Sunday evenings always saw a friendly gathering at their home, there being no vesper service in the Domkirke, since it could not be lighted. We youngsters danced and played games. Our elders had a quiet rubber of whist, or gossiped over their knitting and the fine embroidery they did in those days. There was one article that went with the knitting pins which very recently I have seen come back, as a curiosity I suppose. It was an implement of polite use then--the scratching stick I mean. A slender rod with an ivory hand on its end, the fingers set “a-scratch.” I can think of no better way of describing it. It was handy if a lady’s back needed scratching, to reach down with, and no doubt it was the source of much solid comfort. When the watchman cried ten, Mr. Quedens would look up from his whist and remark innocently: “Well, Anna, what do you say? I say when our company go home, we’ll go to bed.” The company took the hint. On the Monday morning preceding Lent we children had a game that reversed the usual order of things and was fine fun. We went around then and “whipped up” our friends with festive rods trimmed with colored paper rosettes. For being caught in bed they were mulcted in many “boller,” a kind of sweetened bun, or else pennies. They made a point, of course, of staying in bed late, and cried piteously as we beat the feather beds with all our might. Mr. Quedens always cried loudest of all and begged for mercy in his droll half-German speech, while we gleefully laid it on all the harder. Across the main street from the Quedens home one of the two Jewish families in Ribe kept shop. They were quiet good people, popular with their neighbors, who took little account of the fact that they were Jews. The Old Town was not given to religious discussions, for good cause: with this exception it was all one way. There was not a Roman Catholic in the country, I think. Baptists we had heard of as sad heretics quite beyond the pale; Methodism was but a name. We were all Lutherans, and that as such we had a monopoly of the way of salvation followed, of course. So perhaps it was not so strange after all that Mrs. Tacchau should fall out with her life-long friend, Mrs. Kerst, who was as stubbornly zealous in her churchmanship as she was good and generous in her life. The Jewess had always known how to steer clear of the dangerous reef, but at last they struck it fair. “Well, well, dear friend,” said she, trying desperately to back away, “don’t let us talk about it. Some day when we meet in heaven we shall know better.” It was too much. Her friend absolutely bristled. “What! _Our_ heaven? Indeed, no! Here we can be friends, Mrs. Tacchau. But there--really, excuse _me_!” It has helped me over many a stile since to remember that she really was a good woman. She was that. I have seldom known a better. [Illustration: THE GOOD DEAN OF THE DOMKIRKE.]