stomach of the
monster, the minister would have been digested. We have no difficulty in
this matter. Jonah, was a most unwilling guest of the whale. He wanted to
get out. However much he may have liked fish, he did not want it three
times a day and all the time. So he kept up a fidget, and a struggle, and a
turning over, and he gave the whale no time to assimilate him. The man knew
that if he was ever to get out he must be in perpetual motion. We know men
that are so lethargic they would have given the matter up, and lain down so
quietly that in a few hours they would have gone into flukes and fish
bones, blow-holes and blubber.

Now we see men all around us who have been swallowed by monstrous
misfortunes. Some of them sit down on a piece of whalebone and give up.
They say: "No use! I will never get back my money, or restore my good name,
or recover my health." They float out to sea and are never again heard of.
Others, the moment they go down the throat of some great trouble, begin
immediately to plan for egress. They make rapid estimate of the length of
the vertebrate, and come to the conclusion how far they are in. They dig up
enough spermaceti out of the darkness to make a light, and keep turning
this way and that, till the first you know they are out. Determination to
get well has much to do with recovered invalidism. Firm will to defeat
bankruptcy decides financial deliverance. Never surrender to misfortune or
discouragement. You can, if you are spry enough, make it as uncomfortable
for the whale as the whale can make it uncomfortable for you. There will be
some place where you can brace your foot against his ribs, and some long
upper tooth around which you may take hold, and he will be as glad to get
rid of you for tenant as you are to get rid of him for landlord. There is a
way, if you are determined to find it. All our sympathies are with the
plaintiff in the suit of Jonah versus Leviathan.

CHAPTER XXV.

SOMETHING UNDER THE SOFA.

Not more than twenty-five miles from New York city, and not more than two
years ago, there stood a church in which occurred a novelty. We promised
not to tell; but as we omit all names, we think ourselves warranted in
writing the sketch. The sacred edifice had stood more than a hundred years,
until the doors were rickety, and often stood open during the secular week.
The window glass in many places had been broken out. The shingles were off
and the snow drifted in, and th