“What but humiliation could you have expected from a people whose hearts had turned to the worship of cheeses?” I stood recently in the old Cheshire churchyard by the grave of good Elder Leland, and read with a tender reverence the following simple inscription, on his tombstone, which had been prepared by himself:— “Here lies John Leland of Cheshire, who labored to promote piety and to vindicate the civil and religious rights of all men.” His “Evening Hymn” is his true monument, but he will long be a figure in the history of that quaint past. “TRIP-TRIP-TO-DEE-DEE.” THE SCHOOLMASTER’S STORY. A hand was raised in the reading-class. “Well?” I asked. “What became of _that_ man?” “I do not know, James. This reading lesson is a humorous story.” I was a teacher when the unexpected question was asked me. The second class in reading used a book, long ago out of print, that was called the “Introduction to the American Common School Reader and Speaker.” Some of my readers may recall it. It contained a single humorous selection, entitled “A Melting Story.” It was this selection that had been read, when my honest pupil, James, asked the question,— “What became of _that_ man?” “That man” was the unhappy subject of the reading-book story. One cold winter’s night he had slipped into a country store while the keeper had gone out to close the blinds, and had stolen a pound ball of butter, and put it into his hat, and replaced the hat, with the butter ball in the top of the crown, on his head. The storekeeper saw the act, and determined to punish the thief in as cunning a way as the theft had been committed. He rushed into the store, confronted the butter stealer, and compelled him to sit down by the stove. He filled the stove with wood, and began to talk in a lively manner, and, adding seasoned wood to the roaring fire, made the place so hot that the butter melted in the thief’s hat, and ran down over his face and shoulders. The thief, thus detained, made many excuses to get away, but the storekeeper would not accept them, but held him in torture, his face and hair dripping with the butter. At last, when the butter had thoroughly oiled his woful guest, he rose and said: “I say, Seth, the fun that I have had out of you to-night will well pay me for that pound of butter. I shall not charge it,” or words with this meaning. This selection of reading was very popular in old schools forty years ago.