adjoining county, under the depressing conditions of a hopelessly
bedridden mother, and a father and brothers whose perceptions were
obviously closed to the advantages of a matrimonial connection with
Methodism--came straight to the house which their new congregation
rented as a parsonage. The impulse of reaction from the rather grim
cheerlessness of their wedding lent fresh gayety to their lighthearted,
whimsical start at housekeeping. They had never laughed so much in all
their lives as they did now in these first months--over their weird
ignorance of domestic details; with its mishaps, mistakes, and
entertaining discoveries; over the comical super-abundances and
shortcomings of their "donation" outfit; over the thousand and one
quaint experiences of their novel relation to each other, to the
congregation, and to the world of Tyre at large.

Theron, indeed, might be said never to have laughed before. Up to that
time no friendly student of his character, cataloguing his admirable
qualities, would have thought of including among them a sense of humor,
much less a bent toward levity. Neither his early strenuous battle to
get away from the farm and achieve such education as should serve
to open to him the gates of professional life, nor the later wave of
religious enthusiasm which caught him up as he stood on the border-land
of manhood, and swept him off into a veritable new world of views and
aspirations, had been a likely school of merriment. People had prized
him for his innocent candor and guileless mind, for his good heart, his
pious zeal, his modesty about gifts notably above the average, but it
had occurred to none to suspect in him a latent funny side.

But who could be solemn where Alice was?--Alice in a quandary over the
complications of her cooking stove; Alice boiling her potatoes all day,
and her eggs for half an hour; Alice ordering twenty pounds of steak and