God be merciful to me a sinner!

"Now what does that mean? Did you ever hear anyone say?"

"No," was his old wife's answer. "Perhaps she was one of those
Calvinist folks who believe babies go to hell if they are not
baptised."

"But her children were all baptised. I've been told so; some of
them before she was well out of her bed. 'God be merciful to me a
sinner!' And the chick not six weeks old! Something queer about
that, dame, if it did happen more than thirty years ago."

"What did you see over the grave of the child who was killed in
her arms by lightning?"

"This:

"'And he was not, for God took him.'"

Farmer Waite had but one word to say:

"She came to me when my Sissy had the smallpox; the only person in
town who would enter my doors. More than that; when Sissy was up
and I went to pay the doctor's bill I found it had been settled. I
did not know then who had enough money and compassion to do this
for me; now I do."

Many an act of kindness which had been secretly performed in that