THE annual Collett-McKay picnic will be held at the usual place, the farm of Commissioner Collett, Saturday of this week.

(Courtesy Eric Dickerson.)

     It was Sunday, the 22d of February, Washington's Birthday, a bright day, with just enough frost in the air to make a brisk walk necessary to a glow in the cheeks and the tingle of warm blood in the finger tips. We were in the quiet country, just on the border line of Warren and Clinton counties, and in fact one of the quietest nooks in all that section. We were in a house part of which was the old primeval log house that had been standing for more than 50 years, the home which some of the gray headed men we met looked back to as the spot in which they were born. It was sheltered on the north by a dense forest of beech, while to the south, east and west, broad acres of fertile land lay spread out in the morning light. These were a part of the ancestral acres that had come down from father to sons, in the historic Collett family, from the days of Judge Joshua and Moses Collett, when perhaps more than 1,000 acres had been "entered according to act of Congress," and were kept in the widening family of Colletts, McKays, McCunes, Nickersons, &c., all standard names in Warren and Clinton, all solid men and women bearing the characteristic image of their ancestors, so that you can, even in the grandchildren, pick them out by their marked features and sturdy ways and say "these are Colletts."
     As we have said it is a quiet neighborhood, and especially so on the Sabbath, and in one of the quietest corners of it they have a Baptist meeting-house, and it was to this place we went on this bright February Sunday. First we were in the Sabbath School that was well attended by young and old, and well taught by the older members of the school, men and women, with intelligence marked in every line of their faces, with grey beginning to sprinkle their hair, and yet all young enough to engage earnestly and eagerly in the study of the Word of God. The Bible is a good enough book for them.
     By the time the School was over, the house had begun to fill up with other members of the families we have named, together with representatives of the Harlans, another old family of these counties, and others from the country round, so that by the time for service the comfortable little chapel was well-filled. And an audience of greater refinement or of a wider intelligence or a more appreciative audience to preach to, one would rarely find.
     The preacher, Rev. Mr. Sargent, is a man somewhere from 40 to 50 years of age has the signs of study and of careful thought on his face, and impresses all who hear him not only as being deeply impressed with the truth of what he says, but as deeply in earnest, also, as to the necessity of all men making preparation for the life to come. His subject was drawn from the interviews between Jesus and the Sadducees as to whose wife the the widow of the seven brothers should be in the resurrection. "Ye do err," sald the divine Teacher, "not knowing the Scriptures, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are the angels of God."
     The thought that ran through the impassioned discourse was that while the love of husband and wife is pure and tender, it will all be lost in a purer and holier, spirit love in heaven. As the tenderest love in the home on earth, is the love of the spiritual or inner life, that love, alone, will live in the life beyond, and will be so intensified as not only to eclipse all the affections that belong to earth, alone, but also to widen the sphere of its operation till all kindred spirits are included in its ever-extending embrace. It was a sermon that all present would carry home with them to think and talk about till it would thus be repreached in every home represented.