On the way to attend a funeral a country parson stopped to make a call
on one of his members who had the day before done some butchering, after
the old fashion. Before he took his leave the good woman of the house
made him a present of some three yards of newly made sausage, which,
when he came to the church where the service was to be held, he bestowed
for safe-keeping in the pocket of his long-tailed coat. While he was
reading the burial service at the grave, a good-for-nothing dog,
scenting the savory meat, made repeated efforts to dislodge the
treasure, and the preacher was obliged in a very awkward and undignified
manner to punctuate his reading of the service with sundry and numerous
kicks to the rear to save his bacon and chase the dog away.
After the interment there was a full service in the church, the minister
preaching the sermon in one of those old-fashioned pulpits, stuck
against the wall like a swallow's nest, the approach to the pulpit being
by a corkscrew staircase winding solemnly upward from the chancel. Here
the minister was safe from the assaults of that miserable dog. At least
he thought he was. But--at the conclusion of the service, while he was
standing in the pulpit and looking another way, one of his deacons,
wishing him to make an announcement, quietly and softly tiptoed across
the chancel and slipped up the winding stairway and pulled the parson's
coat-tail to attract his attention. He, supposing it was the dog after
his sausage again, let fly a most vigorous kick, which caught the poor
deacon in the middle of the forehead and knocked him rattling down into
the chancel, the preacher, still looking the other way, and saying, "My
friends, I am sorry for this disturbance, but--I have some sausage in my
pocket and that miserable dog has been following me all this morning
trying to steal it!"