The New Minister's Great Opportunity / First published in the "Century Magazine"

By Heman White Chaplin 1887 First published in the “Century Magazine.”
“The minister's got a job,” said Mr. Snell.
Mr. Snell had been driven in by a shower from the painting of a barn, and was now sitting, with one bedaubed overall leg crossed over the other, in Mr. Hamblin's shop.
Half-a-dozen other men, who had likewise found in the rain a call to leisure, looked up at him inquiringly.
“How do you mean?” said Mr. Noyes, who sat beside him, girt with a nail-pocket. “'The minister 's got a job'? How do you mean?” And Mr. Noyes assumed a listener's air, and stroked his thin yellow beard.
Mr. Snell smiled, with half-shut, knowing eyes, but made no answer.
“How do you mean?” repeated Mr. Noyes; “'The minister's got a job'—of course he has—got a stiddy job. We knew that before.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Snell, with a placid face; “seeing's you know so much about it, enough said. Let it rest right there.”
“But,” said Mr. Noyes, nervously blowing his nose; “you lay down this proposition: 'The minister's got a job.' Now I ask, what is it?”
Mr. Snell uncrossed his legs, and stooped to pick up a last, which he proceeded to scan with a shrewd, critical eye.
“Narrer foot,” he said to Mr. Hamblin.
“Private last—Dr. Hunter's,” said Mr. Hamblin, laying down a boot upon which he was stitching an outer-sole, and rising to make a ponderous, elephantine excursion across the quaking shop to the earthen water-pitcher, from which he took a generous draught.