se in this town has yet been able to do."

"Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Prency!" said the cobbler, dropping the shoe and
looking up incredulously. "He's got a thousand times as much head-piece
as I have, an' if he can't learn what he wants to from other people
there ain't the slightest likelihood of my ever learnin' him anythin'."

"Sam," said Mrs. Prency, earnestly, "in the book that you have been
reading so industriously, from which you have learned so much, and from
which I hope you will continue to learn a great deal, don't you
remember something that is said about the Lord having selected the
feeble ones of this world to confound the wise?"

Sam looked down meditatively at the dropped shoe, and replied in a
moment,--

"Well, now you speak of it, ma'am, I think I do."

"You certainly will believe that as much as everything else you have
read there?"

"Why, of course; I'll have to."

"Very well, then; apply it to yourself, and try to be patient the next
time that young man comes to annoy you."

Sam rested his elbows on his knees and dropped the shoe again for a
moment, and at last, resuming his work, said,--

"Well, I'll take your word for it, ma'am: you know a good deal more
about such things than I do."

Gradually the cobbler's face began to contract. His needle and thread
moved more and more rapidly through the buttons and the leather. At
last he laid the shoe aside with an air of desperation, looked up
defiantly, and said,--

"Mrs. Prency, I don't mean no offence, an' I ain't the kind of person
that meddles with other people's business, an' I hope you won't feel
hurt or angry at anythin' that I'm goin' to say to you, because there
is somethin' behind it. So I hope you won't think I'm meddlin' with
your affairs, if you'll listen to me just a little while. I--I--"

"Well?" said the lady, for Sam seemed to be hesitating about what he
wanted to say.

"I don't hardly know how to say it, ma'am, an' I'm awfully afraid to
say it at all; but--well, there, Mrs. Prency, I guess I know why you
are so very much interested in the religious welfare of that young
lawyer."

The judge's wife had naturally a very good complexion, but her face
flushed deeper as she looked inquiringly at the cobbler but said
nothing.

"I've seen him," said Sam,--"I can't help seein' things when I'm goin'
along in the street, you know, or happen to look out through the
windows,--I've seen him in company once in a while with that daughter
o