LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I

HOW DEACON TUBMAN AND PARSON WHITNEY KEPT NEW YEAR'S

(Illustrated by THOMAS WORTH)

II

THE OLD BEGGAR'S DOG

(Illustrated by A.B. SHUTE)

III

THE BALL

(Illustrated by A.B. SHUTE)

IV

WHO WAS HE?

(Illustrated by J.H. Snow)

How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's

I

ew Year's, eh?" exclaimed Deacon Tubman, as he lifted himself to his elbow and peered through the frosty window pane toward the east, where the colorless morning was creeping shiveringly into sight.

"New Year's, eh?" he repeated, as he hitched himself into an upright position and straightened his night-cap, that had somehow gone askew in his slumber. "Bless my soul, how the years fly! But that's all right; yes, that's all right. No one can expect them to stay, and why should we? there's better fish in the net than we've taken out yet," and with this consolatory observation, the deacon rubbed his head energetically, while the bright, happy look of his face grew brighter and happier as the process proceeded. "Yes, there's better fish in the net than we've taken out," he added, gayly, "and if there isn't, there's no use of crying about it." With this philosophical observation, he bounced merrily out of bed and into his trousers.

I say Deacon Tubman bounced into his trousers, but, to be exact, I should say that he bounced into half of them; and, with the other half trailing behind him, he skipped to the window and, putting his little, plump, round face almost against the pane, gazed out upon the world. Everything was bright, sparkling and cold, for the earth was covered with snow and the clear gray of the early morning spread its rayless illumination over the great dome, in the fading blue of which a few starry points still gleamed.

"Bless me, what a morning!" he exclaimed. "Beautiful! beautiful!" he repeated, as he stood with his eyes fastened upon the east and, balancing himself on one foot, felt around with the other for that half of the trousers not yet appropriated. "Bless me, what a day," he ejaculated, as he saved himself by a quick, upward wrench, from falling from a trip he had inadvertently given himself in an abortive effort to insert his foot into the unfilled leg of his pantaloons. "Ha, ha, that's a good un," he exclaimed; "trip yourself up in getting into your own trousers, will you, Deacon Tubman?" and he laughed long and merrily to himself over his little joke.

"A happy New Year to everybody," cried the deacon, as he thrust his foot into his stocking, for the floor of the good man's chamber was carpetless and so cleanly white that its cleanliness itself was enough to freeze one. "Yes, a happy New Year to everybody, high, low, rich, poor, south, north, east and west, where'er they are, the world over, at home and abroad—Amen!" And the deacon, partly at the sweeping character of his benediction and partly because he was feeling so jolly inside he couldn't help it, laughed merrily, as he seized a boot and thrust his foot vigorously into it.

"What's this? what's this?" cried the deacon, as he tugged away at the straps until he was red in the face. "This boot never went on hard before. What's the matter with the pesky thing?" And he arose from his chair, and, standing on one foot, turned and twisted about, tugging all the while at the straps.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the deacon, disgusted with its strange behavior, "what is the matter with the pesky boot?"

Then he sat down upon the chair again, wrenched his foot out of the offending article and held it up between both hands in front of him and shook it violently, when, with a bump and a bound, out rattled a package upon the floor and rolled half way across the room. The deacon was after it in a jiffy and, seizing it in his little fat hands, held it up before his eyes and read: "A New Year's gift from Miranda."

Now Miranda was the deacon's housekeeper,—Mrs. Tubman having peacefully departed this life some years before,—and, speaking appreciatively of the sex, a more prim, prudent, particular member of it never existed. She had been initiated, some ten years before, into that amiable sisterhood commonly known as spinsters, and was, it might be added, a typical representative. Industrious? You may well say so. Her floors, stoves, dishes, linen,—- well, if they weren't clean, nowhere on earth might you find clean ones. She hated dirt as she did original sin, and I've no doubt but that in her own mind considered its existence in the world as the one certain, damning and conclusive evidence of the Fall. It was really an entertainment to see her looking about the house for a speck of dirt; and the cold-blooded manner in which she would seize upon it, bear it away in the dust pan, and, removing the lid of the stove, consign it to the flames, was—well,—what should I say,—yes, that's it—was most edifying.

Amiable! Yes,—after her way. And a very noiseless sort of way it was, too. For, though she had lived with the deacon for nearly a dozen years, he had never known her to so far forget her propriety as to indulge in anything more hearty and hilarious than the most decorous of smiles, which smile was such a kind of illumination to her face as a star of inconceivably small magnitude makes to the sky in trailing across it.

Of her personal appearance I will say—nothing. Sacred let it be to memory! If you ever saw her, or one like her, whether full front or profile, whether sideways or edgewise, the vision, I am ready to swear, remains with you vividly still. Let it suffice, then, when I observe that Miss Miranda was not physically stout, and that the deacon's standing joke was by no means a bad one when he described her as "not actually burdened with fat." Yes, she was a very cleanly, very thin, very prudent, very particular person, that never joined in any sports or amusements; never joked or participated in any happy events in a happy, joyous fashion, but lived unobtrusively, and, I may say, coldly, in her own prim, cold, bloodless, little world.

"Gracious me!" exclaimed the deacon, as he looked at the package. "Gracious me! what has got into Mirandy?" And he looked scrutinizingly at the little, fine, thin, faintly-traced inscription on the package, as if the writer had begrudged the ink that must be expended on the letters, or from a subtle and mystic self-sympathy had made the chirography faint, delicate, and attenuated as her own self.

"Gracious me!" reiterated Deacon Tubman, as he proceeded to untie the knot in the pale blue ribbon smoothly bound around the package. "Who ever knew Mirandy to make a present before?" and the deacon was so surprised at what had taken place that, for a moment, he doubted the evidence of his own senses. "And put it in my boot, too, ha, ha!" And the deacon stopped undoing the parcel, and, lying back in the chair, roared at the thought of the prim, modest, particular Miranda perpetrating such a joke. And when the wrapping of the package was at last undone, for every corner and crease of it was as carefully turned and as sharply edged as if the smoothing iron had passed over them,—will wonders ever cease in this startling world of ours?—out dropped a night-cap! Yes, a night-cap, delicately and deftly crocheted in warm, woolen stuff of a rich cardinal color.

"Ha, ha," laughed the deacon, as he held the cap between his thumb and forefinger of one hand up before his eyes, while he rubbed his bald crown with the other. "Good for Mirandy." And then, as a small slip of white paper fluttered to the floor, he seized it, and read:

"A good girl, a good girl," said the deacon, "not overburdened with fat, but a good girl!" and with this rather equivocal compliment to the donor, with his boot in one hand and the cap in the other, he rushed impulsively to the stairway and shouted:

"A happy New Year to you, Mirandy. God bless you; God bless you," and he swung the boot, instead of the cap, vigorously over his head, while his round, rosy face beamed down the stairway into the cold hall below, like a warm harvest moon over the autumnal stubble.

In response to the deacon's hearty, and, I may say, somewhat uproarious greeting, the kitchen door timidly opened, and Miranda, who had been astir for nearly an hour and had the table already laid for breakfast, stepped into view, and, with a smile on her face that actually broadened its thinness dangerously near to the proportions of a genial and happy reciprocation of the jovial greeting, dropped a courtesy, and said:

"Thank you, Deacon Tubman, I hope you may have many happy returns."

"A thousand to you, Mirandy," shouted the deacon in response, "a thousand to you and your—children!" and the little man swung his boot vehemently over his head and laughed like a boy at his own joke, while poor, frightened, scandalized Miranda turned and scudded, like a patch of thin vapor blown by an unexpected gust of wind, through the door into the kitchen, with a face colored scarlet from an actual, unmistakable blush, though whence the blood came that reddened the clean cold-white of her thin face is a physiological mystery.

In a moment the deacon was fully dressed and he scuttled as merrily and noisily down the resounding stairway as a gust of autumn wind running through a patch of russet leaves. Through the hall and kitchen he bustled and out into the woodshed, where he ran against old Towser, the big Newfoundland watch-dog, who stood in the passage expectantly watching his coming.

"A happy New 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

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 of the year and was filling it, and the hearts within it, too, with mirthful moods. For the deacon laughed and joked as he buttered his cakes and fired off his funny sayings at Miranda, as he had never joked and laughed before, until Miranda herself smiled and giggled; yes, actually giggled, behind the coffee-urn, at his merry squibs, as if the little imp above mentioned was mischievously tickling her—yes, I will say it,—her spinster ribs.

"Mirandy, I'm going up to see the parson," exclaimed the deacon, when the morning devotions were over, "and see if I can thaw him out a little. I've heard there used to be a lot of fun in him in his younger days, but he's sort of frozen all up latterly, and I can see that the young folks are afraid of him and the church, too, but that won't do—no, that won't do," repeated the good man emphatically, "for the minister ought to be loved by young and old, rich and poor, and everybody; and a church without young folks in it is like a family with no children in it. Yes, I'll go up and wish him a happy New Year, anyway. Perhaps I can get him out for a ride to make some calls on the people and see the young folks at their fun. It'll do him good and them good and me good, and do everybody good." Saying which the deacon got inside his warm fur coat and started towards the barn to harness Jack into the worn, old-fashioned sleigh; which sleigh was built high in the back and had a curved dasher of monstrous proportions, ornamented with a

prancing horse in an impossible attitude, done in bright vermilion on a blue-black ground.

II

"Happy New Year to you, Parson Whitney; happy New Year to you," cried the deacon, from his sleigh to the parson, who stood curled up and shivering in the doorway of the parsonage, "and may you live to enjoy a hundred."

"Come in; come in," cried Parson Whitney, in response, "I'm glad you've come; I'm glad you've come. I've been wanting to see you all the morning," and in the cordiality of his greeting, he literally pulled the little man through the doorway into the hall and hurried him up the stairway to his study in the chamber overhead.

"Thinking of me! Well, now, I never," exclaimed the deacon, as, assisted by the parson, he twisted and wriggled himself out of the coat that he a little too snugly filled for an easy exit. "Thinking of me, and among all these books, too; bibles, catechisms, tracts, theologies, sermons; well, well, that's funny! What made you think of me?"

"Deacon Tubman," responded the parson, as he seated himself in his arm-chair, "I want to talk with you about the church."

"The church!" ejaculated the deacon, in response, "nothing going wrong, I hope?"

"Yes, things are going wrong, deacon," responded the parson; "the congregation is growing smaller and smaller, and yet I preach good, strong, biblical, soul-satisfying sermons, I think."

"Good ones! good ones!" answered the deacon, promptly; "never better; never better in the world."

"And yet the people are deserting the sanctuary," rejoined the parson, solemnly, "and the young people won't come to the sociables and the little children seem actually afraid of me. What shall I do, deacon?" and the good man put the question with pathetic emphasis.

"You have hit the nail on the head, square's a hatchet, parson," responded the deacon. "The congregation is thinning; the young people don't come to the meetings, and the little children are afraid of you."

"What's the matter, deacon?" cried the parson, in return. "What is it?" he repeated, earnestly; "speak it right out; don't try to spare my feelings. I will listen to—I will do anything to win back my people's love," and the strong, old-fashioned, Calvinistic preacher said it in a voice that actually trembled.

"You can do it; you can do it in a week!" exclaimed the deacon, encouragingly. "Don't worry about it, parson, it'll be all right; it'll be all right. Your books are the trouble."

"Eh? eh? books?" ejaculated the parson. "What have they to do with it?"

"Everything," replied the beacon, stoutly; "you pore over them day in and day out; they keep you in this room here, when you should be out among the people. Not making pastoral visits, I don't mean that, but going around among them, chatting and joking and having a good time. They would like it, and you would like it, and as for the young folks,—how old are you, parson?"

"Sixty, next month," answered the parson, solemnly, "sixty next month."

"Thirty! thirty! that's all you are, parson, or all you ought to be," cried the deacon. "Thirty, twenty, sixteen. Let the figures slide down and up, according to circumstances, but never let them go higher than thirty, when you are dealing with young folks. I'm sixty myself, counting years, but I'm only sixteen; sixteen this morning, that's all, parson," and he rubbed his little, round, plump hands together, looked at the parson and winked.

"Bless my soul, Deacon Tubman, I don't know but that you are right!" answered the parson. "Sixty? I don't know as I am sixty." And he began to rub his own hands, and came within an ace of executing a wink at the deacon himself.

"Not a day over twenty, if I am any judge of age," responded the deacon, deliberately, as he looked the white-headed old minister over with a most comic imitation of seriousness. "Not a day over twenty, on my honor," and the deacon leaned forward toward the parson and gave him a punch with his thumb, as one boy might deliver a punch at another, and then he lay back in his chair and laughed so heartily that the parson caught the infectious mirth and roared away as heartily as the deacon.

Yes, it was impossible to sit hobnobbing with the jolly little deacon on that bright New Year's morning and not be affected by the happiness of his mood, for he was actually bubbling over with fun and as full of frolic as if the finger on the dial had, in truth, gone back forty years and he was only sixteen. "Only sixteen, parson, on my honor."

"But what can I do," queried the good man, sobering down. "I make my pastoral visits"—

"Pastoral visits!" responded Deacon Tubman, "oh, yes, and they are all well enough for the old folks, but they ar'n't the kind of biscuit the young folks like—too heavy in the centre, and over-hard in the crust, for young teeth, eh, parson?"

"But what shall I do? what shall I do?" reiterated the parson, somewhat despondently.

"Oh, put on your hat and gloves and warmest coat and come along with me. We will see what the young folks are doing and will make a day of it. Come, come; let the old books and catechisms and sermons and tracts have a respite for once, and we'll spend the day out of doors with the boys and girls and the people."

"I'll do it!" exclaimed the parson. "Deacon Tubman, you are right. I keep to my study too closely. I don't see enough of the world and what's going on in it. I was reading the Testament this morning and I was impressed with the Master's manner of living and teaching. It is not certain that he ever preached more than twice in a church during all his ministry on the earth. And the children! how much he loved the children and how the little ones loved him! And why shouldn't they love me, too? Why shouldn't they? I'll make them do it. The lambs of my flock shall love me." And with these brave words, Parson Whitney bundled himself up in his warmest garment and followed the deacon down stairs.

"Tell the folks that you won't be back till night," called the deacon from the sleigh, "for this is New Year's and we're going to make a day of it." And he laughed away as heartily as might be—so heartily, indeed, that the parson joined in the laughter himself as he came shuffling down the icy path toward him.

"Bless me, how much younger I feel already," said the good man, as he stood up in the sleigh, and with a long, strong breath, breathed the cool, pure air into his lungs. "Bless me, how much younger I feel already," he repeated, as he settled down into the roomy seat of the old sleigh. "Only sixteen to-day, eh, deacon," and he nudged him with his elbow.