s funeral preached."

It was a great day, and the babe, who was on her very best
six-months-old behavior, listened with admirable placidity to the
"sermon of grace," on which at a future time she might, perhaps, found a
genealogy. Her only offence against perfect church decorum was a
sometimes rather explosive "Agoo!" as she tried to reach the
ever-swaying black feather fan that was waved by her parents in turn for
her benefit. Before the service was over, indeed, she had secured and
torn the proud emblem into bits; but Tamar only smiled at its demolition
by the baby fingers. It was a good omen, she said, and meant that the
day of mourning was over.

THE DEACON'S MEDICINE

When the doctor drove by the Gregg farm about dusk, and saw old Deacon
Gregg perched cross-legged upon his own gatepost, he knew that something
was wrong within, and he could not resist the temptation to drive up and
speak to the old man.

It was common talk in the neighborhood that when Grandmother Gregg made
things too warm for him in-doors, the good man, her spouse, was wont to
stroll out to the front gate and to take this exalted seat.

Indeed, it was said by a certain Mrs. Frequent, a neighbor of prying
proclivities and ungentle speech, that the deacon's wife sent him there
as a punishment for misdemeanors. Furthermore, this same Mrs. Frequent
did even go so far as to watch for the deacon, and when she would see
him laboriously rise and resignedly poise himself upon the narrow area,
she would remark:

"Well, I see Grandma Gregg has got the old man punished again. Wonder
what he's been up to now?"

Her constant repetition of the unkind charge finally gained for it such
credence that the diminutive figure upon the gate-post became an object
of mingled sympathy and mirth in the popular regard.

The old doctor was the friend of a lifetime, and he was sincerely
attached to the deacon, and when he turned his horse's head towards the
gate this evening, he felt his heart go out in sympathy to the old man
in durance vile upon his lonely perch.

But he had barely started to the gate when he heard a voice which he
recognized as the deacon's, whereupon he would have hurried away had not
his horse committed him to his first impulse by unequivocally facing the
gate.

"I know three's a crowd," he called out cheerily as he presently drew
rein, "but I ain't a-goin' to stay; I jest--Why, where's grandma?" he
added, abruptly, seeing the old man