eneration this holy
season. The way they poured out of the tents, the houses, the long
stoops, and through the bushes was fluttering and noisy as the flight of
ten thousand chickens from a barn-yard. Still the crowd did not break
all at once from the spiritual to the temporal wants of human nature.
They kept on praying and singing in breaks and snatches clear up to the
dining-hall, when the old earthly Evil One got uppermost, and each man
seizing a knife and fork, went at the first dish he saw, and held on to
it with one hand, while he did double express duty with the other.

Sisters, this crowd of sinners sanctified, and to be sanctified, was
made up of about the hungriest mortals that I ever set eyes upon. The
way those safety-seeking souls took care of their bodies was
regenerating, I can tell you. For my part, after seeing every dish swept
away from before me, with Christian fortitude becoming to the place, my
carnal nature rose uppermost, and, seizing upon a plate of summer
squash, I held on to it valiantly, while E. E. snatched a potatoe with
its jacket on, from a flying dish, and Dempster wrestled with one of the
saints for a plate of bread, as Jacob wrestled with the angels; only
this saint was six feet high, wore a hood-brimmed straw hat, and carried
off the plate of bread in his hands, after all.

I greatly fear Cousin Dempster didn't meet this test of a meek and lowly
spirit with the fortitude of a martyr. In fact, I'm afraid he said
something beside "Amen" between his grinding teeth, when that plate
disappeared.

As for E. E. and myself, we got a spoon between us, and dined on the
squash, generously giving up the potato to Dempster, with an admonition
which did not seem to suit him much better than that stone-cold
vegetable.

Well, when we had vegetated the inner man to this extent, and watched
the swarm of hungry eaters devouring the food like a cloud of ravenous
locusts, Cousin Dempster laid down his potato-peel on the table with
mournful sadness, and said, plaintively:

"This is all we are likely to get; let us go."

"Wait," says I, "some one is going to return thanks."

"What, for two spoonfuls of squash and one hollow-hearted potato for
three of us? Never!" says Dempster.

Really, sisters, the spirit will have a tough job before it brings the
proud nature of Cousin Dempster into a state of perfect sanctification.
E. E. and I gave him a beautiful example, and looked as humbly grateful
as two hu