"Well, I declare, here's Little Abe tipping about in the wind like a shuttlecock." Out I ran, and getting hold of his arm towed him into dock.
"Whatever has brought you here in such a gale of wind, Abe?"
"Hurrah! I'st see him naa," was his only response.
"See who?"
"Why, th' young praacher to be sure; ha'nt ye gotten a young praacher in your haase? I've come to see him." So laughing heartily at Abe's way of installing new members into the ministry, I opened the door and pushed him into the house. My wife was as much astonished at his arrival as I was, yet very glad to see him, especially when he inquired "Where's t' young praacher? Let's see him. Come, hold him up; there, naa, put him on my lap and let me have a bit of talk to him." And down he sat, and the "young praacher," at that time having advanced to the age of eight or ten weeks, was placed in the old man's lap, where he lay complacently winking his eye at Abe while he told him how he had left home after breakfast and walked over the hills about five miles in a storm of wind on purpose to make the acquaintance of this "young praacher" whose name was already on the Circuit plan. And there he stayed for the day, talking, singing, and communing with his young friend till evening, when we sent him home by the train.
Well, the time came when dear old Abe visited his friends nor stood in the familiar pulpits any more; then everyone, young and old, felt they had sustained a loss. Yet this is the natural course of things all the world over; the scenes of life are continually changing, so are the most familiar and most beloved faces in those scenes; they come, and come, and come again, until we unconsciously acquire the habit of expecting them, but when at length they do not reappear as formerly, we realize an unexpected loss.
How many grand and familiar faces have disappeared from our pulpits and sanctuaries since we first began to remember things! In running the mind's eye back into byegone years, what a number we can call into recollection who are gone, never to return; while the truth is forced upon us, we are daily hurrying after them, and ere long some others will miss our faces from among the familiar scenes, and let us hope, will regret our absence.