been more than fell within the lines of reason.

As for the other stories, it is enough to say that Uncle John was
himself abundantly blessed with wives and children needing to be fed,
that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and that it was sometimes
vexatious to follow rapid fluctuations in the market value of butter,
eggs, beef, potatoes, beet-molasses, and the like. Certain it is that
after money came to circulate it was a much more satisfactory business
all around; two dollars a blessing--flat, and no grievances on either
side, with a slight reduction if several were blessed in one family.
When Uncle John laid his hands upon a head after that, every one knew
the exact pecuniary significance of the act.

When the Patriarch stopped at Amalon that spring, at the house of Joel
Rae, there were many blessings to be made, and from morning until night
for several days he was busy with the writing of them. Two members of
the household he interested to an uncommon degree,--the child, Prudence,
who forthwith began daily to promise her dolls that they should not
taste of death till Christ came, and Tom Potwin, the imbecile, who
became for some unknown reason covetous of a blessing for himself. He
stayed about the Patriarch most of the time, bothering him with appeals
for one of his blessings. But Uncle John, though a good man, had been
gifted by Heaven with slight imagination, and Tom Potwin would doubtless
have had to go without this luxury but for a chance visitor to the
house one day.

This was no less a person than Bishop Snow, he who had once been Tom
Potwin's rival for the hand of her who was now the second Mrs. Rae. With
his portly figure, his full, florid face with its massive jaw, and his
heavy locks of curling white hair, the good Bishop seemed indeed to have