Scattergood.—­Yes; I don’t know any reason why ministers should not be as well as other persons.  I have never had the ministers’ sore throat, but have avoided it by the observance of two or three rules which I commend to you of less experience.  The drug stores are full of troches, lozenges and compounds for speakers and singers.  All these medicines have an important mission, but how much better would it be to avoid the ills than to spend one’s time in trying to cure them!

1.  Speak naturally.  Let not incompetent elocutionists or the barbarisms of custom give you tones or enunciations at war with those that God implanted.  Study the vocal instrument and then play the best tune on it possible, but do not try to make a flute sound like a trumpet, or a bagpipe do the work of a violin.

2.  Remember that the throat and lungs were no more intended to speak with than the whole body.  If the vocal organs get red hot during a religious service, while the rest of the body does not sympathize with them, there will be inflammation, irritation and decay.  But if the man shall, by appreciation of some great theme of time and eternity, go into it with all his body and soul, there will be an equalization of the whole physical organism, and bronchitis will not know whether to attack the speaker in his throat, right knee or left ankle, and while it is deciding at what point to make assault the speaker will go scot-free.  The man who besieges an audience only with his throat attempts to take a castle with one gun, but he who comes at them with head, eyes, hand, heart, feet, unlimbers against it a whole park of artillery.  Then Sebastopol is sure to be taken.

Myself.—­I notice, Dominie, that your handwriting is not as good as your health.  Your letter in reply to my invitation to be here was so indistinct that I could not tell whether it was an acceptance or a declinature.

Scattergood.—­Well, I have not taken much care of my autograph.  I know that the attempt has been made to reduce handwriting to a science.  Many persons have been busy in gathering the signatures of celebrated men and women.  A Scotchman, by the name of Watson, has paid seventy-five thousand dollars for rare autographs.  Rev. Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has a collection marvelous for interest.

After we read an interesting book we want to see the author’s face and his autograph.  But there is almost always a surprise or disappointment felt when for the first time we come upon the handwriting of persons of whom we have heard or read much.  We often find that the bold, dashing nature sometimes wields a trembling pen, and that some man eminent for weakness has a defiant penmanship that looks as if he wrote with a splinter of thunderbolt.

I admit that there are instances in which the character of the man decides the style of his penmanship.  Lord Byron’s autograph was as reckless as its author.  George Washington’s signature was a reflection of his dignity.  The handwriting of Samuel Rogers was as smooth as his own nature.  Robespierre’s fierce-looking autograph seems to have been written with the dagger of a French revolution.