The New Ministers Great Opportunity | Page 4

Herman White Chaplin
beckoning him to come to
where his green wagon stood under a tree.
"I must tell you," he said, with an awkwardly repressed smile, "about a
trade of Uncle Capen's. He had a little lot up our way that they wanted
for a schoolhouse, and he agreed to sell it for what it cost him, and the
selectmen, knowing what it cost him,--fifty dollars,--agreed with him
that way. But come to sign the deed, he called for a hundred dollars.
'How 's that,' says they; 'you bought it of Captain Sam Bowen for fifty
dollars.' 'Yes, but see here,' says Uncle Capen, 'it's cost me on an
average five dollars a year, for the ten year I 've had it, for manure and
ploughing and seed, and that's fifty dollars more.' But you 've sold the
garden stuff off it, and had the money,' says they. 'Yes,' says Uncle
Capen, 'but that money 's spent and eat up long ago!'"

The minister smiled, shook hands with Mr. Small, and went home.
The church was crowded. Horses filled the sheds, horses were tied to
the fences all up and down the street. Funerals are always popular in
the country, and this one had a double element of attractiveness. The
whole population of the town, having watched with a lively interest, for
years back, Uncle Capen's progress to his hundredth birthday, expected
now some electrical effect, analogous to an apotheosis.
In the front pews were the chief mourners, filled with the sweet
intoxication of pre-eminence.
The opening exercises were finished, a hymn was sung,--
"Life is a span,"
and Father Cobb arose to make his introductory remarks.
He began with some reminiscences of the first time he saw Uncle
Capen, some thirty years before, and spoke of having viewed him even
then as an aged man, and of having remarked to him that he was
walking down the valley of life with one foot in the grave. He called
attention to Uncle Capen's virtues, and pointed out their connection
with his longevity. He had not smoked for some forty years; therefore,
if the youth who were present desired to attain his age, let them not
smoke. He had been a total abstainer, moreover, from his seventieth
year; let them, if they would rival his longevity, follow his example.
The good man closed with a feeling allusion to the relatives, in the
front pew, mourning like the disciples of John the Baptist after his
"beheadment" Another hymn was sung,--
"A vapor brief and swiftly gone."
Then there was deep silence as the minister rose and gave out his text:
"I have been young, and now I am old."
"At the time of the grand review in Washington," he said, "that mighty
pageant that fittingly closed the drama of the war, I was a spectator,

crippled then by a gun-shot wound, and unable to march. From an
upper window I saw that host file by, about to record its greatest
triumph by melting quietly into the general citizenship,--a mighty,
resistless army about to fade and leave no trace, except here and there a
one-armed man, or a blue flannel jacket behind a plough. Often now,
when I close my eyes, that picture rises: that gallant host, those tattered
flags; and I hear the shouts that rose when my brigade, with their
flaming scarfs, went trooping by. Little as I may have done, as a
humble member of that army, no earthly treasure could buy from me
the thought of my fellowship with it, or even the memory of that great
review.
"But that display was mere tinsel show compared with the great
pageant that has moved before those few men who have lived through
the whole length of the past hundred years.
"Before me lies the form of a man who, though he has passed his days
with no distinction but that of an honest man, has lived through some of
the most remarkable events of all the ages. For a hundred years a
mighty pageant has been passing before him. I would rather have lived
that hundred years than any other. I am deeply touched to reflect that he
who lately inhabited this cold tenement of clay connects our generation
with that of Washington. And it is impossible to speak of one whose
great age draws together this assembly, without recalling events
through which he lived.
"Our friend was born in this village. This town then included the
adjoining towns to the north and south. The region was then more
sparsely settled, although many houses standing then have disappeared.
While he was sleeping peacefully in the cradle, while he was opening
on the world childhood's wide, wondering eyes, those great men whose
names are our perpetual benediction were planning for freedom from a
foreign yoke.
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