g his fifty-ninth, sixtieth, and sixty-first summers, had not
carried him beyond the First Reader class in the local district school,
it had given him a pretty thorough knowledge of the sounds of simple
letter combinations. This, supplemented by a quick intuition and a
correct musical ear, had aided him to really remarkable powers of
interpretation, and there was now, ten years later, no chapter in the
entire Bible which he hesitated to read aloud, such as contained long
strings of impossible names hung upon a chain of "begats" being his
favorite achievements.

A common tribute paid Reub's pulpit eloquence by reverential listeners
among his flock was, "Brer Tyler is got a black face, but his speech
sho' is white." The truth was that in his humble way Reub' was something
of a philologist. A new word was to him a treasure, so much stock in
trade, and the longer and more formidable the acquisition, the dearer
its possession.

Reub's unusual vocabulary was largely the result of his intimate
relations with his master, Judge Marshall, whose body-servant he had
been for a number of years. The judge had long been dead now, and the
plantation had descended to his son, the present incumbent.

Reub' was entirely devoted to the family of his former owners, and
almost any summer evening now he might be seen sitting on the lowest of
the five steps which led to the broad front veranda of the great house
where Mr. John Marshall sat smoking his meerschaum. If Marshall felt
amiably disposed he would often hand the old man a light, or even his
own tobacco-bag, from which Reub' would fill his corn-cob pipe, and the
two would sit and smoke by the hour, talking of the crops, the weather,
politics, religion, anything--as the old man led the way; for these
evening communings were his affairs rather than his "Marse John's." On a
recent occasion, while they sat talking in this way, Marshall was
congratulating him upon his unprecedented success in conducting a
certain revival then in progress, when the old man said:

"Yassir, de Lord sho' is gimme a rich harves'. But you know some'h'n',
Marse John? All de power o' language th'ough an' by which I am enable
ter seize on de sperit is come to me th'ough ole marster. I done tooken
my pattern f'om him f'om de beginnin,' an' des de way I done heerd him
argify de cases in de co't-house, dat's de way I lay out ter state my
case befo' de Lord.

"I nuver is preached wid power yit on'y but 'cep' when I