aptist secretary. And if a Universalist
Sunday-School Convention collects five hundred delegates, the next
Congregationalist Sabbath-School Conference must be as large, "lest
'they'--whoever _they_ may be--should think 'we'--whoever _we_ may
be--are going down."

Freed from these necessities, that happy year I began to know my wife by
sight. We saw each other sometimes. In those long mornings, when Dennis
was in the study explaining to map-peddlers that, I had eleven maps of
Jerusalem already, and to school-book agents that I would see them
hanged before I would be bribed to introduce their text-books into the
schools,--she and I were at work together, as in those old dreamy
days,--and in these of our log-cabin again. But all this could not
last,--and at length poor Dennis, my double, overtasked in turn, undid
me.

It was thus it happened. There is an excellent fellow, once a
minister,--I will call him Isaacs,--who deserves well of the world till
he dies, and after, because he once, in a real exigency, did the right
thing, in the right way, at the right time, as no other man could do it.
In the world's great football match, the ball by chance found him
loitering on the outside of the field; he closed with it, "camped" it,
charged it home,--yes, right through the other side,--not disturbed, not
frightened by his own success,--and breathless found himself a great
man, as the Great Delta rang applause. But he did not find himself a
rich man; and the football has never come in his way again. From that
moment to this moment he has been of no use, that one can see at all.
Still, for that great act we speak of Isaacs gratefully and remember him
kindly; and he forges on, hoping to meet the football somewhere again.
In that vague hope, he had arranged a "movement" for a general
organization of the human family into Debating-Clubs, County Societies,
State Unions, etc., etc., with a view of inducing all children to take
hold of the handles of their knives and forks, instead of the metal.
Children have bad habits in that way. The movement, of course, was
absurd; but we all did our best to forward, not it, but him. It came
time for the annual county-meeting on this subject to be held at
Naguadavick. Isaacs came round, good fellow! to arrange for it,--got the
town-hall, got the Governor to preside (the saint!--he ought to have
triplet doubles provided him by law), and then came to get me to speak.
"No," I said, "I would not speak,