XXX.
THE OLD CLERGYMAN'S FAREWELL.
The speaker was about to bid farewell, he said, to all those kind friends. (Sensation.) He would leave them, and be soon forgotten. (Cries of "No, no! never!" from old and young. Job smites his wooden leg, and exclaims, with enthusiasm, "Not that, by a long thread!")
"Well," continues Father Brighthopes, with suffused features, "I thank you. I hope you will remember me, as I shall remember you. God has been very good to me, in giving me friends, all my life long."
"You deserve them, if anybody does," whispers Job, loud enough to be heard by the entire audience.
He rubs his hands as if he meant it.
"Let me give you a little hint about getting and keeping friends," adds the clergyman, smiling around upon the old people in the chairs, and the young people on the grass or standing up. "I thank Brother Job for suggesting the thought."
"Hear, hear!" says Mr. Royden, pulling Willie away from the speaker's legs, and silencing Georgie, who is inclined to blow his grass "squawker."
"My friends have generally been of the right kind," proceeds the old man. "If you wish to have your friends of the right kind,"—glancing at the younger portion of the audience,—"I'll tell you how to go to work.
"Be always ready to lend a helping hand to those who need assistance. Do so with a hearty good will, not feeling as though you were throwing something away; for, although you get no material return,—which should be the last thing to expect,—you will find in the end that you have been exercising your own capacities for happiness, which grow with their use. Do good for the sake of good, and you will see that the bread thus cast upon the waters comes right back to feed your own hungry souls.