as in due time
christened--Reuben.

Mrs. Handby was present at this eventful period, occupying the
guest-chamber, and delighting in all the little adornments that had been
prepared by the loving hands of her daughter; and upon the following
Sabbath, Mr. Johns, for the first time since his entrance upon the
pastoral duties of Ashfield, ventured to repeat an old sermon. Dame
Tourtelot had been present on the momentous occasion, with such a
tempest of suggestions in regard to the wrappings and feeding of the new
comer, that the poor mother had quietly begged the good clergyman to
decoy her, on her next visit, into his study. This he did, and succeeded
in fastening her with a discussion upon the import of the word
_baptize_, in which he was in a fair way of being carried by storm, if
he had not retreated under cover of his Greek Lexicon.

Mrs. Elderkin had been zealous in neighborly offices, and had brought,
in addition to a great basket of needed appliances, a silver porringer,
which, with wonderful foresight, had been ordered from a Hartford
jeweller in advance. The out-of-door man, Larkin, took a well-meaning
pride in this accession to the family,--walking up and down the street
with a broad grin upon his face. He also became the bearer, in behalf of
the Tew partners, of a certain artful contrivance of tin ware for the
speedy stewing of pap, which, considering that the donors were childless
people, was esteemed a very great mark of respect for the minister.

Would it be strange, if the father felt a new ambition stirring in him,
as he listened from his study to that cry of a child in the house? He
does feel it, and struggles against it. Are not all his flock his
spiritual children? and is he not appointed of Heaven to lead them
toward the rest which is promised? Should that babe be more to him than
a hundred others who are struggling through life's snares wearily? It
may touch him, indeed, cruelly to think it; but is not the soul of the
most worthless person of his parish as large in the eye of the Master as
this of his first-born? Shall these human ties supplant the spiritual
ones by which we are all coheirs of eternal death or of eternal life?
And in this way the minister schools himself against too demonstrative a
joy or love, and prays God silently that His gift may not be a
temptation.

For all this, however, there is many a walk which would have been taken
of old under the orchard trees now transferred to the c