A very amusing incident once took place at a baptism.  The service proceeded with due decorum and regularity till my father demanded of the godfather the child’s name.  The answer was so indistinctly given that he had to repeat the question more than once, and even then the name remained a mystery.  All he could make out was something which sounded like “Harmun,” the godfather indignantly asserting the while that it was a “Scriptur” name.  In his perplexity my father turned to Russell with the query:  “Clerk, do you know what the name is?” “No, sir.  I’m sure I don’t know, unless it be he at the end of the prayer,” meaning “Amen.”  The result was that the child was otherwise christened, and after the ceremony was over my father, placing a Bible in the godfather’s hands, requested him to find the “Scriptur” name, as he called it, when, having turned over the leaves for some time, he drew his attention to wicked Haman.  The child’s escape, therefore, was most fortunate.  Old Russell has now slept with his fathers for many years, and the few stories which I have related about him do not by any means exhaust the list of his oddities.  Many of the parishioners to this day, no doubt, will call to mind the quaint way in which, if he thought any one was misbehaving himself in church, he would rise slowly from his seat with such majesty as his diminutive stature could command, and shading his spectacles with his hand, gaze sternly in the offending quarter; how on a certain Communion Sunday he forgot the wine to be used in the sacred office, and when my father directed his attention to the omission, after sundry dives under the altar-cloth he at last produced a common rush basket, and from it a black bottle; how on another Sunday, being desirous to free the church from smoke which had escaped from a refractory stove, he deliberately mounted upon the altar and remained standing there while he opened a small lattice in the east window.  All these circumstances will, no doubt, be recalled by some one or other in the parish.  But, gentle reader, be not overharsh in passing judgment upon him.  I verily believe that he had no more desire to be irreverent than you or I have.  The fault lay rather in the religious coldness and carelessness of those days than in him.  He was liked and respected by every one as a harmless, inoffensive, good-hearted old fellow, and I cannot better close this brief account of some of his peculiarities than by saying—­as I do with all my heart—­Peace to his ashes!

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Mr. Legge’s baptismal story reminds me of a friend who was christening the child of a gipsy, when the name given was “Neptin.”  This puzzled him sorely, but suddenly recollecting that he had baptized another gipsy child “Britannia,” without any hesitation he at once named the infant “Neptune.”  Mr. Eagles was once puzzled when the sponsor gave the name “Acts.” “‘Acts!’ said I.  ‘What do you mean?’ Thinks I to myself, I will ax