and one Sunday
morning in February it was given out at Bethesda that "on the first
Sabbath after the second Tuesday in March, the funeral sermon of
Brother Felix Kendrick will be preached at the house by Brother
Garwood." On the morning of this particular Sunday, which was selected
because it did not conflict with the services of the Bethesda
congregation, two neighbours met in the forks of the public road that
leads to Rockville. Each had come from a different direction. One was
riding and one was walking; and both were past the middle time of life.

"Well met, Brother Roach!" exclaimed the man on horseback.

"You've took the words from my mouth, Brother Brannum. I hope you are
well. I'm peart myself, but not as peart as I thought I was, bekaze I
find that the two or three miles to come is sticking in my craw."

"Ah, when it comes to that, Brother Roach," said the man on horseback,
"you and me can be one another's looking-glass. Look on me, and you'll
see what time has done for you."

"Not so, Brother Brannum! Not so!" exclaimed the other. "There's some
furrows on your forrud, and a handful of bird-tracks below your eyes
that would ill become me; and I'm plumper in the make-up, you'll
allow."

"Yes, yes, Brother Johnny Roach," said Brother Brannum, frowning a
little; "but what of that? Death takes no time to feel for wrinkles and
furrows, and nuther does plumpness stand in the way. Look at Brother
Felix Kendrick,--took off in the very pulse and power of his prime, you
may say. Yet, Providence permitting, I am to hark to his funeral
to-day."

"Why, so am I,--so am I," exclaimed Brother Roach. "We seem to agree,
Brother Brannum, like the jay-bird and the joree,--one in the tree and
t'other on the ground."

Brother Brannum's grim sense of superiority showed itself in his calm
smile.

"Yet I'll not deny," continued Brother Roach, flinging his coat, which
he had been carrying on his arm, across his shoulder, "that sech
discourses go ag'in the grain It frets me in the mind for to hear what
thundering great men folks git to be arter they are dead, though I hope
we may both follow suit, Brother Brannum."

"But how, Brother Johnny Roach?"

"Why, by the grace of big discourses, Brother Brannum. There 'a many a
preacher could close down the Bible on his hankcher and make our very
misdeeds smell sweet as innocence. It's all in the lift of the eyebrow,
and the gesticures of the hand. So old Neighbour Harper says, and h