Uncle Aleck.

Mr. Young was an obsolete revival exhorter, whose life did little
to illustrate and enforce his givings out. He had a weakness for the
elder Scriptures; and hence the irreverent name applied to him in the
boat by Bart.

CHAPTER XII.

A CONSECRATION.

Among the adherents of uncle Aleck were the Coes, a mild, moony race,
and recently it was understood that Emeline, the only daughter in a
family of eight or nine, a languid, dreamy, verse-making mystic, had
expressed a wish to receive the rite of Christian baptism, at that
time practised by Uncle Aleck and his associates in Northern Ohio.

The ceremony had been postponed on account of the illness of her
mother, and was finally performed on the Sunday following the
incidents last narrated. A meeting was to be holden in the primitive
forest, near Coe's cabin, on the margin of a deep, crystal pool,
formed naturally by the springs that supplied Coe's Creek. Few events
happened in that quiet region, and this was an event. News of it had
circulated widely, and hundreds attended.

The occasion was not without a certain touching interest. The beauty
of the day, the wildness of the scenery under the grand old trees,
with rude rocks, beautiful slopes, and running, pure water, and the
deepening tints of autumn in sky, cloud and foliage,--the warm shafts
of sunshine that here and there lit it all up,--the sincere gravity
that fell as a Sabbath hush on the expectant multitude, who seemed to
realize the presence of a solemn mystery,--carried back an imaginative
mind to an earlier day and a more primitive people, when the early
Christians, in the absence of schism, administered the same rite.

Uncle Aleck, imbued with the sweetest spirit of his Master, seemed
inspired with a sense of the sacredness of the act he was to perform.
Of its divine origin, and sweet and consecrating efficacy, he had not
the slightest doubt. The simple services of his faith he performed in
a way that harmonized entirely with the occasion and its surroundings.
A grand hymn under the old trees was sung by the choir with fine
effect; a short, fervent prayer, the reading of two or three portions
of one of the gospels, and a few words of sweet and simple fervor,
expressive of a great love and sacrifice, and the unutterable hope
and rest of its grateful acknowledgment in the public act about to be
performed, followed; and then the believing, trembling girl was led
into the translucent wat