powerful man and the little animal affected them profoundly. No
one--even the youngest--smiled; every one--even the youngest--became
suddenly attentive. Turning over the leaves of the hymnbook, he then
gave out the first two lines of a hymn. The choir accordion in the front
side bench awoke like an infant into wailing life, and Cissy Appleby,
soprano, took up a little more musically the lugubrious chant. At the
close of the verse the preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with
a breezy bass that seemed to fill the little building with the trouble
of the sea. Then followed prayer from Deacon Shadwell, broken by "Amens"
from the preacher, with a nautical suggestion of "Ay, ay," about them,
and he began his sermon.

It was, as those who knew his methods might have expected, a suggestion
of the conversation they had already overheard. He likened the little
chapel, choked with umbrage and rotting in its dampness, to the gospel
seed sown in crowded places, famishing in the midst of plenty, and
sterile from the absorptions of the more active life around it. He
pointed out again the true work of the pioneer missionary; the
careful pruning and elimination of those forces that grew up with the
Christian's life, which many people foolishly believed were a part of
it. "The WORLD must live and the WORD must live," said they, and there
were easy-going brethren who thought they could live together. But he
warned them that the World was always closing upon--"shaddering"--and
strangling the Word, unless kept down, and that "fair seemin'
settlement," or city, which appeared to be "bustin' and bloomin'" with
life and progress, was really "hustlin' and jostlin'" the Word of God,
even in the midst of these "fancy spires and steeples" it had erected
to its glory. It was the work of the missionary pioneer to keep down or
root out this carnal, worldly growth as much in the settlement as in the
wilderness. Some were for getting over the difficulty by dragging the