n witnessed to be fully appreciated.

It chanced one Sunday that a parishioner coming into church after the
service had begun omitted to close the door, causing thereby an
unseemly draught. My father directed Russell to shut it. Accordingly,
book in hand and with a thumb between the leaves to keep the place, he
sallied forth. But, alas! in shutting the door the thumb fell out and
the place was lost, and after floundering about awhile to find, if
possible, the proper response, he at length made known to the
congregation the misfortune which had befallen him by exclaiming aloud,
"I've lost my place or _summut_."

A very amusing incident once took place at a baptism. The service
proceeded with due decorum and regularity till my father demanded of the
godfather the child's name. The answer was so indistinctly given that he
had to repeat the question more than once, and even then the name
remained a mystery. All he could make out was something which sounded
like "Harmun," the godfather indignantly asserting the while that it was
a "Scriptur" name. In his perplexity my father turned to Russell with
the query: "Clerk, do you know what the name is?" "No, sir. I'm sure I
don't know, unless it be he at the end of the prayer," meaning "Amen."
The result was that the child was otherwise christened, and after the
ceremony was over my father, placing a Bible in the godfather's hands,
requested him to find the "Scriptur" name, as he called it, when, having
turned over the leaves for some time, he drew his attention to _wicked
Haman_. The child's escape, therefore, was most fortunate. Old Russell
has now slept with his fathers for many years, and the few stories which
I have related about him do not by any means exhaust the list of his
oddities. Many of the parishioners to this day, no doubt, will call to
mind the quaint way in which, if he thought any one was misbehaving
himself in church, he would rise slowly from his seat with such majesty
as his diminutive stature could command, and shading his spectacles with
his hand, gaze sternly in the offending quarter; how on a certain
Communion Sunday he forgot the wine to be used in the sacred office, and
when my father directed his attention to the omission, after sundry
dives under the altar-cloth he at last produced a common rush basket,
and from it a black bottle; how on another Sunday, being desirous to
free the church from smoke which had escaped from a refractory stove, he
deliberat