Year to you, Towser, old boy," he cried, and, seizing the
huge dog by his shaggy coat, he wrestled with him like a merry-hearted
boy. "A happy New Year to you, old fellow," he repeated, as the dog
broke into a series of joyful barks; "speak it right out, Towser. God
made you as full of fun as he has the rest of us, and a good deal
fuller than many of your kind, and mine, too," and with this backhanded
hit at the vinegar-visaged and acidulous-hearted of his own species, the
deacon shuffled along the crisp, icy path toward the barn, while Towser
gamboled through the deep snow and plunged into the huge, fleecy drifts
in as merry a mood as his merry master.

"A happy New Year to you, old Jack," he called out to his horse, as he
entered the barn, and Jack neighed a happy return, more expectant,
perhaps, of his breakfast of oats than appreciative of the greeting.
"And a happy New Year to you, you youngster," he shouted to the colt,
who, being at liberty to roam at will, had already appropriated a
section of the hay-mow to his own satisfaction. "Ha, none of that, you
woolly-coated rogue, you," he cried, as he jumped aside to escape a kick
that the bunch of equine mischief anticly snapped at him. "None of that,
you little unconverted sinner, you. I verily believe the parson is
right, and that

'In Adam's fall
We sinned all--'

men and beasts, colts and children, all in one lot."

And so, talking to himself and his cattle, the jolly little man, whose
good-heartedness represented more genuine orthodoxy than the whole
Westminster catechism, bustled merrily about the barn and did his
chores, while the cockerels crowed noisily from their perches overhead,
the fat white pigs grunted in lazy contentment from their warm beds of
straw, and the oxen, with their large, luminous eyes, gazed benevolently
at him as he crammed their mangers generously full with the fragrant hay
that smelled sweetly of the flowers and odorous meadow lands, where in
the warm summer sunshine it had ripened for the welcome scythe.

How happy is life, in whatever part of this great fragrant world of ours
it is lived, when men live it happily; and how gloomy seems its
sunshine, even, when seen through the shadows and darkness of our surly
moods.

What happy-hearted fairy was it that possessed the deacon's heart and
home, on this bright New Year's morn, I wonder? Surely, some angel of
fun and frolic had flown into the deacon's house with the opening o