A TALE OF A SAUSAGE

On the way to attend a funeral a country parson stopped to make a call on one of his members who had the day before done some butchering, after the old fashion. Before he took his leave the good woman of the house made him a present of some three yards of newly made sausage, which, when he came to the church where the service was to be held, he bestowed for safe-keeping in the pocket of his long-tailed coat. While he was reading the burial service at the grave, a good-for-nothing dog, scenting the savory meat, made repeated efforts to dislodge the treasure, and the preacher was obliged in a very awkward and undignified manner to punctuate his reading of the service with sundry and numerous kicks to the rear to save his bacon and chase the dog away.

After the interment there was a full service in the church, the minister preaching the sermon in one of those old-fashioned pulpits, stuck against the wall like a swallow’s nest, the approach to the pulpit being by a corkscrew staircase winding solemnly upward from the chancel. Here the minister was safe from the assaults of that miserable dog. At least he thought he was. But—at the conclusion of the service, while he was standing in the pulpit and looking another way, one of his deacons, wishing him to make an announcement, quietly and softly tiptoed across the chancel and slipped up the winding stairway and pulled the parson’s coat-tail to attract his attention. He, supposing it was the dog after his sausage again, let fly a most vigorous kick, which caught the poor deacon in the middle of the forehead and knocked him rattling down into the chancel, the preacher, still looking the other way, and saying, “My friends, I am sorry for this disturbance, but—I have some sausage in my pocket and that miserable dog has been following me all this morning trying to steal it!”