Patty Bissell, his eldest daughter, was to ride over to Boston with the old gentleman. She had been wanting to go to the city for a long time, and she was delighted when her father invited her to go. "Patty, how long will it take you to get ready?" asked the deacon. "Half an hour," the girl replied. "Well, say an hour," said the deacon. "But don't fail to be ready at the moment. I want you to learn to be punctual, my dear." "Oh, I shall be ready in an hour, father, and in less time, too." "Very well." The hour passed. The deacon was in his wagon, ready to start. "Well, Patty," he shouted, so that his daughter could hear him in the room where she was busy putting herself in a trim for the city. She was not quite ready. I think she had forgotten where her gloves were, and was ransacking every drawer in her bureau for them. The deacon spoke again. "In one minute," said Patty. The deacon waited one minute more, a very long minute, according to his watch--and off he started for Boston. Poor Patty! The disappointment was a sore one for her. But it taught her a lesson in punctuality which was worth more to her than a quarter's schooling at the Roundhill Academy. Mr. Bissell, you will please to take notice, was a _real_ deacon. In the country, it is a very common thing, I presume you are aware, for almost all the folks to have some handle or another fixed to their names; and very often the handle is put on, nobody knows how, or why, or when, or where. One man is known as a military officer, a _captain_, perhaps, or a _general_. But when you come to inquire into his history, you find that he never rose to a higher rank than that of a corporal in the militia, and possibly not quite so high as that. Another man is a _squire_. But how he came to be one, and, indeed, what is meant by the title in his case, are questions which would puzzle the wisest heads in the neighborhood. There are, also, in almost every part of the country, sundry men whom everybody calls _uncle_. Each one of them is _everybody's_ uncle in general, and nobody's uncle in particular. _Deacons_, too, scores of them, may be found, who have no other claim to the title than this--that they are _called_ so, by nearly all the men, women and children in the parish.