"Be assured," said the Professor, with much solemnity, "that a sincere devotion to this delicious little berry will finally bring its reward. It will enable you to wait with admirable patience for the big case which is to come and place you prominently before the public. Toney, excuse this interruption. Read on,--I am becoming deeply interested." Toney proceeded with the reading as follows: "We occasionally meet with an instance of the falsification of the old adage that fools are the recipients of fortune's favors; for this illustrious man, at the very outset of his professional career, met with no ordinary good luck. A few days subsequent to his admission to the bar, the pious old maiden, whose deplorable ignorance of the Greek alphabet had deprived one profession of an ornament and added it to another, left these sublunary scenes for her supernal abode in Abraham's bosom. She had never forgotten nor forgiven the supposed ingratitude of her former protégé. So far from this, she had, on every occasion, denounced him, with all the vehemence of virtuous indignation, as the black-hearted instigator of a meditated assault on her person. What, then, was his astonishment when he found that she had left a will in which she had bestowed on him all her worldly possessions. This testamentary document had been executed many years anterior to the melancholy event which had caused so wide a breach between them. She had put it carefully away and must have entirely forgotten it; for had her mind once reverted to the circumstance of its existence, nothing short of a supermundane interposition could have saved it from the devouring flames. She left him a beautiful farm, and personal property to a considerable amount, with the unusual proviso in the will that he should be a bishop. Some of her relatives seemed disposed, at first, to contend for the property, on the ground that as he was not a bishop he could not claim under the will. But this learned jurist cited the legal maxim _lex non cogit ad impossibilia_, and said that although he was not a bishop at that particular period, he would endeavor to carry out the intentions of the testatrix by becoming one as soon as a favorable opportunity should offer. To manifest his sincerity he immediately became a devout member of the church, and would sometimes read the service when the pastor was absent; and this he continued to do even after his secular duties had got to be exceedingly onerous; being apprehensive of trouble about his title unless he observed this wise precaution. Thus was this threatened lawsuit nipped in the bud; and M. T. Pate took peaceable possession of his beautiful farm, which he soon found was mortgaged nearly to the extent of its actual value in the market.