Reverend Abner Peet speaks from the grave about the auction of his belongings. He didn’t mind his household goods being sold in the village square—it let his congregation keep small mementos of him. What he can’t get over is that a trunk holding every sermon he ever wrote was knocked down to Burchard, the local saloonkeeper. Burchard had no interest in the Reverend’s words and simply burned the manuscripts as trash. The speaker’s tone is calm but quietly bitter; he accepted losing his furniture, yet the destruction of his life’s spiritual work stings. The effect is ironic and melancholy, mixing small-town practicality with a cruel twist: a lifetime of preaching ends up destroyed by the very sort of man the sermons likely warned against.
Rev. Abner Peet — Summary
I had no objection at all To selling my household effects at auction On the village square. It gave my beloved flock the chance To get something which had belonged to me For a memorial. But that trunk which was struck off To Burchard, the grog-keeper! Did you know it contained the manuscripts Of a lifetime of sermons? And he burned them as waste paper.