The Elder blinked a moment, as if he were trying to think of something, but he never yipped.
"Come on, Elder," said the colonel heartily. "I want that Rogers group the worst way. One of the old bucks looks just like my grandfather used to when grandmother wigged him. I'm willing to gamble good and hard for that group. I'll take—"
"Put up your filthy lucre, sir!" shouted the Elder. "The devil don't run this church, and there isn't going to be any drawing." So saying, he knocked off one of the heads of the Rogers group with his cane, kicked the grab-bag down the cellar door, ordered the crowd to vamoose, put out the lamps, and locked up the vestry. Then he disappeared from public view until the following Sunday, when he preached his memorable discourse on the text, "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall." And they do say that Colonel Porter put a century-run dollar bill into the contribution box that day to make up for the loss the fair sustained through his little joke on the parson.
I simply mention this story of the Elder as an example of how a man's conscience for other folks may be extraordinarily active, while that section reserved for himself may be sound asleep. And some graceless individual generally holds the alarm clock.
In commenting on the Elder's sudden change of heart, Colonel Porter admitted that he was pretty hard on the old chap. "But if he was ever to reform it was time he began," he said. "Some people seem to think that it's never too late to reform or"—softly—"or to become a lawyer." This meant a story, for the colonel never chuckled except when he felt anecdotal.
"Speaking of lawyers," mused the colonel, "there's a man in Boston who's done more things, it seems to me, than any one I ever knew. He has run stores of all sorts, has been a real estate agent, a promoter, a journalist, a fiddler in an orchestra, and tuba in a band. A few years ago he opened a fish market in the winter, sold it out two days before Lent and went into the cultivation of strawberries. He couldn't be content long enough to make a success of anything. He didn't stick at anything long enough to even lose money at it, to say nothing of making it. One day I met him near the Court House, hurrying along with an earnest, wrapt look in his eyes. I knew at once that he had a new call of duty, for he always began like a steam engine.
"'Hulloa, Caldwell," I said, 'what you up to?'
"'Got to hurry to court,' he answered.
"'What's up,' I asked, 'not in trouble, I hope?'