The St. Johns herald., 1897-06-05

! How thou hast been my life's upraising leaven-
 ] To answer to thy questions, "All Is well''! ] Perchance in heaven.
 ] Verses Grave and Gay.
 ! A LTHOUGH he had, in addition ] A to a local habitation, a name Of l 4 A his own-Peter Dunn to-wit- i be was always known as "the man
 that married Mary" By profession he
 was a plumber of some repute-that IS ! to say, he knew by heart the meander-
 ings and idiosyncrasies of every draln | in the village; and he added to this ex- ! perience knowledge, for he had the | sense to carry about with him such
 white lead as was necessary to the full i fillment of his calling, instead of ex-
 pecting the same to grow wild In every
 we'll ordered household-a false ex- pectation which obtains among plumb ' CTS. For six days of the week he ! plumbed, but on the seventh tor rather | the firsO he dressed himself In a lit | tie brief authority and sort of black | nightgown, and stood revealed to the
 eyes of an admiring village as the ! Yerger of the parish church. It was ] impressive to see him conduct to such
 seats as he deemed meet for them the
 strangers within his gates, and the
 way wherein-during the anthem-he l distributed the almsbags among the | recipients for whom they were reserv- 1 ed was a function in itself. On one
 memorable occasion, when performing this last mentioned rite, he stumbled
 over a top hat, placed in the aisle by
 some unwary stranger, sent 1t spin ming up the church, and staggered aft CT 1t in hot pursuit. For one awful
 moment 1t seemed that the pillars of | Church and State were alike trem-
 bling; then the worthy yerger lighted
 himself, restored the stumbling-block
 to It's owner, and concluded the func-
 ton, to the unfeigned delight of the
 sons of the rector, who longed ever afterward to present testimonial to
 the unknown author of the catastro-
 phe. The inhabitants of Cheriton did
 not wear top hats, and if they had
 they would have known better than to place such obstacles in the path of the
 just; so the rector's boys concluded
 that some alien brow had been, so to 1 speak, the head and front of the of
 lending, and they blessed that brow accordingly, and never forgot the great
 ''kick-Off at o'clock" as they called ! 1t.
 But all these paltry honors and dIg-
 nities paled beside the fact that Peter Dunn C'plumbing yerger" or ''verging | plumber" whichever one was pleased | to dub him), was above all things "the
 man that married Mary" Beside this
 crOwning distinction all meaner hon.
 Ors sank into insignificance. Mary had
 been the reigning beauty of Cheriton
 for more years than she would have cared to confess to, when she arrived
 at the conclusion that leading apes"
 was not so satisfactory an occupation
 as marrying plumbers, and so decided ! to espouse her devoted adorer, Peter Dunn, who had regularly proposed to 1 her every Saturday afternoon for
 well, at least 250 Saturdays, at the lowest computation. With her office
 as reigning beauty of Cheriton Mary
 Mills had combined the duties of vil- lage SchOOlmiStreSs. She was a good girl, and did her work we'll, but she had no natural love of teaching. and she was very thankful at last to lay her occupation aside and become Mrs.
 Peter Dunn instead. Mary felt Gas in-
 deed did all the village, Peter includ- ed that she had conferred an unspeak- able favor upon her husband in marry Ing him, and to the day of her death she treated him more as a King con-
 sort than as a verger and plumber in
 his own right, which he undoubtedly
 was, for Mary was what the villagers call "genteel," and founded her ideas
 of men and women upon the heroes and heroines of such silly and sensa-
 tiOnal novels as came in her way, and. judged according to that standard. Pe-
 ter certainly fell short of ideal man.
 hood. AS long as she lived Mary meas ured Peter by these stupid measure ments and found him short and plain. and commonplace and rough manner ed; afterward she probably learned to
 measure him according to the measure
 of a man-that Is, of the angel-and discovered that her plain little plumb
 CT was more of n hero than all the
 men of straw she had delighted to
 read about in the foolish days of her flesh, but of thIs we have, of course,
 no record. Poor Mary, however. will
 not be the only one who will find the standards of this world all wrong in
 the light of the next one; and there is
 much comfort in this thought.
 1 But, though she looked down upon
 him on account of his rOugher man.
 ners and inferior education, Mary
 Dunn was sincerely attached to her good little husband, and succeeded in
 making the few years she was spared
 to him years of radiant bliss for Pc
 ter. AS for him, he simply worship
 ed the ground on which his wife walk
 eded. Mary had younger sister of
 whom she was inordinately proud.
 who was a governess in a gentleman's 1 family. She was, according to Mary,
 quite the lady," and would, so Mary
 thought, consider 1t degradation to visit so humble home as the Dunns'.
 which showed that poor Mrs. Dunn's
 standards of good breeding were as erroneous as her standards of other 1