or it was supper-time,--"joking one
side, if Uncle Capen never did set the pond afire, we 'd all rather take
his chances to-day, I guess, than those of some smarter men."

At which Mr. Snell turned red; for he was a very smart man and had just
failed,--to everybody's surprise, since there was no reason in the world
why he should fail,--and had created more merriment for the public than
joy among his creditors, by paying a cent and a half on the dollar.

"Come in; sit down," said Dr. Hunter, as the young minister appeared at
his office door; and he tipped back in his chair, and put his feet upon
a table. "What's the news?"

"Doctor," said Mr. Holt, laughing, as he laid down his hat and took an
arm-chair; "you told me to come to you for any information. Now I want
materials for a sermon on old Mr. Capen."

The Doctor looked at him with a half-amused expression, and then sending
out a curl of blue smoke, he watched it as it rose melting into the
general air.

"You don't smoke, I believe?" he said to the minister.

Holt smiled and shook his head.

The Doctor put his cigar back into his mouth, clasped one knee in his
hands, and fixed his eyes in meditation on a one-eared Hippocrates
looking down with a dirty face from the top of a bookcase. Perhaps the
Doctor was thinking of the two or three hundred complimentary visits he
had been permitted to make upon Uncle Capen within ten years.

Presently a smile broke over his face.

"I must tell you, before I forget it," he said, "how Uncle Capen
nursed one of my patients. Years and years ago, I had John Ellis, our
postmaster now, down with a fever. One night Uncle Capen watched--you
know he was spry and active till he was ninety. Every hour he was to
give Ellis a little ice-water; and when the first time came, he took a
table-spoonful--there was only a dim light in the room--and poured the
ice-water down Ellis's neck. Well, Ellis jumped, as much as so sick a
man could, and then lifted his finger to his lips: 'Here 's my mouth,'
said he. 'Why, why,' said Uncle Capen, 'is that your mouth? I took that
for a wrinkle in your forehead."

The minister laughed.

"I have heard a score of such stories to-day," he said; "there seem to
be enough of them; but I can't find anything adapted to a sermon, and
yet they seem to expect a detailed biography."

"Ah, that's just the trouble," said the Doctor. "But let us go into the
house; my wife remembers everything that ever happens, and