["I beg your pardon!  I’ve been afloat,” was the graceful parenthetical apology which a distinguished naval officer used to make, when by mistake he let drop one of “those big words which lie at the bottom of the best man’s vocabulary,” in conversation with sensitive persons whose ears he feared it might offend.  I ought possibly, at the end of the following anecdote, to make some such excuse to the scrupulous reader, whose notions of propriety it will perhaps slightly infringe:  “I beg your pardon!  I couldn’t help telling it.”]

An eminent divine once described to me a scene he witnessed at a funeral, which he said nearly caused him to expire with—­well, you shall see.  An intimate acquaintance of his, who belonged to a neighboring parish, having died, he was naturally induced to assist at the burial-service.  The rector of this parish was a man who, though sensitive in the extreme to the absurdities of others,—­being, in fact, a regular son of Momus,—­was entirely unconscious of his own amusing eccentricities.  Among these, numerous and singular, he had the habit of suddenly stopping in the middle of a sentence, while preaching, and calling out to the sexton, across the church, “Dooke, turn on more gas!” or “Dooke, shut that window!” or “Dooke, do”—­something else which was pretty sure to be wanting itself done during the delivery of his discourse.  Nearly every Sunday, strangers not acquainted with his ways were startled out of their propriety by some such unexpected behavior.

On the occasion referred to, the funeral procession having entered the churchyard, and my informant and the officiating clergyman having taken their places at the head of the grave, the undertaker and his assistants having removed the coffin from the hearse, and the mourners, of whom there was a large crowd, having gathered into a circular audience, the Reverend Doctor ——­ began the service.

“’Man that is born of a woman’—­Oh, stop those carriages! don’t you see where they are going to?” (he suddenly broke out, rushing from the place where he stood, frantically, among the bystanders; and then returning to his former position, continued,)—­“’hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.  He cometh up’—­Oh, don’t let that coffin down yet! wait till I tell you to,” (addressed to the undertaker, who was anticipating the proper place in the service,)—­“’and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,’—­Please to hold the umbrella a little further over my head,” (sotto voce to the man who was endeavoring to protect his head from the sun,)-"’and never continueth in one stay.’—­Hold the umbrella a little higher, will you?” (sotto voce again to the man holding the umbrella.)—­“’In the midst of life we are in death.’—­Stand down from there, boys, and be quiet!” (addressed to some urchins who were crowding and pushing one another about the grave, in their efforts to look at the coffin.) At length he had proceeded without