“As I was getting ready to go, I chanced to open the old saddle-room door, and what should I see there but the very foot-stove that my mother used to carry to church, before they had one stove for all the people. A thought struck me. My pew was in a cold part of the church; I would fill the iron cup inside of the foot-stove with coals, and take the stove along with me under my camlet cloak. No one would ever see it, and it would keep me comfortable all the day. “My mother was better off than I, and her foot-stove was not one of the ordinary kind. It was made of block tin, was perforated in stars, had a mahogany frame, and a brass pan for the coals. It was always a mystery to me how coals in that little hand-stove would hold fire for so long a time. _She_ used to use hard-wood coal, and mostly walnut. I had some good coals of apple-tree wood in the stove that morning, and I put them into the pan, and closed the stove door, and took the stove in my left hand under my cloak like a basket of eggs. Nobody ever carries a foot-stove now, though there can be found one still in the saddle-rooms and eaves-holes of nearly all the old houses, along with the brass warming-pans, candle-moulds, and shovels and tongs and fenders. “How bright the water looked at the ferry! How the old ferryman stared when he saw me! How an old crow on a dead tree peered down at me and cried out in the keen air, ‘Haw, haw, haw!’ “I met Elder Almy on the way. “‘Goin’ to Thanksgiving?’ said he. “‘How do I look now, Elder?’ said I. “‘Just like a rag-bag,—a travelling vanity on the road to Vanity Fair. You’ll get there, Susan. Did you hear that crow? What was he talking about, Susan?’ [Illustration: EGYPTIAN JUGGLER.] “‘Pewter spoons, I guess,’ said I. And I just gave him _that_ look that I had given Malachi. “The churchyard was full of people, the dead and alive; for that matter, the dead are always there. The bell was ringing, and carriages were coming from all the neighboring farms. All eyes were bent upon me as I passed through the crowd and went up the church steps. I took my seat in the back pew where I usually sat, and put my feet on the warm foot-stove and spread over it the camlet cloak like a tent, and looked up to the tall pulpit, the red curtains, and sounding-board, and hour-glass. “Elder Holmes alluded to me in the opening prayer, as one whom ‘celestial charity delighted to honor.’ After the prayer I looked up again and around, and I saw that all the eyes in the church were turned towards me. “‘The Lord keep me humble!’ prayed I. “That prayer was answered. Surely it was.