"One hot summer's day," the farmer told me, "the elder was preaching
to a very drowsy crowd after a hard week's work in the hayfield, when
suddenly he stopped and shouted: 'Fire! Fire!' at the top of his
lungs. 'Where? where?' cried some ex-snorers jumping to their feet.
'In hell,' cried the indignant parson, 'for those who sleep under the
sound of the gospel.'"

This model minister was dear to every heart, for it was he who had
blessed them when they first saw the light of day, had baptized them
when first his kindly teachings had awakened their aspirations to walk
in the straight and narrow way. It was he who married them when they
found each the _alter ego_, to whom they could say:

"Thou art all to me love for which my heart did pine
A green isle in the sea love, a fountain and a shrine."

It was he who had lifted their souls on the breath of prayer, when
their loved ones had "fallen asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep, from
which none ever wake to weep."

They loved him though they gave him from their scanty earnings but
$400 a year, and half the fish he could catch, yet they liberally
supplied his larder with their sweetest butter, freshest eggs, and the
choicest cuts from their flocks. When a city minister once said to
him: "You have a poor salary, brother," he at once replied: "Ah, but I
give them mighty poor preaching, you know."

Grand old man, he followed closely in the footsteps of his Master, and
accomplished much more good than many famous ones who wander far from
the precepts of the lowly Nazarene, and deliver featureless sermons