The New Ministers Great Opportunity | Page 6

hour our friend is no longer aged; wrinkles and

furrows, trembling limbs and snowy locks he has left behind him, and
he knows, we believe, to-day, more than the wisest philosopher on
earth. We may study and argue, all our lives, to discover the nature of
life, or the form it takes beyond the grave; but in one moment of swift
transition the righteous man may learn it all. We differ widely one from
another, here, in mental power. A slight hardening of some tissue of the
brain might have left a Shakspeare an attorney's clerk. But, in the
brighter world, no such impediments prevent, I believe, clear vision
and clear expression; and differences of mind that seem world-wide
here, may vanish there. When the spirit breaks its earthly prison and
flies away, who can tell how bright and free the humblest of us may
come to be! There may be a more varied truth than we commonly think,
in the words,--'The last shall be first.'
"Let this day be remembered. Let us think of the vast display of
Nature's forces which was made within the long period of our old
neighbor's life; but let us also reflect upon the bright pageant that is
now unrolling itself before him in a better world."
That evening Miss Maria and her brothers, sitting in state in the little
old house, received many a caller; and the conversation was chiefly
upon one theme,--not the funeral sermon, although that was
commended as a frank and simple biographical discourse, but the great
events which had accompanied Uncle Capen's progress through this
world, almost like those which Horace records in his Ode to Augustus.
"That's trew, every word," said Apollos Carver; "when Uncle Capen
was a boy there wasn't not one railroad in the hull breadth of the United
States, and just think: why now you can go in a Pullerman car clear'n
acrost to San Francisco. My daughter lives in Oakland, just acrost a
ferry from there."
"Well, then, there 's photographing," said Captain Abel. "It doos seem
amazing, as the minister said: you set down, and square yourself, and
slick your hair, and stare stiddy into a funnel, and a man ducks his head
under a covering, and pop! there you be, as natural as life,--if not more
so. And when Uncle Capen was a young man, there wasn't nothing but
portraits and minnytures, and these black-paper-and-scissors

portraits,--what do they call 'em? Yes, sir, all that come in under his
observation."
"Yes," said one of the sons, "'tis wonderful; my wife and me was took
setting on a settee in the Garding of Eden,--lions and tigers and other
scriptural objects in the background."
"And don't forget the telegrapht," said Maria; "don't forget that."
"Trew," said Apollos, "that's another thing. I hed a message come
once-t from my son that lives to Taunton. We was all so sca't and faint
when we see it, that we did n't none of us dast to open it, and finally the
feller that druv over with it hed to open it fur us."
"What was there in it?" said Mr. Small; "sickness?--death?"
"No, he wanted his thick coat expressed up. But my wife didn't get over
the shock for some time. Wonderful thing, that telegraph--here's a man
standing a hundred miles off, like enough, and harpooning an idea
chock right into your mind."
"Then that was a beautiful truth," said Maria: "that father and
Shakspeare would like enough be changed right round, in Heaven; I
always said father wasn't appreciated here."
"Well," said Apollos, "'tis always so; we don't begin to realize the value
of a thing tell we lose it. Now that we sort o' stand and gaze at Uncle
Capen at a fair distance, as it were, he looms. Ef he only hed n't kep' so
quiet, always, about them 'ere wonders. A man really ought, in justice
to himself, to blow his own horn--jest a little. But that was a grand
discourse, wa'n't it, now?"
"Oh, yes," said Maria, "though I did feel nervous for the young man.
Still, when you come to think what materials he had to make a sermon
out of,--why, how could he help it! And yet, I doubt not he takes all the
credit to himself."
"I should really have liked to have heard Father Cobb treat the subject,"

said Mrs. Small, rising to go, and nodding to her husband. "'T was a
grand theme. But 't was a real chance for the new minister. Such an
opportunity doesn't happen not once in a lifetime."
The next morning, after breakfast, on his way home from the
post-office, the minister stopped in at Dr. Hunter's office. The Doctor
was reading a newspaper.
Mr. Holt took a chair in silence.
The Doctor laid down the