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Thus repulsed, the paupers went shivering about the rooms and premises; the old women feeling happy if among their worn clothing they could find a bit of soiled crape to tie over a dilapidated cap! And so the mourning for aunt Dorothy was confined to the heart.

CHAPTER XIX.
SERMON to the Paupers. Was it or was it not a Gospel Endeavor? There is a great itching now-a-days to preach Homiletice and Philosophic Yams, and some preach like Yellow Dandelions and Buttercups! The Gospel's the Gospel for a' that, and happy soul is he who preaches it.

At one o'clock Mr. Rodman arrived, and still it snowed. The storm of the night had filled the roads with snow, and the wind had piled it here and there so as greatly to impede the traveling. Mr. Rodman, on his way down, was frequently obliged to get out of his sleigh and break the road open before his horse could proceed. It was difficult to convey a coffin to the grave under these circumstances, and some persons would, in a like state of things, have deferred the funeral to another day, especially as the storm would prevent many of the mourners from arriving, and others from going to the grave. But neither of these objections weighed a feather in the case of aunt Dorothy. She hadn't a friend the less at her funeral for the storm, nor a carriage the less went to the grave. And it was no object to keep her corpse a moment above ground beyond the appointed hour, as no one could receive from it the least possible good, and the society at the poor-house wanted all the room there was in that institution.

Captain Bunce hardly regained his usual composure sufficiently to look concerned and sorry, when the clergyman arrived, especially as he observed the effort made by all the paupers to look as if in mourning. The widow Prescott had on her very cleanest cap, an old relic of other days, musty with time and careful preservation in a tight drawer, around it circling a plain band of mourning ribbon. Prink and prim she sat near the head of the coffin, and appeared as chief mourner. One and another had found some rag or strip of black for dress, hat, or cap; the instinct natures, or education, and the longing for mourning, inducing the conceit in them that it made the sad obsequies of aunt Dorothy more accordant with the mournful Providence! And all, as Captain Bunce directed, had washed them, and brushed and combed their locks. There sat they, grouped together, the aged, feeble, pale, sallow, simple ones, with the younger also, equally squalid and wretchedly clad, with lustreless eyes and sad, desponding features -- mere wrecks of humanity, dependent on the cold charity of the world for every comfort, however small, that they enjoyed, and pining away, nearly helpless from old age, or from chronic diseases they had no power of constitution to resist -- who were sure victims of cold and wet, and burning heat, and especially of any prevailing sickness or epidemic in the community around. And they sat together as mourners -- the chief mourners in the case of a departed companion, in the tribulation of this weary "mortal state." Though too poor to buy them a mourning habit, the God of nature clad every countenance of them with a grief that spoke the language of a true sorrow, and they looked to the observer as really weeping for the dead, as though it had not been to her an infinite gain!

Thus hold we all to life.

Mr. and Mrs. Haddock were at the funeral, and two or three other neighbors. The minister, Mr. Rodman, before the prayer, made a short address to the people, and selected as the ground of his remarks the solemn words of Scripture, "So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." Mr. Rodman was a very good dissector of Bible truth, and of human character. He knew very well that nothing would reach the hitman depraved heart, if the words of the gospel failed of this, and he was, consequently, very faithful and skilful in exposing the heart, and applying to it the healing word of truth. This was his usual character. But the congregation he now addressed was somewhat new, a little out of his usual routine, and he had some difficulty in choosing the course of argument with them, that would enable him most effectually to meet their necessities, and so improve their hearts. He had felt this before, it is true, on like occasions, but never did he more sensibly so feel it than now. After coming to a decision he attempted to perform his duty in a faithful, though affectionate manner.

Apprising them of their loss, he then called their attention to two very serious and important truths presented in the words of the text. First, the universal fact, that we ourselves, and all men must appear before God. Second, the equally solemn and universal truth that we must give a personal account of our life to God. Under the first department of thought, he assured them that they would all, one after another, leave the world and appear before their Maker. He told them, that not one of their number could possibly avoid this; there being no age long enough to outlive the Almighty, no arm strong enough to resist death, no secret place where one might cover himself from view, no flight so distant whereunto the arrow of the King of Terrors would not follow them. He further represented the different modes of death and times of it, and assured them that as it had been with the deceased so would it prove with them, that they must go alone out of the world, how many friends or companions soever they might now have around them. Death would cut them all down.