with zest.

"I'm afraid the next tale I've got to tell you will take a good deal of
time." ("We're here to listen," interrupted the minister.)

"Thank you! but you don't know me when I begin to talk! I can hardly
tell this tale in a public meeting, it comes so near home. It's about a
friend of mine, we'll call him Joe, and whenever I think about him there
always comes into my mind the verse we put up over him, 'Blessed is he,
whosoever shall not be offended in Me,' for Joe hadn't an easy lot. I'll
tell you what his trade was, though it may make you laugh to hear he was
a sweep! Now, I don't know what there is about a sweep that makes little
rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but
that's the curious fact. As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in
the street, there's a crowd of little rascals round him at once. I've
seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black
face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ''Weep, 'weep!' behind
him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about
where he lived. 'Eh! never mind 'em, Mr Charter,' he used to say. 'It
pleases the children, and it doesn't hurt me.' That was the sort of man
he was, you see, humble and content.

"He was married, was Joe, to a good, hard-working little wife, and
they'd had one daughter. She married a young plumber who got work at
Peterhead, and she had three little boys that their grandfather had
never seen. He had a photograph of them on the mantleshelf with their
mother, that she'd sent him one Christmas. Now one day, an idea came
into his head, that if he put by threepence a week, after a good long
time, he and his wife could go by a cheap excursion to see those little
grandchildren and their mother, just once before they died. He prayed