umenical Council to issue a bull of excommunication against "pusley."
Of all the forms which "error" has taken in this world, I think that is
about the worst. In the Middle Ages the monks in St. Bernard's ascetic
community at Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyard which a less rigid
monk had planted near, so that it bore nothing. In 1120 a bishop of Laon
excommunicated the caterpillars in his diocese; and, the following year,
St. Bernard excommunicated the flies in the Monastery of Foigny; and in
1510 the ecclesiastical court pronounced the dread sentence against
the rats of Autun, Macon, and Lyons. These examples are sufficient
precedents. It will be well for the council, however, not to publish the
bull either just before or just after a rain; for nothing can kill this
pestilent heresy when the ground is wet.

It is the time of festivals. Polly says we ought to have one,--a
strawberry-festival. She says they are perfectly delightful: it is so
nice to get people together!--this hot weather. They create such a good
feeling! I myself am very fond of festivals. I always go,--when I can
consistently. Besides the strawberries, there are ice creams and cake
and lemonade, and that sort of thing: and one always feels so well the
next day after such a diet! But as social reunions, if there are good
things to eat, nothing can be pleasanter; and they are very profitable,
if you have a good object. I agreed that we ought to have a festival;
but I did not know what object to devote it to. We are not in need of
an organ, nor of any pulpit-cushions. I do not know that they use
pulpit-cushions now as much as they used to, when preachers had to have
something soft to pound, so that they would not hurt their fists. I
suggested pocket handkerchiefs, and flannels for next winter. But
Polly says that will not do at all. You must have some charitable
object,--something that appeals to a vast sense of something; something
that it will be right to get up lotteries and that sort of thing for.
I suggest a festival for the benefit of my garden; and this seems
feasible. In order to make everything pass off pleasantly, invited
guests will bring or send their own strawberries and cream, which I
shall be happy to sell to them at a slight advance. There are a great
many improvements which the garden needs; among them a sounding-board,
so that the neighbors' children can hear when I tell them to get
a little farther off from the currant-bushes. I should a