"Ain't she a little mite too jolly for a minister's wife?" questioned
Mrs. Ossian Popham, who was a professional pessimist.

"If this world is a place of want, woe, wantonness, an' wickedness,
same as you claim, Maria, I don't see how a minister's wife _can_ be
too jolly!" was her husband's cheerful reply. "Look how she's melted
up the ice in both congregations, so't the other church is most
willin' we should prosper, so long as Mis' Larrabee stays here an' we
don't get too fur ahead of 'em in attendance. Me for the smiles,
Maria!"

And Osh Popham was right; for Reba Larrabee convinced the members of
the rival church (the rivalry between the two being in rigidity of
creed, not in persistency in good works) that there was room in heaven
for at least two denominations; and said that if they couldn't unite
in this world, perhaps they'd get round to it in the next. Finally,
she saved Letitia Boynton's soul alive by giving her a warm,
understanding friendship, and she even contracted to win back the
minister's absent son some time or other, and convince him of the
error of his ways.

"Let Dick alone a little longer, Luther," she would say; "don't hurry
him, for he won't come home so long as he's a failure; it would please
the village too much, and Dick hates the village. He doesn't accept
our point of view, that we must love our enemies and bless them that
despitefully use us. The village did despitefully use Dick, and for
that matter, David Gilman too. They were criticized, gossiped about,
judged without mercy. Nobody believed in them, nobody ever praised
them;--and what is that about praise being the fructifying sun in
which our virtues ripen, or something like that? I'm not quoting it
right, but I wish I'd said it. They were called wild when most of
their wildness was exuberant vitality; their mistakes were magnified,
their mad pranks exaggerated. If I'd been married to you, my dear,
while Dick was growing up, I wouldn't have let you keep him here in
this little backwater of life; he needed more room, more movement.
They wouldn't have been so down on him in Racine, Wisconsin!"

Mrs. Larrabee lighted her lantern, closed the door behind her, and
walked briskly down the lonely road that led from the parsonage at
Beulah Corner to Letitia Boynton's house. It was bright moonlight and
the ground was covered with light-fallen snow, but the lantern habit
was a fixed one among Beulah ladies, who, even when they were not
wid