CHAPTER XIX.
THE BATTLE OF PEW AND PULPIT.
Two more sermons unloaded, and Monday morning I went sauntering down town, ready for almost anything.

I met several of my clerical friends going to a ministers' meeting.

I do not often go there, for I have found that some of the clerical meetings are gridirons where they roast clergymen who do not do things just as we do them.

I like a Presbyterian gridiron no better than a Methodist one, and prefer to either of them an old-fashioned spit, such as I saw one summer in Oxford, England, where the rabbit is kept turning round before a slow fire, in blessed state of itinerancy, the rabbit thinking he is merely taking a ride, while he is actually roasting.
As on the Monday morning I spoke of I was passing down the street, I heard high words in a church.

What could it be?
Was it the minister, and the sexton, and the trustees fighting?
I went in to see, when, lo! I found that the Pew and the Pulpit were bantering each other at a great rate, and seemed determined to tell each one the other's faults.