he travelling evangelist conducting the meetings, began to
make fun of him in the paper; and, as a revivalist in a church is a
sacred person while the meetings are going on, we had to kill Mehronay's
items about the revival; whereupon, his professional pride being hurt,
Mehronay went forth into the streets, got haughtily drunk, and strutted
up and down Main Street scattering sirs and misters and madams about so
lavishly that men who did not appreciate his condition thought he had
gone mad. That night he went to the revival, and sat upon the back seat
alone, muttering his imprecations at the preacher until the singing
began, when the heat of the room and the emotional music mellowed his
pride, and he drowned out the revivalist's singing partner with a
clear, sweet tenor that made the congregation turn to look at him.
Mehronay knew the gospel hymns by heart, as he seemed to know his New
Testament, and the cunning revivalist kept the song service going for an
hour. When Mehronay was thoroughly sober there was a short prayer, and
the singer on the platform feelingly sang "There Were Ninety and Nine"
with an adagio movement, and Mehronay's face was wet with tears and he
rose for prayers.

He came to the office chastened and subdued next morning and wrote an
account of the revival so eulogistic that we had to tone it down, and
for a week he went about damning, with all the oaths in the pirate's
log, Dan Gregg and the College professor who taught evolution. But no
one could coax him back to the revival. As spring came we thought that
he had forgotten the episode of his regeneration, and perhaps he had
forgotten it, but the Saturday before Easter he put on the copy-hook an
Easter sermon that made us in the office think that he had added another
dream to his world. It was a curious thing for Mehronay to write;
indeed, few people in town realised that he did write it; for he had
been rollicking over town on his beat every day for months after the
revival, and half the pious people in town thought he shammed his
emotion the night he came to the church merely to mock them and their
revivalist. But we in the office knew that Mehronay's Easter sermon had
come as the offering of a contrite heart. It is in so many scrapbooks in
the town that it should be reprinted here that the town may know that
Mehronay wrote it. It read:

"The celebration of Easter is the celebration of the renewal of life
after the death that prevails in winter. P