At dinner, the Doctor, who had been all the morning studying out his Treatise on the Millennium, discoursed tranquilly as usual, innocently ignorant of the unusual cares which were distracting the minds of his listeners. What should he know of dress-makers, good soul? Encouraged by the respectful silence of his auditors, he calmly expanded and soliloquized on his favorite topic, the last golden age of Time, the Marriage-Supper of the Lamb, when the purified Earth, like a repentant Psyche, shall be restored to the long-lost favor of a celestial Bridegroom, and glorified saints and angels shall walk familiarly as wedding-guests among men. "Sakes alive!" said little Miss Prissy, after dinner, "did I ever hear any one go on like that blessed man?--such a spiritual mind! Oh, Miss Scudder, how you are privileged in having him here! I do really think it is a shame such a blessed man a'n't thought more of. Why, I could just sit and hear him talk all day. Miss Scudder, I wish sometimes you'd just let me make a ruffled shirt for him, and do it all up myself, and put a stitch in the hem that I learned from my sister Martha, who learned it from a French young lady who was educated in a convent;--nuns, you know, poor things, can do _some_ things right; and I think _I_ never saw such hemstitching as they do there;--and I should like to hemstitch the Doctor's ruffles; he is _so_ spiritually-minded, it really makes me love him. Why, hearing him talk put me in mind of a real beautiful song of Mr. Watts,--I don't know as I could remember the tune." And Miss Prissy, whose musical talent was one of her special _fortes_, tuned her voice, a little cracked and quavering, and sang, with a vigorous accent on each accented syllable,-- "From _the_ third heaven, where God resides, That holy, happy place, The New Jerusalem comes down, Adorned with shining grace. "Attending angels shout for joy, And the bright armies sing,-- 'Mortals! behold the sacred seat Of your descending King!'" "Take care, Miss Scudder!--that silk must be cut exactly on the bias"; and Miss Prissy, hastily finishing her last quaver, caught the silk and the scissors out of Mrs. Scudder's hand, and fell down at once from the Millennium into a discourse on her own particular way of covering piping-cord.