MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE.
By George Thomas Dowling
BY GEORGE THOMAS DOWLING, D. D. THE minister's wife had just finished her chores,
By calling on all the church people,
And some she'd found open as both the church doors,
And some she'd found as stiff as the steeple,
For, while all the deacons had slept on the wall,
A committee had come like a lion,
And, by giving her husband a generous call,
Had shaken the bulwarks of Zion. For years they had paid him who taught them the word,
About six hundred dollars, or seven,
For they felt that a preacher should "trust in the Lord,"
And grow fat on the "manna from heaven." And so the cash question had come to annoy,
Which with so many ministers rankles,
For the Lord had sent children,—three girls and a boy,—
And the boy—hollow down to his ankles. Sister Blodgett, the wife of "a pillar," had cried
(They supported a carriage and horses),
"Beware, lest you sin against God;" she had sighed,
"A rolling stone gathers no mosses." The preacher looked up from the book which he read,
And his merry eyes twinkled with laughter;
"Why didn't you tell Sister Blodgett," he said,
"That moss isn't what we are after?"
—New York Independent.