of thumping along this way. I am conservative and like to keep in my shell.
I have been pastor of thirteen other mud-turtles, and we always had peace
until you came, and next week at our semi-annual meeting of mud-turtles we
shall either have you voted a nuisance or will talk it over in private,
eight, or ten of us, which will probably be the more prudent way." Then the
mud-turtle's shell went shut with a snap, at which the horse kicked up his
heels as he turned to go up to the barn to be harnessed to a load of corn
that was ready for the market.

Let us all wake up and go to work. There are in the private membership of
our churches and in the ministry a great many men who are dead, but have
never had the common decency to get buried. With the harvest white and
"lodging" for lack of a sickle, instead of lying under the trees
criticising the sweating reapers who are at work, let us throw off our own
coat and go out to see how good a swathe we can cut.

Myself.--You seem, Dominie Scattergood, though you have been preaching a
great while, to be very healthy and to have a sound throat.

Scattergood.--Yes; I don't know any reason why ministers should not be as
well as other persons. I have never had the ministers' sore throat, but
have avoided it by the observance of two or three rules which I commend to
you of less experience. The drug stores are full of troches, lozenges and
compounds for speakers and singers. All these medicines have an important
mission, but how much better would it be to avoid the ills than to spend
one's time in trying to cure them!

1. Speak naturally. Let not incompetent elocutionists or the barbarisms of
custom give you tones or enunciations at war with those that God implanted.
Study the vocal instrument and then play the best tune on it possible, but
do not try to make a flute sound like a trumpet, or a bagpipe do the work
of a violin.

2. Remember that the throat and lungs were no more intended to speak with
than the whole body. If the vocal organs get red hot during a religious
service, while the rest of the body does not sympathize with them, there
will be inflammation, irritation and decay. But if the man shall, by
appreciation of some great theme of time and eternity, go into it with all
his body and soul, there will be an equalization of the whole physical
organism, and bronchitis will not know whether to attack the speaker in his
throat, right knee or left ankle, and while it is deciding