THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE
BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE
ON a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke; until, at the close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to my traveling acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, "Kin ye beat that, stranger?"
"Well, I don't know—maybe I could if I should try. I never happened to fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a man who stole a meeting-house once."
"Stole a meetin'-house! That goes a little beyant anything yit," remarked another of the honest villagers. "Ye don't mean he stole it and carried it away?"
By permission of Lee & Shepard. From "Coupon Bonds.' Copyriffht 187s. by James R. Osgood & Co. Cops ' Trowbridge. Coi>yri|rht 187J. by James R. Osgood & Co. Copyright, xgoo, by J.
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- ↑ By permission of Lee & Shepard. From "Coupon Bonds." Copyright 1872, by James R. Osgood & Co. Copyright, 1900, by J. T. Trowbridge.
