The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-09-22

SlOWly Uue Suu CTcpI over Luo wheatfield, tracking a broad, black shadow-veil across the pillows of green falling before the winds swift passage, and rising again as the sun sent long, quivering gleams through the bright, restless blades. . Beyond the wheatfield, just across the creek, Deac Ellis was ploughing his corn. His hearty "chirrup," when- ever old Moll turned into new fur row, could be heard away down to the big road. And between furrows the good deacon whiled away the time by singing the old, familiar meeting house hymn:
 "C~me, thou fount of every blessing"
 He had sung it SO constantly that the neighbors called it "Deacon Ellis' hymn" And indeed the song had be- come his own much more entirely than had the cornfeld, with it's heavy mortgage, which the deacon was working Jay and night to pay off.
 He had one striking characteristic Deacon Ellis had "a peculiarity," the neighbors called it, but it was more properly characteristic: he never found matters 80 bad but that they might be worse. This characteristic naturally showed him the brighter side of life's pictures. Though the gossippy neighbors said these same pictures were dark, only the deacon viewed them through peculiar specta- cles.
 His was no Sunday religion; his voice rang out as cheery and trustful in the cornfield as when, in the vil- lage church, each Sabbath morning, he led the praises of Jehovah. He car- ried it with him at all times and un- der all circumstances. Sometimes the neighbors laughed at him and called him "Thankful Ellis"
 It happened that while the deacon was singing in the cornfeld, Farmer Foster and his wife were driving to town in their new Jersey. They were crossing the creek at the turn of the big road, and stopped moment to give the mare drink just as the dea- cons song rose to it's highest pitch
 "Here I'll raise mine Ebenezer,
 Hither by Thy help I'm come.
 And hope by Thy good pleasure,
 oateiy to drrlVe at nOme."
 The farmers wife laughed as she pushed back her sunbonnet to listen.
 "The deacon's singing, Ezekiel" she said, "same's if his only COW didn't fall in the ditch yistiddy, an' break her leg, an have to be knocked in the head"
 The farmer tapped his whip at & fly on the back of his mare.
 "An' the same," he said, Gas if his biggest heifer wasn't down with the pink-eye. Nothin' can't stop him a-thankin' of the Lord, Nancy. Rain or shine, summer'n winter, hits all the same to Deacon Ellis. There's allus somethin' not quite as bad as it might "a been. Pve good min to drive by an ax after the heifer, Nancy"
 "Do, Ezekiel. Hitll look kinder neighborly," said the farmers wife, and the Jersey wagon turned out of the big road into the red lane running past the deacon's cornfleld. The dea- con saw them coming, and called old Moll to halt, while he went over to the worm fence, and exchanged chow dye-do's" with hes neighbors. Greet ings being over, Farmer Foster in- quired after the deacon's wife.
 "Well, she's ailin' some, to be sure," was the answer. "She's ailin' some, but, the Lord be praised for it, she's up an about againl"
 "An' how's the heifer, deacon?."
 "Poo'ly, mighty poo'ly; but 'taint the only one we've got, an' Pm a-thankin' of the Lord for that"
 He was always thanking Him for something, good old Deacon Ellis was :; though some who were evil- minded hinted that there was hypocrisy in the old mans grstitnde, and that ssshould real trouble como upon him, they would sse that Deacon Ellis could grumble q loud as the balance of them. But 70 fir their predictions