criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia Brewster had a few infant
babes to "put on the job--he'd like to see 'em try." Meantime several
male members of the congregation, who at one time or another had sat on
the roof during the hottest of the dog days to see that shingling
operations we're conscientiously and skilfully performed, were very
pessimistic as to any satisfactory result ever being achieved.

"The angle of the roof--what they call the 'pitch'--they say that that's
always been wrong," announced the secretary of the Dorcas in a business
session.

"Is it that kind of pitch that the Bible says you can't touch without
being defiled? If not, I vote that we unshingle the roof and alter the
pitch!" This proposal came from a sister named Maria Sharp, who had
valiantly offered the year before to move the smoky chimney with her own
hands, if the "men-folks" wouldn't.

But though the incendiary suggestion of altering the pitch was received
with applause at the moment, subsequent study of the situation proved
that such a proceeding was entirely beyond the modest means of the
society. Then there arose an ingenious and militant carpenter in a
neighbouring village, who asserted that he would shingle the
meeting-house roof for such and such a sum, and agree to drink every drop
of water that would leak in afterward. This was felt by all parties to
be a promise attended by extraordinary risks, but it was accepted
nevertheless, Miss Lobelia Brewster remarking that the rash carpenter,
being already married, could not marry a Dorcas anyway, and even if he
died, he was not a resident of Edgewood, and therefore could be more
easily spared, and that it would be rather exciting, just for a change,
to see a man drink himself to death with rain-water. The expected