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And they had hair as the hair of women, and teeth as the teeth of lions, and they had breastplates as it were, breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of the chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails, and their power was to hurt men five months.

These locusts with the men's faces, and women's hair, and lions' teeth, and stings that hurt you for five months, had a king over them with a pretty Greek name, I used to think, of Apollyon; meaning, Parson Bates said, Destroyer; the Hebrew of it was Abaddon, he said.

There were also four angels loosed out of the River Euphrates and prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year, to assail the third part of man, and horses in a vision with breastplates of fire, jacinth and brimstone, with lion heads and fire and smoke and brimstone coming out of their mouths, and power in their mouths and in their tails. They should make our bellies bitter, Parson Bates said.

My Cousin Ellen had heard him that first day pound and roar and exalt. "What is Behemoth!" she thought. "What is Leviathan to this man?" She felt thumped and thwacked all over. What vitality! What a voice among the beams and rafters! One almost expected heaven to open.

The children's eyes used to be as big as saucers during these tremendous accounts of Parson Bates's. I am excited when I think of these monstrous marvels, even now. But I never was quite overcome, because I kept my eye on Uncle George and how he was taking it. When I was very small I used to slip my hand in his at the most terrifying climaxes, but later on I merely glanced at Uncle George to see how matters stood. He sat back in his pew with a pleased and hearty look on his face, with his gaze on Bates, as if he were peering down into a divine arena where a plucky little boy was raising the dust. He was not afraid of either Bates or God, but I thought he liked both of them better than any of us did.

When church had ended, everyone had risen and begun pouring into the aisles, carrying my Cousin Ellen with them. What had been heads over the tops of the pews were now bodies. Ranks of

hoopskirts bubbled out over the carpets, and little boys who had been hidden away up to now came along with their elders or went wriggling through the worshippers' legs.

The congregation did not seem to Cousin Ellen so very much damped by the threats of hell and prophecies of fire, though some of the ladies had tears in their eyes as they greeted each other and withdrew into various groups for refreshments. My Aunt Martha was opening a hamper basket out of which she took cakes and bottles of wine. And now that church was over and there was still a ride home, everyone was taking some of the refreshments and talking at the same time. There were compliments to the sermon, and in the midst of the banter the old regular joke had come, someone passing the cherry bounce to Miss Mary Cherry and saying that it belonged to her family; and the regular burst of laughter.

They asked my Cousin Ellen what she thought of the sermon, and when she expressed, very gently, the astonishment that the service had given her, though she took pains not to say that she had never till then heard so much noise before God, they told her of another minister before whom Parson Bates dwindled into a shadow. This was Brother Mun, who used to preach in these parts, one of the first evangelists to come through North Mississippi. Cousin Ellen heard how Brother Mun, when his preaching got under way, used to rouse himself to such a pitch that he began to pull his hair out. Any of the older people there had seen him do it. Hadn't Colonel Wallace or Miss Jennie or Cousin Hester seen Parson Mun snatch his hair out? They had, many a day. He began on his head, they said, from which he jerked out handfuls. After he got through preaching they would have to roll him up in a blanket, he was so exhausted. Finally, when he had torn all his hair out during these sermons he began to snatch out his eyebrows, and after he had pulled out his eyebrows, he snatched out his eyelashes. And died at last from nervous fits.

Everyone was there at Fredonia that day, so sweet was the season and clear the air. And all of them were moving about refreshing themselves with the cake and wine and cherry bounce among the hedges and by the gravestones. The place was full of cousins, living or dead, no one very far away it seemed.

They told Cousin Ellen of Ellington Pegues, when she observed a tall shaft with palm branches wreathed upon it and asked whose monument that was. Ellington Pegues, of the Carolina Pegues, had been a young preacher in Sardis, a very handsome and romantic young man, killed in a duel for some rivalry over a lady's hand; Rosa Hunt was her name. But the duel, of course, had been fought on some other pretext to spare a lady's honor. Duels of pastors, cake and wine, so much pleasantry and conversation, angels and ministers of grace!-how far the devout of Heaven Trees and Panola County must have seemed to my Cousin Ellen from her own people in Vermont; how far indeed! Like different kinds of human beings almost, they were; two races.

What must she have thought of that other sort of race not long afterward? For every Sunday, when roads were good and the weather permitted, it was the custom of my cousins, any of them who lived in the same neighborhood, to race one another home when the time came for them to go. And on this Sunday, as she sat in my Uncle George's rockaway and everyone got settled into his place, my Cousin Ellen had suddenly seen Oscar the coachman, with Solomon grinning beside him, give the horses a sharp flip with his whip and had felt the carriage leap forward. Uncle George called out, "The wing'd steeds are pawing the courts. Eros and Mars, let us go." She felt Miss Mary Cherry, who sat beside her fanning herself, suddenly sit bolt upright, snapping her fan to with disapproval. Behind them came Mr. Bobo, his face beaming, in a kind of trap or yellow chaise, as some called it, driving his sorrels and pressing close, in the hope of passing the rockaway and so to win the race.

But what is this? Cousin Ellen had asked, and they explained that they were racing to see who could draw up first at the gate; and she had settled herself back with what thoughts may have been her own to await the end of the contest; her eyes were shining. Horse racing on the Sabbath!

Miss Mary Cherry looked down at her, "I don't wonder you inquire! It's sinful, I regard it."

Solomon had given the horses another crack and they went faster yet. The wine bottles in the hamper rattled together. Behind them in a cloud of yellow dust the smooth rhythm of Mr.

VOL. COXXIII.-NO. 882

Bobo's perfect trotters came louder and louder. He was driving himself. It was not for nothing that his heart dwelt with his horses. Cousin Ellen could hear him talking to them, "Come on, boys! Steady, steady! What'll you bet," he called, "what'll you bet, ladies, that we win?”

Miss Mary Cherry, sitting back with her dignified contemplation and godly remoteness, suddenly leaned forward and boxed our driver over the ear with her fan.

"Get up, you fool!" she cried; "don't you see he's going to pass us?"

But all that was half an hour later. The race had come when the gathering and refreshment had ended. For some time yet the sociabilities in the churchyard went on, and more and more cake was cut, more glasses filled. Plans were being made for parties during the week, and friends were promising each other visits.

My Cousin Ellen presently slipped away and was walking a little apart from the others, looking at the gravestones and reading the lines on them. On one stone she saw her own name, Ellen, and it read:

Ellen Wallace
Implora Pace

She guessed the meaning of the Italian without difficulty. “Implora pace: She asks for peace," my Cousin Ellen translated slowly, saying the words over slowly to herself. The name and the phrase struck her imagination.

Around her on many of the graves flowers were blooming. The cream white blossoms flecked with purple and yellow dropped now and then from the catalpa trees down on the noiseless carpet of young grass. Birds were chirping and singing and darting here and there against the blue sky, and little yellow butterflies flitted in and out of the sunlight and shade. And seeming to be always in distant fields somewhere and to go so well with the marbles of the dead and with the dark, pointed trees, the doves were calling at intervals with their long, mournful, plaintive, cooing note. Out beyond the brick wall where the horses were waiting, the drivers began to sing, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot!" STARK YOUNG.

WORDS

BY MARY SARGENT POTTER

SILENCE in some parts of the world, and among certain peoples, is the natural expression of vocation and temperament. Where this silence has become a habit of life, it has developed through concentration on wide horizons, both material and spiritual. Thus silence itself has come to be regarded as desirable, and cause and effect are often confused. We emulate a result, thinking to acquire a quality.

The Arab gazes out across the desert, his thought focussed on the vast spaces of nature. The immediate and correct interpretation of the signs and sounds of the wilderness is so vital to the preservation of life itself that silence impregnates his entire being. His very eyes remain mute as they look, tragic and remote, into the animated eyes of his western brother come to greet him from other civilizations. He is dumb in the ordinary intercourse between human beings, his senses attuned to other expressions. The men who live their lives amid Nature's august spaces-from glacial North to desert South-are silent men. Vastness imposes silence.

The Mystic of India develops his existence in wordless contemplation of unseen Perfection. The exquisite beauty of his thought, his faith and patience, frequently through lifelong misery, bear witness to the development of spiritual power through meditation. Listening is vastly more important than talking, when men commune with God. Men of the East have learned that the depths of the human soul are silent depths.

In the Western World the New England character is a less poetic expression of this habit of silence. Yet its course is no less deeply rooted, nor is it less instinctive. The desire for an uncompromising sincerity emphasizes action while it undervalues the loveliness of friendly human intercourse. Courage means endurance under the least comfortable conditions, for others as well as

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