ch his soul despised.

There are very few good old elders in the Presbyterian Church who care
to have pink bows tied on their penholders, or to be reminded at every
turn that they are hand-painted and daisy-decked "Dear Grandfathers." It
is rather inconvenient to have to dodge a daisy or a motto every time
one wants to dry a letter on his blotting-pad, and the hand-painted
paper-cutter was never meant to cut anything.

"Yes," the good old man repeated, "ef I knowed I could stir in every
blame thing thet's got a ribbon bow or a bo'quet on it, I'd take a spoon
to this table now--an' stir the whole business up--an' start fresh!"

Still, as his hand tipped a bottle presently, he caught it and set it
cautiously back in its place.

He had begun now to systematically feel over the table, proceeding
regularly with both hands from left to right and back again, until on a
last return trip he discerned the edge of the mahogany next his body.
And then he said--and he said it with spirit:

"Dod blast it! They ain't here--nowheres!"

He sat still now for a moment in thought. And then he began to remember
that he had sat talking to his wife at the sewing-machine just before
she left the house. He rose and examined the table of the machine and
the floor beneath it. Then he tried the sideboard and the window-sill,
where he had read his morning chapter from St. Paul's Epistle to the
Romans, chapter viii.

He even shook out the leaves of his Testament upon the floor between his
knees and felt for them there. There had been a Biblical surrender of
this sort more than once in the past, and he never failed to go to the
Good Book for relief, even when, as now, he distinctly remembered having
worn the glasses after his daily reading.

Failing to find them here, he suddenly ran his hand over his forehead
with an eager movement. Many a time these very spectacles had come back
to him there, and, strange to say, it was always one of the last places
he remembered to examine. But they were not there now.

He chuckled, even in his despair, as he dropped his hand.

"I'll look there ag'in after a while. Maybe when he's afeerd I'll clair
lose my soul, he'll fetch 'em back to me!"

The old man had often playfully asserted that his "guardeen angel" found
his lost glasses, and laid them back on his head for him when he saw him
tried beyond his strength. And maybe he was right. Who can tell? That
there is some sort of so-called "supernatural" in