On the morning after the meeting the happiest man in all Barton was the Reverend Jonas Wedgewell. He had been one of the first to agitate the subject of a grand temperance demonstration; in fact, he had, while preaching the funeral sermon of a young man who had been drowned while drunk, prophesied that the sad event which had on that occasion drawn his hearers together would give a mighty impetus to the temperance movement; then like a sensible, matter-of-fact prophet, he exerted himself to the uttermost that his prophecy might be fulfilled. He subscribed liberally to the fund which paid for advertising the meeting; he labored personally a full hour with the performer on the big drum, and ended by persuading him to forego a coon-hunt on that particular night, that he might take part in a hunt for nobler game. The Reverend Jonas had drafted all the pledges which were circulated during the meeting, and had seen to it that they contained no weak or ungrammatic expressions which might tempt thirsty souls to treat disrespectfully the documents and the principles they embodied. He had reached the church door at the third tap of the bell, had greeted all his reverend brethren with a hearty shake with both his own hands, and had offered the Reverend Timotheus Brown so many pertinent suggestions as to the prayer which that gentleman had been requested to make that the ancient divine remarked, with a touch of saintly sarcasm, that he did not consider that the occasion justified him in making a departure from his habit of offering strictly original prayers.