g."

"How do you see it, Budge?" I asked.

"Why, don't you know when the thunder bangs, and then you see an awful
bright place in the sky?--that's where the Lord's carriage gives an
awful pound, and makes little cracks through the floor of heaven, an'
we see right in. But what's the reason we can't ever see anybody
through the cracks, Uncle Harry?"

"I don't know--old fellow,--I guess it's because it isn't cracks in
heaven that look so bright,--it's a kind of fire that the Lord makes up
in the clouds. You'll know all about it when you get bigger."

"Well, I'll feel awful sorry if 'tain't anything but fire. Do you know
that funny song my papa sings 'bout:--

"'Roarin' thunders, lightenin's blazes,
Shout the great Creator's praises?'"

I don't know zactly what it means, but I think it's kind o' splendid,
don't you?"

I DID know the old song; I had heard it in a Western camp-meeting, when
scarcely older than Budge, and it left upon my mind just the effect it
seemed to have done on his. I blessed his sympathetic young heart, and
snatched him into my arms. Instantly he became all boy again.

"Uncle Harry," he shouted, "you crawl on your hands and knees and play
you was a horse, and I'll ride on your back."

"No, thank you, Budge, not on the dirt."

"Then let's play menagerie, an' you be all the animals."

To this proposition I assented, and after hiding ourselves in one of
the retired angles of the house, so that no one could know who was
guilty of disturbing the peace by such dire noises, the performance
commenced. I was by turns a bear, a lion, a zebra, an elephant, dogs of
various kinds, and a cat. As I personated the latter-named animals,
Toddie echoed my voice.

"Miauw! Miauw!" said he, "dat's what cats saysh when they goesh down
wells."

"Faith, an' it's him that knows," remarked Mike, who had invited
himself to a free seat in the menagerie, and assisted in the applause
which had greeted each personation.

"Would ye belave it, Misther Harry, dhat young dhivil got out the front
door one mornin' afore sunroise, all in his little noight-gown, an'
wint over to the doctor's an' picked up a kitten lyin' on the kitchen
door-mat, an' throwed it down dhe well. The docthor wasn't home, but
the missis saw him, an' her heart was dhat tindher that she hurried out
and throwed boords down for dhe poor little baste to stand on, an' let
down a hoe on a sthring, an' whin she got dhe poor little dhing out,
she