A minister esteemed it his religious duty to visit an extreme
frontier settlement to preach. To reach that settlement he had
to pass through a wilderness infested with hostile Indians. When
about to start on one of these journeys, he took his rifle from
its rack and was about to depart with it on his shoulder when
his good wife said to him: “My dear husband, why do you carry
that great, heavy rifle on these long journeys? Don’t you know
that the time and manner of your taking off has been decreed
from the beginning of time, and that rifle can not vary the
decree one hair’s breadth?” “That is true, my dear wife, and I
don’t take my rifle to vary, but to execute the decree. What if
I should meet an Indian whose time had come according to the
decree and I didn’t have my rifle?”--HENRY C. CALDWELL.
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