was it long before still greater changes occurred.

The Deacon went

so far as to build himself a large new house, and talk about a church with steeple and bell, for the convenience of a parish which had thus far always worshipped in the schoo-hlouse. So much for the influence of a judicious woman.

The Deacon was a man who never did any thing by halves,—who never made two bites at a cherry, -as his family history will show. Acting on the spur of those new feelings which had sprung up in his bosom, he went resolutely forward in his purpose of decorating the village green with "an elegant meetin'-us," and by a singular coincidence, the corner stone of that edifice was laid on the very day which made him the father of two lusty boys. We have just said he never did any thing by halves! "My stars," cried he, hearing the happy news just as he had completed the task of laying the corner stone,-"My stars, Sister Marvel, you've done well! Sol, fa, sol, la! The gentle maid that twinned with me!'"

The foundation of the church being laid under such auspicious circumstances, and with such omens of fertility and speedy increase, the work went on with great vigor and high hope. A spacious framework was erected upon this foundation, roofed, shingled, clapboarded and painted with surprising expedition. The inside of the church was not so speedily completed, and in consequence of some unavoidable delay, it was determined to open the house for worship at once, but to postpone the formal dedication till the whole of the work was completed.

Accordingly as soon as the lower floor was laid, and the pews and pulpit erected, although scarcely any thing had been done to the "gallery," public worship was had in the new house. A few loose planks were arranged in the gallery to accommodate "the singers," and the crowd of urchins that always swarm around the highest seats in our synagogues. To keep these boys in order, as well as to lead the music, (for he was both tything man and chorister,) the Deacon took his seat also in the gallery. Alas! he little foresaw the catastrophe that awaited him, but in happy security joined in the psalmody, pouring forth a cataract of melody, and making the ears of the audience tingle with the rich nasal twang of his stentorian voice. The psalms were sung, the prayers were prayed, and the chosen chapter of Holy Writ had been read, when the venerable Elder Mack rose in the pulpit and announced the text. At that unlucky moment the attention of the Deacon was caught by the grimaces of a young rogue who was "taking off" the minister, surrounded by half a dozen others ready to split with suppressed laughter. The spectacle was intolerable.

"The sight no longer Blount could bear!

By heavens and all its saints I swear,

I'll hit his head a knock!"

The angry Deacon sprang furiously forward to visit the pate of the of fending urchin with an admonitory rap, trod thoughtlessly, but with all his

weight, on the unsupported end of an unfastened board, and the next moment, to his utter amazement, found himself making a flying leap into the midst of the congregation below. He landed most gracefully astride the neck and shoulders of a corpulent old lady, who sunk under the tremenduous shock of his descent into the bottom of the pew, kicking and screaming "like a shot deer or a hurt wild duck." The minister paused in the midst of his text, and the whole congregation arose as though they were about singing the doxology, and every head was turned towards the pew in which the flying Deacon and the fat woman had so mysteriously disappeared. For a moment not a sound was heard—

"Not a drum was heard, nor a funerul note !"

but all was appallingly still; so that Elder Mack began to fear it was all over with both Deacon Marvel and Mrs. Broaders. But sounds soon broke upon the stillness of the people-sounds which indicated that a desperate struggle was in progess, attended with no little wrath, pain, affright and confusion. The Deacon had nearly stunned Mrs. B. by his fall, while she in her turn almost annihilated him by the manner in which she dragged him down with her and crushed his unfortunate legs beneath her mountainous weight. Rustling and struggling, groaning, kicking and something that sounded awfully like cursing, rose in horrid discord from the invisible pair, and at last, just in time to prevent a general rush of the people to the pew, the lantern jaws of the Deacon appeared above the rail, looking as red and fiery as though his phiz actually was a lantern with a dozen lamps burning within, followed by the broad, blowsy and indignant face of the unhappy victim of his assault, more red, if possible than his, looking like the full moon through an evening mist; the two together presenting in conjunction a spectacle beyond description ludicrous and extraordinary. The Deacon limped back to the gallery, amazingly crest fallen, while Mrs. Broaders, with a vain endeavor to restore her crushed bonnet and rumpled ruff to decent and christian trim, hobbled out of the church and did not again make her appearance for a six-month.

Five minutes, however, sufficed to re-assure and compose the sturdy Deacon, so that he seated himself on the cross-beam of the gallery, with his feet dangling over the broad aisle, and began to meditate on the "special providence," as he considered the affray from which he had just escaped.

Alas! for our hero! he would have been a wise man, had he gone home like the lady upon whom he 'lighted so unceremoniously.

Silence having been restored to the congregation, Elder Mack recommenced his discourse. Like most of the old-fashioned preachers, his method of analysing and arranging his sermon was, to divide them into some eight or ten heads, each head being sub-divided into three or four more little heads thus resembling some of the strange monsters, with their heads and horns, seen by St. John in the Apocalypse. In fact the preaching of one of Elder Mack's discourses was like the conflict be. tween Hercules and the Hydra, in which one head of the beast was hardly cut off and disposed of before two others started up in its place.

The minister had now proceeded triumphantly through his "seventhly;" for upwards of an hour had his guttural monotony fallen like a gentle opiate on the senses of his hearers, and he was just ready to grapple with his "eighthly," when his attention was arrested by the head of Deacon Marvel, which had gradually swayed from its perpendicularity, until his chin was now buried in the bosom of his vest, and his body seemed nodding to the cadences of the speaker's voice.

The truth is, Deacon Marvel was asleep. Either he had been kept awake by the squalling of his babies, the night before-or his recent fall had so stunned his faculties as to make him lethargic.

At every emphatic word, as if the Deacon attended to the discourse even when sleeping, his head nodded, and every nod seemed to bring him nearer the floor. The parson was dismayed; what should he do? Once already had the Deacon flown from the gallery, and now it appeared he was about to repeat the experiment, and alas, with no subjacent fat woman to break his fall!

Suppressing a momentary rising of wrath and mortified vanity, Elder Mack resorted to several innocent artifices to rouse and save the slumbering saint. He lifted up his voice like a trumpet; nod, went the head. He lowered his tones to a gentle manner: nod, nod. He pounded the pulpit with his clenched fists; nod, nod, nod. The sweat started on his brow and trickled down his nose, in his excitement, and with his eyes rolling in a sort of phrenzy, he slammed down the big bible upon the desk with a tremendous noise; nod, nod, nod, as before. The audience were surprised and delighted with the unwonted energy of their old parson; they imagined that he had received from on high a new and sudden inspiration, little fancying where he borrowed his ardor. And now, Elder Mack, growing desperate, began to hurl texts of Scriptures at the unsteady head of the sleeper. "It is high time to awake out of sleep," cried he. But in vain, Deacon Marvel did not heed it. "Wo to them that are at ease in Zion," shouted he. The Deacon nodded his assent. "Awake, O sleeper, and arise!" yelled the maddened divine. The only answer was another nod, and a most threatening lurch of the Deacon's whole body. Elder Mack could stand it no longer, but called out at the top of his voice," Deacon Marvel! Deacon Marvel! it is hard preaching to a sleepy congregation!" The Deacon's head flew up to its place at once, and before he could command his tongue, he thundered back, "Elder Mack, Elder Mack, it's a darned sight harder listening to a sleepy sermon!" The effect of this retort was irresistible, and the assembly broke out in a paroxysm of laughter!

CHAPTER IV.

Education, &c. &c.

Not long after the birth of those twin boys, whom the Deacon knew, by a sort of instinct, would be his only children, he became profoundly

interested in the theory of parental government and domestic education. Long and deeply did he ponder, meditate, and turn the matter over in his mind. At last his thoughts settled down upon two distinct and conflicting systems, and between these he oscillated like a pendulum between the two ends of its cycloid. These two schemes were afterwards described by his son Joshua, in the chemical language of that day, as "the phlog-istic and the anti-phlogistic," or the "flogging" and "no flogging" systems. The first assumed as its fundamental proposition and basis, the doctrine that a child's conscience is decidedly cutaneous, and resides chiefly in that part which Hudibras asserts to be the seat of honor at a more advanced period in life. It is a sort of manual-labor system,— its chief exercises being flagellation and those various other callisthenic and gymnastic exercises commonly known as corporeal punishments, and which are supposed to beat in knowledge and beat out the principles of evil at one and the same operation. The other system avoids such distinct and sensible appeals, by rod and ferule, and naked hand, to the cutaneous conscience, and addresses itself to the good sense and inward principles of the juvenal: it is persuasive, not compulsory,—it treats logic and not authority as the basis of family government, and assumes that good arguments are always irresistible and conclusive. Well might the Deacon pause and ponder before adopting either of these opposite modes of treatment. He weighed and measured as well as he could all the arguments upon both sides of the controversy with all the patience of Chancellor Eldon, and with an expenditure of time so nearly rivalling the duration of an equity suit under the administration of that most learned and most hesitating lord, that the wonder was that the parties in interest outlived his dubitation, or that he himself survived it. In fact he never did come to any choice, and when at last a decision was forced upon him, fiinding with another profound reasoner, (Sir Roger)" that a great deal might be said on both sides," he imitated the even-handed (in) justice" of a board of referees, and dexterously avoiding an avowal of his preference for either side, decided in favor of both, by determining to

Parents who are blessed with but one child at a birth can never adopt his conduct as a precedent, and "dodge the question" as Deacon Marvel did by determining to test at once the merits of both systems, by applying the one to Caleb and subjecting Joshua to the other!

Thus did the sturdy spirit of the Deacon triumph over the perplexity which beset him. When Sampson bore away the gates of Gaza, and when Alexander cut the complexities of the Gordian knot, they merely triumphed over physical obstructions. Deacon Marvel vanquished a difficulty of a far higher grade, and deserves to be esteemed accordingly.

He resolved that while the elder, Caleb, was scolded, cuffed and pounded for all his sins and peccadillos, the younger, Joshua, should hear soft words, gentle reproof, wholesome advice and tender admonition.

Reasoning on common cases and ordinary principles, we should expect this extraordinary conduct would introduce discords and domestic

jars into the Marvel family: that the boys would grow up jealous of each other, and that Caleb, the whippee, would soon learn to hate his parents as unjust, and his brother as his natural enemy, the cause of all his sufferings. Providence, however, provided an antidote for this otherwise fatal domestic poison, in the disposition and temperament of the two boys. In fact we suspect that the Deacon's duplex system originated partly, at least, in the diversity of character manifest in his children. even while they were in swaddling bands. Had these twins resembled us, and our brothers, what scuffling and squabbling there would have been; what bickerings and heart burnings! We remember with tingling distinctness the day when we were made the scape goat to bear away the sins and receive all the expiatory whippings and spankings due in justice to the other three delinquents, whose ingenuity converted us in the Malachi Malagwesthen of the tribe. Those happy days are, alas, flown, and we have outgrown and outlived all those delectable pleasures. But Caleb and Joshua were admirably adapted to their respective lots and treatments. Joshua, whose skin was predestined to remain unbroken in its integrity, was one of those quick, retiring, inoffensive bodies, whose conduct, if it never merits strong commendation, never incurs a reproach, nor deserves a censure. On the other hand, Caleb, as if aware that the rod must come, and yet resolved that it should neither come without a cause, nor be remembered a moment, was as boisterous and mischievous a mad cap as ever pulled his nurse's hair, or tried a mother's patience. Frolic and fun and deviltry were natural to him. He was the most inveterate truant that ever broke leading strings. Mud-pies were his delight. He bore castigation like a martyr, and gloried in stripes and persecution. In his frequent elopements it was matter of doubt, so nearly amphibious was he, whether he was to be sought for by land or water. He was found one day, long before he was out of petticoats, up to his neck in a tub of rain-water near the door, frolicking with a shad that had been placed there to keep fresh. His energy in mischief was so active as sometimes to inspire and carry away his gentle brother. Being at one time expelled from the sick chamber of his mother, for blowing his willow whistle, he went out, and taking Joshua with him, they both vanished. Presently a distant whistling noise was heard, which seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth. Search was thereupon made, and the missing boys were discovered at the bottom of the well, blowing their bark trumpets in wonderful unison !

It will be readily imagined that their domestic education was not the only cause of perplexity to the worthy Deacon. The school-boy age arrived, and new drafts were made on the paternal treasury,

"For children fresh expenses get,

And Bobby now for school was fit!"

We will not dwell on the joys and sorrows of this new period of boyish existence, and parental anxiousness. It will or must now suffice to say, at fourteen years of age, Caleb had sobered down into an industrious and