It was an honored guest at a wedding, a christening, or a funeral.

The minister whose hands were laid in baptismal blessing on babes, or raised in the holy sacrament of love over brides, lifted also the glass; and the selfsame lips which had spoken the last words over the dead, drank and made merry presently afterward among the decanters on the side-board.

It mattered not for what the building was intended--whether for church, school, or parsonage, rum was the grand master of ceremonies, the indispensable celebrant at the various stages of its completion.

The party who dug the parson out after a snow-storm, verily got their reward, a sort of prelibation of the visionary sweets of that land, flowing not, according to the Jewish notion, with milk and _honey_, but according to the revised version of Yankeedom, with milk and _rum_.

Rum was, forsooth, a very decent devil, if judged by the exalted character of the company it kept.