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It was the most unpleasant day they had encountered, everyone's nerves were on edge, and there has been more gaiety in a mourner's carriage than in the surrey where "Red" tried vainly to interest Aunt Lizzie. Wallie was too angry with Mr. Stott to care for luncheon, so after a bite he betook himself to the shade of a tree, and sat down to smoke, with his back against it.

Dave, you know, went up to the mourner's bench some time ago an' got a right lively artickle of religion; but when his hoss died he 'lowed, he did, that he didn't want no sich religion that this here preacher would fetch an' he ups an' cusses, he does, an' flings his religion away." "Wall," said Jasper, "this here is news. What air they goin' to do about it?" "Kain't do nothin', I reckon.

"just as he is"; accustomed to seeing him do it; accustomed to seeing him pass up the aisle through sobbing seas of welcome, and love, and congratulation, and arrive at the mourner's bench and be received like a long-lost government bond. No, there is nothing of that kind in Mrs. Eddy's system.

"Oh, Thou, who dry'st the mourner's tear, How dark this world would be, If, when deceived and wounded here, We could not fly to Thee! The friends, who in our sunshine live, When winter comes, are flown; And he who has but tears to give, Must weep those tears alone.

Like children they came, Marcums and Braytons, piling their arms on the rock before him, shaking hands right and left, and sitting together on the mourner's bench. Old Brayton was humbled thereafter. He wanted to shake hands with Steve Marcum and make friends. But Steve grinned, and said, "Not yit," and went off into the bushes.

From that day to this he has been following the lead of the renowned Simon Suggs, who, having in true camp meeting style acquired "the grace of God," turned loose as an exhorter shouting "Step up to the mourner's bench, my brethering, step up lively, and be saved! I come in on na 'er par, an' see what I draw'd! Religion's the only game whar you can't lose. Him that trusts the Lord holds fo' aces!"

Sweet faces turn their beaming eyes on mine; Ah! not in these the wished-for look I read; Still for that one dear human smile I pine; Thou and none other! is the lover's creed. And whence thy sadness in a world of bliss Where never parting comes, nor mourner's tear? Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal's kiss Amid the seraphs of the heavenly sphere?

In what fearful peril the caliph and the Kalendars placed themselves when, in spite of warning, they would ask questions! How delightful are the verses of the Nights, whether they have or have not any bearing upon the text! Says the third Kalendar, apropos of nothing: "How many a weal trips on the heels of ill Causing the mourner's heart with joy to thrill."

Well, the summer after I was twelve years old and had reached that fateful period of "personal accountability," at our protracted meeting, I wanted to go to the "mourner's bench," repent, join the church and be baptized, and thus make good my escape and my "calling and election sure." At this time I had no clear conception of the meaning of conversion.

Although broken and decayed in many of its parts, it is sufficiently alive to bear foliage. The gray, drooping moss hangs from its decaying branches, like a mourner's veil shrouding face and neck, emblematic of the tears which the daring adventurer is said to have wept in its shadow. An iron railing protects the tree from careless usage and from the knives of ruthless relic hunters.