nner,
and what there was she was ashamed for him to sit down to. The
Superintendent heard her in mute astonishment. He lifted his dark eyes,
and looking her in the face with penetration and austerity, he rose
gently from the table and said,--

"Brother Hopkins, I want my horse immediately; I must leave this house."

"Why, Brother Robson, what is the matter?"

"Enough the matter! Why, sir, your house isn't fit to stay in, and you
haven't anything fit to eat or drink, and I won't stay."

The preacher mounted his horse and took his departure.

Both the Squire and his lady were confounded at such unexpected conduct.
They stood in their room as though thunderstruck, not knowing what to
say or what to do. But the preacher was gone, and could not be
re-called.

After a few moments poor Sister Hopkins wept like a child. "Dear me,"
said she to the Squire, "this is a terrible thing. It will be all over
the village, and everybody will be laughing at me. How shall I meet the
Superintendent again? I did not mean anything by what I said; it is only
my way. I never thought it wrong. Had I known our new minister didn't
like such a way of talk I would not have talked so. Oh, how vexed I am!"

The result of this was that Mrs. Hopkins saw herself as others saw her.
She ceased making these empty and meaningless apologies, and became a
wiser and better woman. The next time Superintendent Robson went to the
Squire's he found a "house fit for him to stay in and things fit for him
to eat."

VIII.

_THE COMMON SWEARER._

"Take not His name, who made thy tongue, in vain,
It gets thee nothing, and hath no excuse."
HERBERT.

He is a transgressor of the third commandment of the Decalogue, "Thou
shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." He transgresses
without any laudable purpose, and without any necessity. He is
thoughtless, foolish, and void of the fear of God. "His mouth," as an
old divine says, "is black with oaths, and the very soot of hell hangs
about his lips." He degrades the most excellent things into the meanest
associations. Sometimes he indulges to such an extent in his sin, that
the main substance of his speech is swearing. It is more than an adjunct
or concomitant of his conversation; it is the body and soul of it.
Sometimes you may hear him, with an air of self-complacency, give
utterance to his profanity, as though he regarded it an ornament