January 24 and January 31, 1863.  The moral which it tries to illustrate, which is, I believe, an important one, was thus commended to the attention of the very large circle of the readers of that journal,—­a journal to which I am eager to say I think this nation has been very largely indebted for the loyalty, the good sense, and the high tone which seem always to characterize it.  During the war, the pictorial journals had immense influence in the army, and they used this influence with an undeviating regard to the true honor of the country.]

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CHAPTER I.

THE PORK-BARREL.

“Felix,” said my wife to me, as I came home to-night, “you will have to go to the pork-barrel.”

“Are you quite sure,” said I,—­“quite sure?  ‘Woe to him,’ says the oracle, ‘who goes to the pork-barrel before the moment of his need.’”

“And woe to him, say I,” replied my brave wife,—­“woe and disaster to him; but the moment of our need has come.  The figures are here, and you shall see.  I have it all in black and in white.”

And so it proved, indeed, that when Miss Sampson, the nurse, was paid for her month’s service, and when the boys had their winter boots, and when my life-insurance assessment was provided for, and the new payment for the insurance on the house,—­when the taxes were settled with the collector (and my wife had to lay aside double for the war),—­when the pew-rent was paid for the year, and the water-rate—­we must have to start with, on the 1st of January, one hundred dollars.  This, as we live, would pay, in cash, the butcher, and the grocer, and the baker, and all the dealers in things that perish, and would buy the omnibus tickets, and recompense Bridget till the 1st of April.  And at my house, if we can see forward three months we are satisfied.  But, at my house, we are never satisfied if there is a credit at any store for us.  We are sworn to pay as we go.  We owe no man anything.

So it was that my wife said:  “Felix, you will have to go to the pork-barrel.”

This is the story of the pork-barrel.

It happened once, in a little parish in the Green Mountains, that the deacon reported to Parson Plunkett, that, as he rode to meeting by Chung-a-baug Pond, he saw Michael Stowers fishing for pickerel through a hole in the ice on the Sabbath day.  The parson made note of the complaint, and that afternoon drove over to the pond in his “one-horse shay.”  He made his visit, not unacceptable, on the poor Stowers household, and then crossed lots to the place where he saw poor Michael hoeing.  He told Michael that he was charged with Sabbath breaking, and bade him plead to the charge.  And poor Mike, like a man, plead guilty; but, in extenuation, he said that there was nothing to eat in the house, and rather than see wife and children faint, he had cut a hole in the ice, had put in his hook again and again, and yet again, and coming home had delighted the waiting family with an unexpected breakfast.  The good parson made no rebuke, nodded pensive, and drove straightway to the deacon’s door.