clergymen—a man with an indomitable will,
a strong arm, and an abusive tongue.
Warrants, summonses, exigents, and actions for
battery, the colonel laughed to scorn. "As
much law as you like," he said, "but not
one lick will that save you." The female
members of the Grace-Walking congregation
were fain to write anonymous letters to him,
exhorting him to repentance. Reverend
Joash M‘Tear wrote to Lucretia Z.
Tackeboguey of Grimgribberopolis, Va., the
celebrated table-turner and spirit-rapper, and
begged her to consult a four-legged
mahogany of extraordinary talent and
penetration with reference to Colonel Quagg's
persecution of the saints. He received
in reply a highly-flattering and
interesting communication from the spirits
of Cleopatra and his late Royal Highness
the Duke of Gloucester, in which it was
confidently predicted that shortly after the
passing of the Maine liquor law in Holland,
and the adoption of Bloomerism at the
court of Queen Victoria, Colonel Quagg
would be bound in leathern straps for five
hundred years ; which, all things taken
into consideration, was not a very
encouraging look out for the Grace- Walkers.
Then they took to holding public meetings,
mass meetings, indignation meetings, against
him ; then to praying for him ; then to
praying to be delivered from him as from
a dragon or a fiery serpent. One bright
spirit of the sect suggested bribery, either
directly by the enclosure of dollars, or
indirectly by the encouragement of the
colonel's trade in having horses shod at his
smithy. But both artifices failed. The
colonel took the first ten-dollar bill that was
offered him, and administered a more
unmerciful thrashing than ordinary to the
giver—as a receipt, he said. The next
victim happened to have a horse that
opportunely cast both his fore-shoes in front of the
colonel's residence. The enemy of Grace-
Walkers shod the beast ; but the only benefit
that its proprietor derived was the privilege
of being beaten inside the smithy instead of
out, and the threat that the next time he
presumed to come that way he should be
laid on the anvil and beaten as flat as a
wheel-tire with a red-hot crowbar.

This state of things was growing intolerable.
The more the brethren went on
preaching the more the colonel went on
licking. The more they beat the—

          "Pulpit drum ecclesiastic
            With fist instead of a stick,"

the more Colonel Quagg proved his doctrine
orthodox—

          "By apostolic blows and knocks."

The Punkington circuit began to lack
ministers. Clergymen were not forthcoming.
The pulpits were deserted. The
congregations began to cry out. No wonder.
Devotion, meekness, self-abnegation are
all admirable qualities in their way, but
human nature, after all, is not cast iron. It
will wrestle with wild beasts at Ephesus, but
it does not exactly love to wrestle when the
wild beasts are twisting the bars of their cage,
and have not had a shin-bone to feed on for
three weeks. To put one's head into the lion's
mouth is good once in a way; but it is
hardly prudent to do so when the lion's tail
begins to wag, and his mane to bristle, and his
eyes to flash fire and fury.

There was a meeting held at Punkington
to decide upon what ministers should go the
ensuing Spring circuit; just as, in Europe, the
Judges meet to arrange among themselves
who shall go a hanging, and where. The
question of Colonel Quagg was debated in
solemn conclave: for, though all the other
places in the circuit found ready volunteers
not one clergyman could be found to offer
to administer to the spiritual necessities of
the Rapparoarer brethren. Brother M‘Tear
had a bad cold; brother Brownjohn would
rather not; brother Knash had a powerful
call down Weepingwail way; brother
Bobberlink would next time—perhaps. Brother
Slocum gave a more decided reason than any
one of his brother ministers. He said that
he would be etarnally licked if he'd go,
because he'd be sure to be considerably
licked if he went..

A brother who, up to that time, had said
little or nothing—a long, thin, loose-limbered
brother, with a face very like a quince more
than three parts withered—who sat in the
corner of the room during the debate, with
his legs curled up very much in the fashion
of a dog:—a brother, to say the truth, of
whose abilities a somewhat mean opinion was
entertained, for he was given to stammering,
blushing, hemming, hawing, scraping
with his feet, and seemed to possess no peculiar
accomplishment save the questionable
one of shutting one eye when he expectorated
—this brother, by name Zephaniah
Stockdolloger, here addressed himself modestly to
speech:—

"Thorns," he said, "is'nt good eating;
stinging-nettles is'nt pleasant handling, without
gloves; nor is thistles comfortable, worn
next to the skin. Corns is painful. Man's
skin was not made to be flayed off him like
unto the hide of a wild cat. But vocation
is vocation, and duty, duty. Some. I,
Zephaniah Stockdolloger will go on the
Rapparoarer location, and if Brother Brownjohn
will lone me his hoss I will confront the
man—even Goliah Quagg." After which the
devoted brother shut his eyes and
expectorated.

The meeting turned their quids and
expectorated too; but without shutting their eyes.
They adopted the long brother's disinterested
proposition, nem.-con. But Brother Bobberlink
whispered to Brother Slocum that
he had allays thought Zephaniah