to church, and my uncle, who stayed home, improved the opportunity
to point out of what stuff those Pharisees were made, much to his
own edification. Easter week came. In Denmark it is, or was, custom
to go to communion once a year, on Holy Thursday, if at no other
season, and, I might add, rarely at any other. On Wednesday night,
the deacon appeared, unbidden, at my uncle's door, craving an
interview. If a spectre had suddenly walked in, I do not suppose
he could have lost his wits more completely. He recovered them with
an effort, and bidding his guest welcome, led him courteously to
his office.

From that interview he came forth a changed man. Long years after
I heard the full story of it from my uncle's own lips. It was simple
enough. The deacon said that duty called him to the communion
table on the morrow, and that he could not reconcile it with his
conscience to go with hate toward his neighbor in his heart. Hence
he had come to tell him that he might have the line as he claimed
it. The spark struck fire. Then and there they made up and were warm
friends, though agreeing in nothing, till they died. "The faith,"
said my uncle in telling of it, "that could work in that way upon
such a nature, is not to be made light of." And he never did after
that. He died a believing man.

It may be that it contributed something to the ordinarily democratic
relations of the upper-class men and the tradespeople that the
latter were generally well-to-do, while the officials mostly had a
running fight of it with their incomes. My father's salary had to
reach around to a family of fourteen, nay, fifteen, for he took
his dead sister's child when a baby and brought her up with us,
who were boys all but one. Father had charge of the Latin form, and