group of midland counties that embraced Charlotte, Prince Edward and Halifax—names that fell into line, as by natural gravitation, in the thought and speech of the “Old Virginian”—the Presbyterian was the leading denomination. Rice, Lacy, Hoge, Alexander, and Speece had left their mark upon preceding generations, and a fragrant memory—as of mountains of myrrh and hills of frankincense—through all the Southern Church.