DIESPISCATOPI.E. 591 



Let us follow Watch, and enter the log school-house. How 

 the primitive institoot brings back recollections of the time 

 when we walked two or three miles to an old field-school, and 

 carried our dinners in a basket ! Its very smell is familiar ; 

 the long slab benches, just such as we used to polish with 

 our corduroy trousers, and carve the initials of our sweet- 

 hearts' and our own name on ; the wooden pegs like those we 

 hung our hats and bonnets on ; the teacher's desk, and the 

 long low windows, of the same pattern they were forty years 

 ago ; and there is the old ten-plate wood-stove standing in the 

 middle of the floor, with its side-doors off the hinges, so like 

 the one we used to toast our bread or fry our bacon on, at 

 playtime, and, when the master was not looking, spit against 

 during school-hours, to see it dance and sizzle. Let us read 

 the maker's name on the side-plate — " Eeuben Trexler — Mary 

 Ann Furnace." What an affectionate way those old iron- 

 masters had, of naming their furnaces after their wives or 

 some favorite daughter! I never read any other than a 

 feminine name on a ten-plate stove, I don't believe there 

 ever was a Tnale furnace, at least there were none when I was 

 a boy; but there was "Eebecca Furnace," or /'Mary Ann 

 Furnace," or "Maria Furnace," or "Isabella Furnace," or 

 " Sarah Ann Furnace." It was always some dear woman's 

 name that appeared on the hard black side-plates. 



What delays the preacher? he is fifteen minutes behind 

 time ! Perhaps his horse is grass-fed, and he remembers on 

 this warm June morning, that " the merciful man is merciful 

 to his beast," and rides slowly; or the fair sisters at old 

 brother Ezra's, where he stayed all night, twelve miles away, 

 have been a little sweet on the young preacher, and he 

 sat longer over his coffee than usual. The company are 

 getting restless ; there is a frequent " ahem !" from the women, 

 and the little boys are munching maple-sugar, or indulging 



