by the old theology; "Oh my wedding day, why did they rejoice? Brides
should wear mourning, every family is built over this awful pit of
despair, and only one in a thousand escapes."

When I semi-occasionally peruse one of the sermons I preached in those
days of my youth, I am strongly inclined to crawl into a den and pull
the hole in after me. I can fully believe the orator who said that a
stupid speech once saved his life.

"I went back home," he said, "last year to spend Thanksgiving with the
old folks. While waiting for the turkey to cook, I went into the woods
gunning--it would amuse me, and wouldn't hurt the game, for I couldn't
hit the broadside of a barn at ten paces. While promenading, it
commenced to rain, and not wishing to wet my best Sunday-go-to-meetings,
I crawled into a hollow log for shelter; at last the clouds rolled by
and I attempted to pull out, but to my horror, the log had contracted so
that I was stuck fast in the hole, and I gave myself up for lost. I
remembered all the sins of my youth, and conscience assured me that I
richly deserved my fate; finally, I thought of a certain unspeakably
asinine speech which I once inflicted upon a suffering audience, and I
felt so small that I rattled round in that old log like a white bean in
a washtub, and slipped like an eel out of the little pipe-stem end of
that old tree. I was saved; but the audience had been ruined for life."

Thus often in this cruel world do the innocent suffer, while the
guilty go unscathed to torture a confiding public with what the great
apostle calls the "foolishness of preaching."

This summer brought our family few smiles but many tears, and the
death-angel passed close to our doors. My eldest brother, while