Adventures in Contentment

"Is that possible?" I said, and I dropped my knife and fork. The strangest sensation came over me. "Why," I said, "then I'm an infidel too!" So I laughed and I've been laughing gloriously ever since--at myself, at the infidel, at the entire neighbourhood. I recalled that delightful character in "The Vicar of Wakefield" (my friend the Scotch Preacher loves to tell about him), who seasons error by crying out "Fudge!" "Fudge!" I said. We're all poor sinners! XI THE COUNTRY DOCTOR Sunday afternoon, June 9. We had a funeral to-day in this community and the longest funeral procession, Charles Baxter says, he has seen in all the years of his memory among these hills. A good man has gone away--and yet remains. In the comparatively short time I have been here I never came to know him well personally, though I saw him often in the country roads, a ruddy old gentleman with thick, coarse, iron-gray hair, somewhat stern of countenance, somewhat shabby of attire, sitting as erect as a trooper in his open buggy, one muscular hand resting on his knee, the other holding the reins of his familiar old white horse. I said I did not come to know him well personally, and yet no one who knows this community can help knowing Doctor John North. I never so desired the gift of moving expression as I do at this moment, on my return from his funeral, that I may give some faint idea of what a good man means to a community like ours--as the more complete knowledge of it has come to me to-day.