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The Best American Humorous Short Stories by Unknown
page 145 of 393 (36%)
public. It springs from our balancing of sects. If a spirited
Episcopalian takes an interest in the almshouse, and is put on the
Poor Board, every other denomination must have a minister there, lest
the poorhouse be changed into St. Paul's Cathedral. If a Sandemanian
is chosen president of the Young Men's Library, there must be a
Methodist vice-president and a Baptist secretary. And if a
Universalist Sunday-School Convention collects five hundred delegates,
the next Congregationalist Sabbath-School Conference must be as large,
"lest 'they'--whoever _they_ may be--should think 'we'--whoever _we_
may be--are going down."

Freed from these necessities, that happy year, I began to know my wife
by sight. We saw each other sometimes. In those long mornings, when
Dennis was in the study explaining to map-peddlers that I had eleven
maps of Jerusalem already, and to school-book agents that I would see
them hanged before I would be bribed to introduce their textbooks into
the schools--she and I were at work together, as in those old dreamy
days--and in these of our log-cabin again. But all this could not
last--and at length poor Dennis, my double, overtasked in turn, undid
me.

It was thus it happened. There is an excellent fellow--once a
minister--I will call him Isaacs--who deserves well of the world till
he dies, and after--because he once, in a real exigency, did the right
thing, in the right way, at the right time, as no other man could do
it. In the world's great football match, the ball by chance found him
loitering on the outside of the field; he closed with it, "camped" it,
charged, it home--yes, right through the other side--not disturbed,
not frightened by his own success--and breathless found himself a
great man--as the Great Delta rang applause. But he did not find
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