tter of it. As a rule, the poorer the people we served the
more weddings we helped to celebrate, and if the heroes and heroines of
them did not live happy ever after, at least they lived together.

There is no hour of the day or night that William has not sanctified
with somebody's marriage vows. Once, about two o'clock in the morning,
there was a furious rap at the door of the parsonage. William stuck
his head out of the window overhead and beheld a red-faced young farmer
standing in the moonlight, holding the hand of his sweetheart, who was
looking up at him with the expression that a white rose wears in a
storm.

"Come down and tie us, Parson," called the groom. "You ain't got time
to dress. They air after us hot-footed."

William slipped on his longtailed coat over his pajamas, hurried
downstairs and married them there in the moonlight, after having
examined the license the young man handed in through the parlor window.
And he looked well enough from the sill up, but from the sill down I
doubt if his costume would have passed muster.

Fortunately, no one thought of divorces in those days. Women stayed
with their husbands at the sacrifice of self-respect and everything
else save honor. And they were better women, more respected than those
who kick up so much divorce dust in society nowadays. Part of their
dissatisfaction comes from bad temper and bad training, and a good deal
of it comes from getting foolish notions out of books about the way
husbands do or do not love their wives. It seems they can't be
satisfied how they do it or how they don't do it. But back there
William and I never had any biological suspicions about the nature of
love, and the people he married to one another did not have any, either.

Once I remember a bridegroom who blushingly confessed that he was too
poor to pay the fee usually offered the preacher.

"But I'll pay you, Parson," he whispered as he swung his bride up
behind him upon his horse; "I'll pay as soon as I'm able."

[Illustration: "I'll Pay You, Parson. I'll Pay as Soon as I'm Able."]

Ten years passed and William was sent back to the same circuit. One
day, as he was on his way to an appointment, he met a man and woman in
a buggy. The woman had a baby at her breast, and the bottom of the
buggy looked like a human birdnest, it was so full of young, tow-headed
children.

"Hold on!" said the man, pulling up his horse; "ain't this Brother
Thompson?"

"Yes."