half a pound of sugar, and striving to extract a breakfast beverage from
the unground coffee-bean? Clearly not so tenderly fond and sympathetic a
husband as Theron. He began by laughing because she laughed, and grew by
swift stages to comprehend, then frankly to share, her amusement. From
this it seemed only a step to the development of a humor of his own,
doubling, as it were, their sportive resources. He found himself
discovering a new droll aspect in men and things; his phraseology took
on a dryly playful form, fittingly to present conceits which danced up,
unabashed, quite into the presence of lofty and majestic truths. He
got from this nothing but satisfaction; it obviously involved increased
claims to popularity among his parishioners, and consequently magnified
powers of usefulness, and it made life so much more a joy and a thing to
be thankful for. Often, in the midst of the exchange of merry quip
and whimsical suggestion, bright blossoms on that tree of strength and
knowledge which he felt expanding now with a mighty outward pushing
in all directions, he would lapse into deep gravity, and ponder with a
swelling heart the vast unspeakable marvel of his blessedness, in being
thus enriched and humanized by daily communion with the most worshipful
of womankind.

This happy and good young couple took the affections of Tyre by storm.
The Methodist Church there had at no time held its head very high among
the denominations, and for some years back had been in a deplorably
sinking state, owing first to the secession of the Free Methodists and
then to the incumbency of a pastor who scandalized the community by
marrying a black man to a white woman. But the Wares changed all this.
Within a month the report of Theron's charm and force in the pulpit was
crowding the church building to its utmost capacity--and that, too,
with some of Tyre's best people. Equally winning was the atmosphere of
jollity and juvenile high spirits which pervaded the parsonage under