his thumbs firmly in the armholes of his waistcoat,
surveyed the smoke-stained pictures pasted on the wall, looked keen, and
softly whistled.

At last he condescended to explain.

"Preaching Uncle Capen's funeral sermon."

There was a subdued general laugh. Even Mr. Hamblin's leathern apron
shook.

Mr. Noyes, however, painfully looking down upon his beard to draw out a
white hair, maintained his serious expression.

"I don't see much 'job' in that," he said; "a minister's supposed to
preach a hundred and four sermons in each and every year, and there's
plenty more where they come from. What's one sermon more or less, when
stock costs nothing? It's like wheeling gravel from the pit."

"O.K.," said Mr. Snell; "if 't aint no trouble, then 't ain't But
seeing's you know, suppose you specify the materials for this particular
discourse."

Mr. Noyes looked a little disconcerted.

"Well," he said; "of course, I can't set here and compose a funereal
discourse, off-hand, without no writing-desk; but there's stock enough
to make a sermon of, any time."

"Oh, come," said Mr. Snell, "don't sneak out: particularize."

"Why," said Mr. Noyes, "you 've only to open the leds of your Bible, and
choose a text, and then: When did this happen? Why did this happen? To
who did this happen? and so forth and so on; and there's your sermon. I
've heard 'em so a hunderd times."

"All right," said Mr. Snell; "I don't doubt you know; but as for me,
I for one never happened to hear of anything that Uncle Capen did but
whitewash and saw wood. Now what sort of an autobiographical sermon
could you make out of sawing wood?"

Whereat Leander Buffum proceeded, by that harsh, guttural noise well
known to country boys, to imitate the sound of sawing through a log. His
sally was warmly greeted.

"The minister might narrate," said Mr. Blood, "what Uncle Capen said to
Issachar, when Issachar told him that he charged high for sawing wood.
'See here,' says Uncle Capen, 's'pos'n I do. My arms are shorter'n other
folks's, and it takes me just so much longer to do it.'"

"Well," said Mr. Noyes, "I'm a fair man; always do exactly right is the
rule I go by; and I will frankly admit, now and here, that if it's a
biographical discourse they want, they 'll have to cut corners."

"_Pre-cise-ly_" said Mr. Snell; "and that's just what they do want."

"Well, well," said Mr. Hamblin, laboriously rising and putting his
spectacles into their silver case,--f