“I must tell you,” he said, with an awkwardly repressed smile, “about a trade of Uncle Capen’s. He had a little lot up our way that they wanted for a schoolhouse, and he agreed to sell it for what it cost him, and the selectmen, knowing what it cost him,—fifty dollars,—agreed with him that way. But come to sign the deed, he called for a hundred dollars.
“‘How’s that?’ says they. ‘You bought it of Captain Sam Bowen for fifty dollars.’
“‘Yes, but see here,’ says Uncle Capen, ‘it’s cost me on an average five dollars a year for the ten year’ I’ve had it for manure and plowing and seed, and that’s fifty dollars more.’
“‘But you’ve sold the garden stuff off it, and had the money,’ says they.
“‘Yes,’ says Uncle Capen, ‘but that money’s spent and eat up long ago.’”
The minister smiled, shook hands with Mr. Small, and went home.
THE church was crowded. Horses filled the sheds, horses were tied to the fences all up and down the street. Funerals are always popular in the country, and this one had a double element of attractiveness. The whole population of the town, having watched for years with a lively interest Uncle Capen’s progress to his hundredth birthday, expected now some electrical effect analogous to an apotheosis.
In the front pews were the chief mourners, filled with the sweet intoxication of preëminence.
The opening exercises were finished, a hymn was sung:
“Life is a span,”