afterwards, as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at a
prayer-meeting, and to "take the service" in the village chapels on
Sunday evening. He was the most singularly placid, even-tempered
person I ever knew. I first became acquainted with him when I was a
child and he was past middle life. What he was then, I am told, he
always was; and I certainly never heard one single violent word
escape his lips. His habits, even when young, had a tendency to
harden. He went to sleep after his mid-day dinner with the greatest
regularity, and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire after
dark. I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and praying
with his family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to the
confusion of all who were around him. He is dead now, but he lived
to a good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, and
he passed away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze. He
never read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was not
at work or at chapel he slumbered. To the utter amazement of
everybody, it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he--
George Butts--were to be married. They were about the last people in
the world, who, it was thought, could be brought together. My mother
was stunned, and never completely recovered. I have seen her, forty
years after George Butts' wedding-day, lift up her hands, and have
heard her call out with emotion, as fresh as if the event were of
yesterday, "What made that girl have George I can NOT think--but
there!" What she meant by the last two words we could not
comprehend. Many of her acquaintances interpreted them to mean that
she knew more than she dared communicate, but I think they were
mistaken. I am quite certain if she had known anything she must have
told it, and, in the next place, the phrase "but there" was not
uncommon amongst women in our town, and was supposed to mark the
consciousness of a prudently restrained ability to give an