, with Irish songs and Irish readings?
Such an entertainment would draw; it would keep a good many people out
of the saloons. Such was the suggestion.

The proposition excited no little interest. Ladies who had begun to put
on their wraps sat down again. To one of the board, a clergyman, who had
lately been lecturing on "Popery the People's Peril," the proposition
was startling. It looked toward the breaking down of all barriers; it
gave Romanism an outright recognition. Another member, a produce-man,
understood,--in fact he had read in his denominational weekly,--that
Saint Patrick could be demonstrated to have been a Protestant, and
he suggested that that fact might be "brought out." Others viewed
the matter in that humorous light in which this festival day commonly
strikes the American mind.

The motion prevailed. Even the anti-papistic clergyman was comforted,
apparently, at last, for he was heard to whisper jocosely to his
left-hand neighbor: "Saint Patrick's Day in the Morning!"

A committee, with the produce-man at the head, was appointed to select a
speaker, and to provide music and reading. It was suggested that perhaps
Mr. Wakeby and Mrs. Wilson-Smith would volunteer, if urged,--their
previous charities in this direction had made them famous in the
neighborhood. Mr. Wakeby to read from "Handy Andy;" Mrs. Wilson-Smith to
sing "Kathleen Mavourneen,"--there would not be standing-room!

So finally unanimity prevailed, and with unanimity, enthusiasm.

The committee met, and the details were settled. The chairman quietly
reserved to himself, by implication, the choice of a speaker. He knew
that it would be an audience hard to hold. The occasion demanded a man
of peculiar gifts. Such a man, he said to himself, he knew.

II.

The single meeting-house of L------ stands on the main street, with its
tall spire and its two tiers of gray-blinded windows. Beside it is the
mossy burial-ground, where prim old ladies walk on Sunday afternoons,
with sprigs of sweet-william.

Across the street, and a little way down the road, is the square white
house with a hopper-roof, which an elderly, childless widow, departing
this life some forty years ago, thoughtfully left behind her for a
parsonage. It is a pleasant, home-like house, open to sun and air, and
the pleasantest of all its rooms is the minister's study. It is an upper
front chamber, with windows to the east and the south. There is nothing
in the room of any va