How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Years | Page 3

held the cap between his thumb and forefinger of one hand up before his eyes, while he rubbed his bald crown with the other. "Good for Mirandy." And then, as a small slip of white paper fluttered to the floor, he seized it, and read:
[Handwritten: A happy New Year to Deacon Tubman from Miranda.]
"A good girl, a good girl," said the deacon, "not overburdened with fat, but a good girl!" and with this rather equivocal compliment to the donor, with his boot in one hand and the cap in the other, he rushed impulsively to the stairway and shouted:
"A happy New Year to you, Mirandy. God bless you; God bless you," and he swung the boot, instead of the cap, vigorously over his head, while his round, rosy face beamed down the stairway into the cold hall below, like a warm harvest moon over the autumnal stubble.
In response to the deacon's hearty, and, I may say, somewhat uproarious greeting, the kitchen door timidly opened, and Miranda, who had been astir for nearly an hour and had the table already laid for breakfast, stepped into view, and, with a smile on her face that actually broadened its thinness dangerously near to the proportions of a genial and happy reciprocation of the jovial greeting, dropped a courtesy, and said:
"Thank you, Deacon Tubman, I hope you may have many happy returns."
"A thousand to you, Mirandy," shouted the deacon in response, "a thousand to you and your--children!" and the little man swung his boot vehemently over his head and laughed like a boy at his own joke, while poor, frightened, scandalized Miranda turned and scudded, like a patch of thin vapor blown by an unexpected gust of wind, through the door into the kitchen, with a face colored scarlet from an actual, unmistakable blush, though whence the blood came that reddened the clean cold-white of her thin face is a physiological mystery.
In a moment the deacon was fully dressed and he scuttled as merrily and noisily down the resounding stairway as a gust of autumn wind running through a patch of russet leaves. Through the hall and kitchen he bustled and out into the woodshed, where he ran against old Towser, the big Newfoundland watch-dog, who stood in the passage expectantly watching his coming.
[Illustration: "_Ha, none of that, you woolly-coated rogue, you._"]
"A happy New Year to you, Towser, old boy," he cried, and, seizing the huge dog by his shaggy coat, he wrestled with him like a merry-hearted boy. "A happy New Year to you, old fellow," he repeated, as the dog broke into a series of joyful barks; "speak it right out, Towser. God made you as full of fun as he has the rest of us, and a good deal fuller than many of your kind, and mine, too," and with this backhanded hit at the vinegar-visaged and acidulous-hearted of his own species, the deacon shuffled along the crisp, icy path toward the barn, while Towser gamboled through the deep snow and plunged into the huge, fleecy drifts in as merry a mood as his merry master.
"A happy New Year to you, old Jack," he called out to his horse, as he entered the barn, and Jack neighed a happy return, more expectant, perhaps, of his breakfast of oats than appreciative of the greeting. "And a happy New Year to you, you youngster," he shouted to the colt, who, being at liberty to roam at will, had already appropriated a section of the hay-mow to his own satisfaction. "Ha, none of that, you woolly-coated rogue, you," he cried, as he jumped aside to escape a kick that the bunch of equine mischief anticly snapped at him. "None of that, you little unconverted sinner, you. I verily believe the parson is right, and that
'In Adam's fall We sinned all--'
men and beasts, colts and children, all in one lot."
And so, talking to himself and his cattle, the jolly little man, whose good-heartedness represented more genuine orthodoxy than the whole Westminster catechism, bustled merrily about the barn and did his chores, while the cockerels crowed noisily from their perches overhead, the fat white pigs grunted in lazy contentment from their warm beds of straw, and the oxen, with their large, luminous eyes, gazed benevolently at him as he crammed their mangers generously full with the fragrant hay that smelled sweetly of the flowers and odorous meadow lands, where in the warm summer sunshine it had ripened for the welcome scythe.
How happy is life, in whatever part of this great fragrant world of ours it is lived, when men live it happily; and how gloomy seems its sunshine, even, when seen through the shadows and darkness of our surly moods.
What happy-hearted fairy was it that possessed the deacon's heart and home, on this bright New Year's