Well, it warn’t no easy matter to keep on saying No, An’ disapp’intin’ every one. Poor Rube he fretted so, When I told him the name I’d chosen, that he fairly made me cry. For I’d planned to name the darlin’ Augustus Percival Guy. Ah! that was a name worth hearin’, so ’ristocratic an’ grand! He might ’a’ held up his head then with the proudest in the land. But now—Well, ’tisn’t no wonder, when I look at that blessed child, An’ think of the name he’s come to, that I can’t be reconciled.
At last I coaxed up Reuben, an’ a Sabbath mornin’ came When I took my boy to meetin’ to git his Christian name. Jest as proud as a peacock I stood a-waitin’ there; I couldn’t hardly listen to the readin’ nor the prayer, For of half a dozen babies, mine was the finest of all; An’ they had sech common names too! But pride must have a fall.
“What will ye call him?” says Parson Brown, bendin’ his head to hear. Then I handed a bit of paper up, with the names writ full an’ clear. But Uncle Si, ’stead of passin’ it, jest reads it over slow, With sech a wond’rin’, puzzled face, as ef he didn’t know. The child was beginnin’ to fidget, an’ Rube was gittin’ red, So I kinder scowled at Uncle Si, and then I shook my head. “The name?” says Parson Brown agin; “I’m ’feared I haven’t caught it.” “Jee—hoshaphat!” says Uncle Si, out loud, before he thought it.
The parson—he’s near-sighted—he couldn’t understand, Though I p’inted to the paper in Uncle Silas’ hand. But that word did the business; an’ before I got my breath That boy was named Jehoshaphat. I felt a’ most like death. I couldn’t keep from cryin’ as I hurried down the aisle, An’ I fairly hated Widder Green when I see her kinder smile. I’ve never, never called him by that name, an’ never will, An’ I can’t forgive old Parson Brown, though I bear him no ill-will. E. T. Corbett, in Harper’s.
THE VILLAGE CHOIR.
Half a bar, half a bar, Half a bar onward! Into an awful ditch, Choir and precentor hitch, Into a mess of pitch, They led the Old Hundred. Trebles to right of them, Tenors to left of them, Basses in front of them, Bellowed and thundered. Oh, that precentor’s look, When the sopranos took Their own time and hook, From the Old Hundred!
Screeched all the trebles here, Boggled the tenors there, Raising the parson’s hair, While his mind wandered; Theirs not to reason why This psalm was pitched too high: Theirs but to gasp and cry Out the Old Hundred. Trebles to right of them, Tenors to left of them, Basses in front of them, Bellowed and thundered. Stormed they with shout and yell, Not wise they sang, nor well, Drowning the sexton’s bell, While all the church wondered.
Dire the precentor’s glare, Flashed his pitchfork in air, Sounding the fresh keys to bear Out the Old Hundred. Swiftly he turned his back, Reached he his hat from rack, Then from the screaming pack Himself he sundered. Tenors to right of him, Trebles to left of him, Discords behind him Bellowed and thundered. Oh the wild howls they wrought! Right to the end they fought! Some tune they sang, but not, Not the Old Hundred. —Audre’s Journal.