'
"'Oh,' said a little lassie that was listening to the conversation,
'if you know all these things, Sir, can you tell me if Noah had any
butterflies in the ark? I wonder how in the world he ever got hold of
them! Many and many a beauty have I chased all day, and I never could
catch one yet.'"
"I can tell you a better one than that," says Larry Hilliard. "Do you
recollect old Hardwood, our under-sheriff? He has a very beautiful
daughter, and she was married last week at St Paul's Church, to a
lieutenant in the navy. There was such an immense crowd present (for
they were considered the handsomest couple ever married there), that
she got so confused she could hardly get through the responses. When
the archdeacon said, 'Will you have this man to be your wedded
husband?'
"'Yes,' she said, and made a slight pause; and then became bewildered,
and got into her catechism. 'Yes,' she said, 'by God's grace I will,
and I humbly thank my Heavenly Father for having brought me to this
state of salvation.'
"It was lucky she spoke low, and that the people didn't distinctly
hear her, but it nearly choaked the parson."
"Talking of church anecdotes," says Lawyer Martin, "reminds me of old
Parson Byles, of St John's, New Brunswick. Before the American
rebellion he was rector at Boston, and he had a curate who always
preached against the Roman Catholics.
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