or Heaven. I don't know how she will get on in a place
where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. It's bound to
be hard on her if the Lord does not give her something more than a harp
and a golden crown with which to fill the aching void she is sure to
have somewhere under her breast feathers.

But no one can say that I did not stand by William through the entire
widowhood of my marriage. I was the world compass of his life, always
sitting in his amen corner with my attention fixed anxiously upon the
spiritual pulse of the congregation, always giving him the most
nourishing food our limited means afforded, always standing between him
and sordid dickering with the butcher and candlestick maker, always
making myself a Chinese wall to separate him on sermon-making days from
the church public.

Many a time I have taken my hands out of the biscuit dough to meet a
steward who was determined to see him about the increased foreign
mission assessment, or it might be the Sunday-school superintendent
come to discuss the May picnic. I could usually pacify the steward and
put off the superintendent, but if it was a messenger from some remote
neighborhood on the circuit come to say that Brother Beatem was dead
and the family wanted Brother Thompson to conduct the funeral services
next morning at the nearest Methodist church I would be obliged to give
in, even if William was in the very heat of spiritual constructions.
For a funeral is a thing that cannot be put off. The corpse will not
endure it, nor the family, either, for that matter. They want the
preacher to be on hand promptly with all the laurels of language to
bestow upon their dead in the funeral wreath discourse.

And this brings me to mention a peculiarity of "surviving relatives" as
a class. They demand that the pastor of the dead man or woman shall
furnish him his titles to mansions in the sky, whether he deserves them
or not. Even if Brother Beatem was a mean man who neglected his wife
and children, cheated his neighbors, abused his horse and failed to
support the church, he must have a funeral that praised him for a
saint. And if the pastor failed to do this the surviving relatives
whom the dead man had victimized every day he lived would be the first
to resent it.

I never knew but one pastor who told the truth in a funeral sermon, and
he had to be "moved" immediately by his presiding elder. The whole
community regarded it as one of the most