tually private. There stands the family
altar, pitifully grotesque amid the ruinous splendor of the destroying
fire, the tea-kettle upon it proudly flaunting its steamy plume. What?
Is a common cooking-stove an altar? Yes, verily, in lineal descent.
Examine an ancient altar and you will see its sacrificial stone scored
and guttered to catch the dripping from the roasting meat. Who is
the priestess, after an order older than Melchisedec's, but she that
ministers to us that most comfortable sacrament, wherein we are made
partakers not alone of the outward and visible food which we do carnally
press with our teeth, but also of that inward and spiritual sustenance,
the patient and enduring love of wife and mother, without which there
can be no such thing as home? All other sacraments wherein men break
the bread of amity together are but copies of this pattern, the Blessed
Sacrament of the Household Altar, the first and primal one of all, the
one that shall perdure, please God! throughout all ages of ages.

The flames die down. The timbers sink together with a softer fall. The
air grows chill. We fetch a sigh. We cannot bear to look at that mute
figure of the priestess seated on the sordid heap of broken furniture,
her sleeping baby pressed against her breast, her gaze fixed--but
seeing naught--upon her ruined temple. We do not like to think upon such
things. We do not like to think at all. Is there nothing more to laugh
at?

The firemen, having all borrowed the makings of a cigarette from each
other, put on their hats and coats, left on the hook-and-ladder truck in
the custody of a trusted member. The apparatus trundles off, the bells
dolorously tolling as the striking gear on the rear axle engages the
cam.

Who is this weeping man approaches, supported by two friends, that
comfort him with: "All right, Tom. You done noble," uttered in pacifying
if not convincing tones? Heart-brokenly he cries: "I dull le ver' bes' I
knowed, now di' n't I? Charley? Billy, I dub bes' I knowed how. An' nen
he says to me--Oo-hoo-hoo-oooo-oo! He says to me: 'Come ou' that, ye
cussed fool!' Oo-oooo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo! Smf! Lemme gi' amma ham hankshiff.
Leg go my arm. Waw gi' amma hankshifp. Oo-oo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo! Fmf! I
ash you as may wurl--I ash you as may--man of world, is that--is that
proper way address me? Me! Know who I am? I'm Tom Ball. 'S who I am. I
kill lick em man ill Logan Coun'y. Ai' thasso? Hay? 'S aw ri. Mfi choose
stay up there, a