MR.

R. FRYE and his little wife live at our house. They took a room for themselves and their little girls, with full board, last December, when the Sloanmakers went to Illinois. This is how it happened that one Sunday, after dinner, in quite an assembly of the full boarders and of the breakfast boarders also, all of whom, except Mr. Jeffries, dine with us on Sunday, Mr. Frye told how he would have preached it.

What made this more remarkable was, that the Fryes are not apt to talk about themselves, or of their past life. I think they have always been favorites at the table; and Mrs. Frye has been rather a favorite among the "lady boarders." But none of us knew much where they had been, excepting that, like most other men, he had been in the army. He brought out his uniform coat for some charades the night of the birthday party. But till Sunday I did not know, for one, anything about the things he told us, and I do not think any one else did.

Every one had been to church that Sunday in the morning. Mrs. Whittemore gives us breakfast on Sunday only half an hour late, and almost all of us do go to church. I believe the Wingates went out to Jamaica Plains to their mother's, but I am almost sure every one else went to church. So at dinner, naturally enough, we talked over the sermons and the services. The Webbers had found Hollis Street shut, and had gone on to Mr. Clarke's, where they had a sort of opening service, and a beautiful show of fall flowers, that some of their orphan boys had sent. Mr. Ray is rather musical. He told about a new Te Deum at St. Peter's. The Jerdans always go to Ashburton Place. They had heard Dr. Kirk. But it so happened that more of us than usual had been to the new church below Clinton Street. We had not found

Dr. Warren there, however, but a strange minister. Some said it was Mr. Broadgood, one of the English delegates. But I knew it was not he. For he said, "If you give an inch they take an ell," and this is a sentence the English delegates cannot speak. The sexton thought it was Mr. Hapgood, from South Norridgewock. I asked Mr. Eels, one of the standing committee, and he did not know. No matter who it was. He had preached what I thought was rather above the average sermon, on "The way of transgressors is hard."

Well, we got talking about the sermon. My wife liked it better than I did. George Fifield liked it particularly, and quoted, or tried to quote, the close to the Webbers; only, as he said, he could not remember the precise language, and it depended a good deal on the manner of the delivery. Mrs. Watson confessed to being sleepy. Harry said he had sat under the gallery, and had not heard much, which is a less gallant way of making Mrs. Watson's confession. The Fryes were both at church. They sat with me in Mrs. Austin's pew. They were the only ones who said nothing about the sermon. Mrs. Frye never does say much at table. But at last the matter became quite the topic of after-dinner discussion; and I said to Frye that we had not had his opinion.

"O," said he, "it was well enough. But if I had had that text, I should not have preached it so."

"How would you have preached it?" said Harry laughing.

Oddly enough, Frye's face evidently flushed a little; but he only said, "Well, not so, I should not have preached it that way."

I did not know why the talk should make him uncomfortable, but I saw it did, and so I tried to change the subject. I asked John Webber if he had seen the Evening Gazette. But Harry

has no tact; and after a little more banter, in which the rest of them at that end of the table joined, he said: "Now, Mr. Frye, tell us how you would have preached it.”

Mr. Frye turned pale this time. He just glanced at his wife, and then I saw she was pale too. But whatever else Frye is, he is a brave man, and he has very little back-down about him. So he took up the glove, and said, if we had a mind to sit there half an hour, he would tell how he would have preached it. But he did not believe he could in less time. Harry was delighted with anything out of the common run, and screamed, "A sermon from Mr. Frye! - a sermon from Mr. Frye! -reported expressly for this journal. No other paper has the news." Poor Mrs. Frye said she must go up and see to her baby, and she slipped away. A gentleman whom I have not named said, in rebuke of us all, that we might be better employed, and he left also. He is preparing for a Sunday paper a series of sketches of popular preachers, and it is my opinion that he spent that afternoon in writing his account of the Rev. Dr. Smith. I do not know, but I used to think he was a correspondent of the New York Observer, for I noticed once that he spoke of Jacqueline Pascal as if Jacqueline were a man's name, and as if she wrote the Pensées. When they were gone, Mr. Frye told us

HOW HE SHOULD HAVE PREACHED

IT.

"I SHOULD have said," said Mr. Frye, "that when Jenny and I were married, fourteen years ago, at Milfold, there was not so good a blacksmith as I in that part of Worcester County. To be a good blacksmith in a country town requires not only strength of arm, and a reasonably correct eye, but a good deal of nerve. And when I first worked at the trade, and afterwards here, once when I worked in Hawley Street for good Deacon Safford, I got the reputation of being afraid of noth

ing. And I think I deserved it, as far as any man does. Certainly I was not easily frightened. So it happened that I was at work for the Semple Brothers, in Milfold, at the highest journeyman's wages, and with lots of perquisites for shoeing the ugly horses. For a circle of fifteen miles round, there was not a kicking brute of the Cruiser family who, in the end, was not brought to our shop for Heber Frye to shoe. I have shod horses from Worcester, who came down with all four of their shoes off because nobody dared touch them. Now in the trade all such work is well paid for. As I say, I had the highest journeyman's wages. And in any such hard case I was paid extra; and as likely as not, if they had had trouble, I got a present beside. The Semples liked the reputation their shop was getting; and so, though I was a little fast, and would be off work at working hours sometimes, they kept me; and if I had chosen to lay up money, I could have made myself-what I never did make myself — a forehanded man.

"Well, I fell in with Jenny there. And while we were engaged, she took care of me, and made me stick to work, and kept me near her. I did not want any other excitement, and I did not want any other companion. She would not go where I could drink, and I would not go anywhere where she did not go. And for the six months of our engagement, I was amazed to find how rich I was growing. When we were married, I was able to furnish the house prettily, as nicely as any man in Milfold, though it was on a baby-house scale, of course. But, as Tom Hood's story says, we had six hair-cloth chairs, a dozen silver spoons, carpet on every room in the house, and everything to make us comfortable."

But here Mr. Frye stopped and said: "This is going to be a longer sermon than I supposed, and those of you who are going to meeting had better go, for I hear the Old-South bell." But nobody started. Even Mrs. Whittemore held firm, only moving her chair so that Isabel might take the dirty plates. The

rest of us moved up a little way, and Mr. Frye went on.

"We were married, and we lived as happily as could be,- a great deal more happily than I deserved, and almost as happily as my wife deserves, even. But, I tell you, there is nothing truer than the saying, 'Easy earned, easy spent'; and I believe that perquisites and fees, unexpected and uncertain remunerations, are apt to be rather bad for a man. At least they make a sort of excuse for a man. I never could be made half as careful as Jenny is, or as I had better be. I spent pretty freely. I liked to spend money on her. And then I would get short; and then I would find myself hoping some halfbroken, kicking beast would be brought in, which nobody could manage but me. And if one came, and I managed him, and shod him, instead of feeling proud of the victory, as I fairly might, I would feel cross if the owner did not hand me a dollar-bill extra as he went away. Then I knew this was mean; and then I would be mad with myself; and then, as I went home, I would stop at Williams's or Richards's, and get something to drink; and then, when I got home, I would scold Jenny; and after the baby came, I would swear at the baby if she cried; and then Jenny would cry, and then I would swear again; and I would go out again, and meet some of the fellows at Edwards's, and would not know when I came home at night, and would be down at the shop late the next morning, and, what was worse, had not the nerve and grit which had given me the reputation I had there. Dutch courage, for practical purposes, ranks with Dutch gold-leaf or German silver.

"Well," said Frye, rather pale again, but trying to laugh a little, "perhaps, my beloved hearers, you don't know what this sort of thing is. If you don't, lucky for you. When they asked that Brahmin, Gangooly, if he believed in hell, he said he believed there were a good many little hells, as he walked through Washington Street to come to the church that evening. If he had

come into my house, almost any evening, he would have found one. Poor Jenny did her best. But a woman can't do much. It is not coaxing you want. You know it's hell a great deal better than anybody can tell you. It is will you want. You can make good enough resolutions about it: the thing is to keep them. All this time the Semples were getting cross. At last they got trusteed for my wages. And old Semple told me he would discharge me if it ever happened again. Then one day, Tourtellot's black mare got away from me, knocked me down, and played the old Harry generally in the shop; and the other hands said it was because I did not know what I was doing, which, by the way, was a lie. It was because my hand was not steady, nor my eye. What is it we used to speak at school, about failing brand and feeble hand? It was not that night, but it was some other night, when I was blue as Peter and cross as a hand-saw, that I stopped to take something on my way home. I remember now that Harry Patrick, who was always my true friend, tried to get me by the shops. He did get me by the hotel, for a strong man can do almost anything with a broken one; but after I had promised him I would go home, he was fool enough to leave me, and then I stopped somewhere else, -no matter where, you do not know Milfold, — and when I got home, it might as well have been anybody else. I don't remember a thing. If the Prince Camaralzaman had gone there, I should now know as little what he did from my own memory. But what I did,— or rather what this hand and arm and leg and the rest of the machine did,—was, to kick the baby's cradle over into the corner; to knock poor Jane down with a chair, on top of it; to put the chair through one window, and throw it out of the other; then to scream, Murder! fire! murder! fire!' and then to tumble on the 'hair-cloth sofa,' which was to make us so comfortable, and go into a drunken sleep.

"This was what I learned I did, the next morning, when I found myself in a justice's court; and for this the judge sent me up to Worcester to the House of Correction for three months. It was a 'first offence,' or it would have been longer. As for poor Jenny and the baby, neither of them could come and see me."

By this time, Frye was done with pretending to smile. He stopped a minute, drank a little water from his tumbler, and said: "Now you would think that would cure a man. Or you would think, as the law does, that three months in the House of Correction would 'correct' him. That is because you do not know. At the last day of the three months I thought so. There is not a man here who dreads liquor as I did that day. Harry Patrick, who, as I said, was my best friend, came to meet me when I went out. Richardson, the sheriff, as kind a man as lives, took pains to come down and see me, and said something encouraging to me. Harry had a buggy, that I need not be seen in the cars. And as we went home, I talked as well to him as any man ever talked. Jenny kissed me, and soothed me, and comforted me. The baby was afraid of me, but came to me before night; - and so, before a month was over, we had just such another scene again, and went through much the same after-scene, but that this time I went to Worcester for six months. For now it was not a first offence, you see.

-

more

"Well, not to disgust you than I can help," — and the poor fellow choked for the only time in the sermon, -"not to disgust you more than I can help, this happened three times. I believe things always do in stories. This did in fact. The 'third time' you go for twelve months. And one Sunday Harry had been over to see me, and had brought me a dear kind letter from poor Jenny, who was starving, with two children now, in an attic, on what washing she could get, and vestmaking, and all such humbugs, Sunday, I say, we were marched out

- one

to chapel,

they have a very good chapel in Worcester, — and a man preached; and he preached from this very text you talk about, 'The way of transgressors is hard.'

"What the man said, I know no more than you do. I don't think I did then. Indeed, I do not think I cared much when he began. But it is a great luxury to hear the human voice, when you have been at work on shoes for a week in a prison on our Massachusetts system, which they call the Silent System, where you have heard no word except the overseer's directions. So I sat there, well pleased enough, even glad to hear a sort of yang-yang they had for music, — and very glad to have some good souls who had come in sing. I remember they sang Devizes, which my father used to sing. So I got into a mood of revery as this preacher went on, and was thinking of Harry, and old Deacon Safford, and father, and Jenny, and what we would call the baby, when to my surprise the minister was finished. And he ended with the text, as some men do, you know. And he said, 'The way of transgressors is hard.' And I caught Wesson's eye, - he was my turnkey, — and Wesson half laughed; and, in violation of all order, I said across the passage to Wesson, 'Damned hard! Wesson.' Mrs. Whittemore, I beg your pardon, but I did say so.

"Wesson nodded, and looked sad. If he had informed on me, I don't know where I should be now. But he looked sorry, and I have not touched liquor again.

"I was discharged the next Wednesday. Harry came for me again, as he always did. I told him I did not want to go on in Milfold. And the good fellow agreed. He brought me and Jenny and the babies down here to Boston. I'll tell you where we lived. We took two rooms in the third story in Genessee Street, and we began life again.

"Now any of you who are tired can go away. But this is only one head of the sermon."

I

"People always have an excuse. Perhaps if we had not used the cars more or less, I should not have had this head in my discourse; I know it all began with these Metropolitan tickets. would not work at shoeing any more. I got a place in that shop where your firm are now, Mr. Webber,—the Beals were there then, as a machinist. I had no difficulty ever with tools and iron. Pay was good enough. Work was steady, though rules were much stricter than at Milfold. But I had not got away, I have not till this hour, from that passion for extras. It is so much easier to earn an extra than to economize; and it is a great deal easier still to plan how you will earn one, and to think that is the same thing. I was tearing a strip of Neck cartickets in two, one day, to give Jenny half, when it occurred to me that there was a great moth of money. We spent twenty or thirty dollars a year on these tickets, and should be glad to spend twice as much. I think the fun of the thing at first, and then curiosity about it, set me on the business. I know I did not tell her. And before I had got my little hand-press started, and had succeeded in my electrotypes to my mind, and had spoiled a dozen blocks of wood in cutting my pattern, I had spent as much money five times over as all the car-tickets I ever printed would have cost me." "You printed car-tickets?" said Mrs. Webber. "I don't understand."

"O," said poor Mr. Frye, blushing. "I forgot that all people do not look on things as a machinist does, to see how they were made. Yes, Mrs. Webber, for two or three years, I printed all the Metropolitan tickets my wife and I used in riding. And eventually we rode a good deal. satisfied such conscience as I had, by

I

never selling any. And, as I said, I never told my wife. I tried to persuade myself it would be an economy after the plant was paid for. But it never was an economy. What was the worst part of it was, that I had the plant. I had this little handy printingpress. You did not think why I got it, Mrs. Whittemore, when I printed your cards for you. That is rather a tempting thing to have in the house. And that little Grove's battery, that I gilded your silver thimble with, Mrs. Stearns, is more of a temptation. Both together, I can tell you all, they start a man on more enterprises than are good for him.

"There is no danger," he added, rather meditatively, "of the kind people call danger, if a man will only be reasonable, and be satisfied with what is good for him. It is the haste to be rich which is dangerous in that way, to people who would never have been

detected,' as they call it, if they were willing to be reasonable and comfortable. But it is not the detection and punishment which play the dogs with a man. It is the meanness and lying, after the first excitement of the enterprise is over. As I said, I never sold any car-tickets or stage-tickets. I just made enough for my own use and Jenny's. I did give away a lot of concert-tickets one week at the shop; and I told the men that I had them for printing them. It was the off-part of the season, and the Music Hall was not half full, as it stood. I have sometimes thought the Steffanonis, or whoever it was, may have thanked me in their hearts for the audience. No. The trouble is, you see, you have to do things on the sly. I thought it would be a satisfaction to me to have five or six books out of the library at once; and I got up my own library cards, easy enough to fill them out with the names of dead people. But I never took any comfort in those books. George Fiske went into the gift-concert business. He knew I had this battery up stairs, and I used to gild his watch-backs for him. Well,