ly ever had such grandchildren. It
will be a good thing when the evenings are short, and the old folks'
eyesight is somewhat dim, if you can set up in their house for a little
while one or two of these lights of childhood. For the time the aches and
pains of old age will be gone, and they will feel as lithe and merry as
when sixty years ago they themselves rummaged hayrick, and mow and
wagon-house, hiding eggs for Easter.

CHAPTER XLII.

SINK OR SWIM.

We entered the ministry with a mortal horror of extemporaneous speaking.
Each week we wrote two sermons and a lecture all out, from the text to the
amen. We did not dare to give out the notice of a prayer-meeting unless it
was on paper. We were a slave to manuscript, and the chains were galling;
and three months more of such work would have put us in the graveyard. We
resolved on emancipation. The Sunday night was approaching when we expected
to make violent rebellion against this bondage of pen and paper. We had an
essay about ten minutes long on some Christian subject, which we proposed
to preach as an introduction to the sermon, resolved, at the close of that
brief composition, to launch out on the great sea of extemporaneousness.

It so happened that the coming Sabbath night Was to be eventful in the
village. The trustees of the church had been building a gasometer back of
the church, and the night I speak of the building was for the first time to
be lighted in the modern way. The church was, of course, crowded--not so
much to hear the preacher as to see how the gas would burn. Many were
unbelieving, and said that there would be an explosion, or a big fire, or
that in the midst of the service the lights would go out. Several brethren
disposed to hang on to old customs declared that candles and oil were the
only fit material for lighting a church, and they denounced the innovation
as indicative of vanity on the part of the new-comers. They used oil in the
ancient temple, and it was that which ran down on Aaron's beard, and
anything that was good enough for the whiskers of an old-time priest was
good enough for a country meeting-house. These sticklers for the oil were
present that night, hoping--and I think some of them secretly praying--that
the gas might go out.

With our ten-minute manuscript we went into the pulpit, all in a tremor.
Although the gas did not burn as brightly as its friends had hoped, still
it was bright enough to show the people the persp