“You have hit the nail on the head, square’s a hatchet, parson,” responded the deacon.  “The congregation is thinning; the young people don’t come to the meetings, and the little children are afraid of you.”

“What’s the matter, deacon?” cried the parson, in return.  “What is it?” he repeated, earnestly; “speak it right out; don’t try to spare my feelings.  I will listen to—­I will do anything to win back my people’s love,” and the strong, old-fashioned, Calvinistic preacher said it in a voice that actually trembled.

“You can do it; you can do it in a week!” exclaimed the deacon, encouragingly.  “Don’t worry about it, parson, it’ll be all right; it’ll be all right.  Your books are the trouble.”

“Eh? eh? books?” ejaculated the parson.  “What have they to do with it?”

“Everything,” replied the beacon, stoutly; “you pore over them day in and day out; they keep you in this room here, when you should be out among the people.  Not making pastoral visits, I don’t mean that, but going around among them, chatting and joking and having a good time.  They would like it, and you would like it, and as for the young folks,—­how old are you, parson?”

“Sixty, next month,” answered the parson, solemnly, “sixty next month.”

“Thirty! thirty! that’s all you are, parson, or all you ought to be,” cried the deacon.  “Thirty, twenty, sixteen.  Let the figures slide down and up, according to circumstances, but never let them go higher than thirty, when you are dealing with young folks.  I’m sixty myself, counting years, but I’m only sixteen; sixteen this morning, that’s all, parson,” and he rubbed his little, round, plump hands together, looked at the parson and winked.

“Bless my soul, Deacon Tubman, I don’t know but that you are right!” answered the parson.  “Sixty?  I don’t know as I am sixty.”  And he began to rub his own hands, and came within an ace of executing a wink at the deacon himself.

“Not a day over twenty, if I am any judge of age,” responded the deacon, deliberately, as he looked the white-headed old minister over with a most comic imitation of seriousness.  “Not a day over twenty, on my honor,” and the deacon leaned forward toward the parson and gave him a punch with his thumb, as one boy might deliver a punch at another, and then he lay back in his chair and laughed so heartily that the parson caught the infectious mirth and roared away as heartily as the deacon.

Yes, it was impossible to sit hobnobbing with the jolly little deacon on that bright New Year’s morning and not be affected by the happiness of his mood, for he was actually bubbling over with fun and as full of frolic as if the finger on the dial had, in truth, gone back forty years and he was only sixteen.  “Only sixteen, parson, on my honor.”

“But what can I do,” queried the good man, sobering down.  “I make my pastoral visits”—­

“Pastoral visits!” responded Deacon Tubman, “oh, yes, and they are all well enough for the old folks, but they ar’n’t the kind of biscuit the young folks like—­too heavy in the centre, and over-hard in the crust, for young teeth, eh, parson?”