The street was quiet, and no one was stirring in the mansion.
"I'm not likely to be wanted for another minnit or two," he said, "so I'll just give the furnace a shake-out.

Unless I'm mistaken, there's a frost coming." Had he prophesied a hurricane he would not have been far wrong, but it was entirely in keeping with the other remarkable developments of a night already noteworthy for its strange happenings that the elevator attendant at No.

1000 59th Street should have chosen the next few minutes to attend to the steam-heating arrangements in the basement.
There is little to be gained, however, from speculation as to the probable outcome of conditions which did not obtain, and the trivial space of time which was demanded for the shaking-out and re-coaling of a furnace was largely responsible for John D.Curtis and Hermione Beauregard Grandison being made man and wife.
Curiously enough, the tying of this particular knot was facilitated by the fact that the clergyman was hale mentally but decrepit physically, and, as might be expected, resented the conclusion, long ago arrived at by his friends, that he was unfitted for work.

He burgeoned with delight when a servant announced that two young people wanting to get married were waiting in the vestibule; he hobbled out of the library, where he was poring over an essay on the Sixtine text of the Septuagint, and ushered them into a parlor.

The room was not well-lighted, because of some defect in the electric installation, but the old gentleman--"Rev.Thomas J.Hughes" was the legend on the door-plate--bustled about in the liveliest way, and talked most cheerfully.
"Ah, young folk--as usual, leaving things to the last moment, and then in a desperate hurry," he chirped.