purchases from another
house.

What cowardice! Because a few critical hearers sit with lead-pencils out to
mark down the inaccuracies of extemporaneousness, shall the pulpit cower?
If these critics do not repent, they will go to hell, and take their
lead-pencils with them. While the great congregation are ready to take the
bread hot out of the oven shall the minister be crippled in his work
because the village doctor or lawyer sits carping before him? To please a
few learned ninnies a thousand ministers sit writing sermons on Saturday
night till near the break of day, their heads hot, their feet cold, and
their nerves a-twitch. Sermons born on Saturday night are apt to have the
rickets. Instead of cramping our chests over writing-desks, and being the
slaves of the pen, let us attend to our physical health, that we may have
more pulpit independence.

It would be a grand thing if every minister felt strong enough in body to
thrash any man in his audience improperly behaving, but always kept back
from such assault by the fact that it would be wrong to do so. There is a
good deal of heart and head in our theology, but not enough liver and
backbone. We need a more stalwart Christian character, more roast beef
rare, and less calf's-foot jelly. This will make the pulpit more bold and
the pew more manly.

Which thoughts came to us this week as we visited again the village church
aforesaid, and preached out of the same old Bible in which, years ago, we
laid the ten-minute manuscript, and we looked upon the same lights that
once behaved so badly. But we found it had been snowing since the time we
lived there, and heads that then were black are white now, and some of the
eyes which looked up to us that memorable night when the gasometer failed
us, thirteen years ago, are closed now, and for them all earthly lights
have gone out for ever.

CHAPTER XLIII.

SHELLS FROM THE BEACH.

Our summer-house is a cottage at East Hampton, Long Island, overlooking the
sea. Seventeen vessels in sight, schooners, clippers, hermaphrodite brigs,
steamers, great craft and small. Wonder where they come from, and where
they are going to, and who is aboard? Just enough clovertops to sweeten the
briny air into the most delightful tonic. We do not know the geological
history of this place, but imagine that the rest of Long Island is the
discourse of which East Hampton is the peroration. There are enough bluffs
to relieve the dead level, eno