his nose, cause his breath was enough to stop a clock.  Pa stopped singing and turned around kind of cross towards Ma, and then he smelled Ma’s cheese and he turned his head the other way and said, ‘whew,’ and they didn’t sing any more, but they looked at each other as though they smelled frowy.  When they sat down they sat as far apart as they could get, and Pa sat next to a woman who used to be a nurse in a hospital, and when she smelled Pa’s cheese she looked at him as though she thought he had the small pox, and she held her handkerchief to her nose.  The man in the other end of the pew, that Ma sat near, he was a stranger from Racine, who belongs to our church, and he looked at Ma sort of queer, and after the minister prayed, and they got up to sing again, the man took his hat and went out, and when he came by me he said something in a whisper about a female glue factory.

[Illustration:  “Just as I am.”]

“Well, sir, before the sermon was over everybody in that part of the church had their handkerchiefs to their noses, and they looked at Pa and Ma scandalous, and the two ushers they came around in the pews looking for a dog, and when the minister got over his sermon, and wiped the prespiration off his face, he said he would like to have the trustees of the church stay after meeting, as there was some business of importance to transact.  He said the question of proper ventilation and sewerage for the church would be brought up, and that he presumed the congregation had noticed this morning that the church was unusually full of sewer gas.  He said he had spoken of the matter before, and expected it would be attended to before this.  He said he was a meek and humble follower of the lamb, and was willing to cast his lot wherever the Master decided, but he would be blessed if he would preach any longer in a church that smelled like a bone boiling establishment.  He said religion was a good thing, but no person could enjoy religion as well in a fat rendering establishment as he could in a flower garden, and as far as he was concerned he had got enough.  Everybody looked at everybody else, and Pa looked at Ma as though he knew where the sewer gas came from, and Ma looked at Pa real mad, and me and my chum lit out, and I went home and distributed my cheese all around.  I put a slice in Ma’s bureau drawer, down under her underclothes, and a piece in the spare room, under the bed, and a piece in the bath-room in the soap dish, and a slice in the album on the parlor table, and a piece in the library in a book, and I went to the dining room and put some under the table, and dropped a piece under the range in the kitchen.  I tell you the house was loaded for bear.  Ma came home from church first, and when I asked where Pa was, she said she hoped he had gone to walk around the block to air hisself.  Pa came home to dinner and when he got a smell of the house he opened all the doors, and Ma put a comfortable around her shoulders,