IVOLD-TIME RELIGION
Autumn in the Southern Appalachians.
The little boy sat on the prize pumpkin that his grandfather had put in front of the house to challenge the comment of passers-by. He was chewing sorghum-cane and singing in snatches:
“Give me that old-time aligion,Give me that old-time aligion,It is good enough for me.It was good for Paul and Silas,It is good enough for me——”
“Give me that old-time aligion,Give me that old-time aligion,It is good enough for me.It was good for Paul and Silas,It is good enough for me——”
“Give me that old-time aligion,Give me that old-time aligion,It is good enough for me.It was good for Paul and Silas,It is good enough for me——”
“Give me that old-time aligion,
Give me that old-time aligion,
It is good enough for me.
It was good for Paul and Silas,
It is good enough for me——”
His Aunt Carolina stood on the porch spinning stocking yarn, whilenear her sat his grandfather, cobbling shoes as diligently and contentedly as if born and bred to that lowly occupation instead of being a forehanded farmer holding county and township offices.
“Grover Cleveland certainly is a good singer,” said Carolina. “He can carry the tune of every last hymn he hears ’em sing down to church and he can carry the words too, clean up to twenty verses I reckon, and what he can’t remember he can make up.”
The old man laid down his implements, bowed himself to his “studyin’” attitude, and looked fondly and proudly at his grandson. Carolina let her eyes range the highroad.
“Here comes old man Sumter a-drivin’ that ar’ Sal he bought over to Nantahala. She was round and plump as ary one of our mules when he brought her here, but now I declareshe’s the gauntedest mule that travels the road. I reckon he’s jerked and jawed the flesh right off her bones.”
“You say Cap’n Sumter’s a-comin’?” asked her father, and he got up and went out to the road side. At his signal his neighbour twitched Sal to a stand and stared at him without a relaxing line in his hard old face or a gleam of friendliness in his eyes.
Colonel Ledbetter had pleasant information to impart. He lifted one foot to the hub of the clumsy fore wheel, rested an arm across his knees and looked hard into the sandy road lest his eyes should forestall his tongue as the bearer of good news.
“You sold me them ’leven wa’nut trees on Sundown Hill for thirty dollars apiece, Cap’n Sumter?”
“I reckon that’s ’bout how the case stands,” the grim face looked steadily at the smiling one and not a line softened.
“Well, sir,” the pleasant eyes looked up with a lively sparkle that might have been borrowed from Grover Cleveland’s own, “I hadn’t examined them trees as close as I ought to, and ’pears like you hadn’t either; there’s a little mistake about one of ’em and I expected we’d better rectify it right now——”
“G’long!” old man Sumter hit the mule a “lick,” saying viciously as she sprang forward, “You got the timber and I got the money and I don’t rectify no mistakes now; you’re old enough to have knowed what you was gittin’ ’fore you paid for it.”
“Jes’ as you please Sam Sumter, jes’ as you please”; the indignant old gentleman made a gesture as one who gladly washes his hands of a responsibility and yielding to curiosity Sumter turned toward him.
Colonel Ledbetter didn’t pausein his slow walk toward the house but he said in a tone of supreme indifference:
“I’ve had my men up there a-fellin’ them trees and the biggest of ’em, the one furthest up the hill, is a curly walnut. Five years ago I sold one like it for twelve hundred dollars and I could have give you points ’bout sellin’ yours; but seein’ you don’t rectify no mistakes, why that’s all there is about it and we’ll stick to the bargain.”
Again Sal was jerked to a stand and twisting round on a pivotal hand pressed to the seat, old man Sumter regarded his interlocutor with intense concern. But Colonel Ledbetter proceeded to the house without looking right or left and, disappointed and ireful, his neighbour went on his way.
Colonel Ledbetter resumed his seat and his grandson came and leaned against him:
“Looks like he’s plumb mad, gran’daddy.”
“Yes he is, Grover Cleveland, he’s plumb mad and he’s been so ever since I’ve knowed him and that’s mighty nigh sixty years. He’s so rarin’ mad that when the Lord throws a good thing in his way he’s too mad to see it. Now like that ar wa’nut; any man that was a-lookin’ out for virtues instid ofdefects would have discovered that ’twas a curly. But old man Sumter’s mad at every thing under the sun whether it’s human or beast or tree or stone; and he’s mad at ’em all the time and he’s so mad that he won’t take no notice to ’em. Jes’ like he wouldn’t take notice to me jes’ now, when I was goin’ to put more than a thousand dollars right into his hand; it would mighty nigh paid off that ar mortgage that he’s been skinnin’ himself to pay int’rest on these twentyyears—for he jes’ keeps a-goin’ behind and a-goin’ behind for no airthly reason that I can see but jes’ ’cause he’s so mad all the time that he can’t study any of the arts of peace. Why his very crops fails because he hates ’em so. Grover Cleveland, don’t you never go to bein’ mad at every body all the time. Tain’t Christian, an’ more’n that it kind o’ spiles your aim so that you don’t bring down no game.”
“Was he borned that-a-way, gran’daddy?”
“I expect he was, Grover Cleveland, I expect he was.”
“I’m mighty sorry for him”; the little fellow twisted his hands together and looked afar; “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help.”
The old man’s attention and sympathy were his in an instant. “Don’t you go to takin’ on about sleep walkin’, Grover Cleveland,”he said drawing his arm tightly about the child; “you’re bound to outgrow that before long.”
“I paid him,” the old man went on addressing his daughter, “I paid him more for them trees than ary other somebody had offered him, jes’ because I was willin’ to help make up to him the loss of his barn that burnt down; but he didn’ thank me for it.”
“What’s curly wa’nuts good for, gran’daddy?”
“They’re good for veneerin’, Grover Cleveland. You see this is how ’tis: they don’t saw the logs through like they do down to Campbell’s saw-mill but they saw ’em, round and round, into sheets mighty nigh as thin as writin’-paper. There hadn’t ought to be any cuts or holes in the log, so that they can make big smooth sheets of it, and they’ll saw that log up till there ain’t a core left that’s as thick as my arm.”
“What can they make out of timber as thin as writin’-paper, gran’daddy?”
Then to the extent of his own imperfect knowledge of the veneering process, the old man explained it to the child.
“So far as I know, there’s only three veneering mills in the country. When I sold my tree I wrote a letter to all three of ’em and told ’em what I had to sell and they wrote back and made me a offer—only that Kentucky fellow, he’s the nearest by and he made out like he had business in this direction and he stopped round to see it; and ’twas him I sold the tree to.
“And I aimed to work it jes’ that-a-way for Cap’n Sumter; I aimed to write the letters for him—for he ain’t a mite handy with a pen, Sam Sumter ain’t (a education is a mighty handy thing to get hold of Grover Cleveland), and get inthe three bids for the tree and let him take up with ary one he see fit.”
“You’ve sure done your duty by him now, daddy,” said Carolina, “and that tree is yours anyway you can fix it.”
“Isit yours, gran’daddy?”
“It’s mine by rule o’ law, Grover Cleveland, but I don’t know as it’s mine by that ar golden rule that you and Preacher Carr let on to know so much about.”
His doting grandparent considered the child a prodigy of ethical understanding, or “jedgment,” as he would have expressed it, and, although he was continually plying him with information and advice on all sorts of subjects, it was no uncommon thing for him to consult the little fellow even in matters of moment. It was as if he stored his maxims and admonitions into the laboratory of the child’s mind and then requisitionedit for them in convenient form for practical use.
“What’s your opinion, Grover Cleveland?’”
The child hesitated, his bright face raised earnestly to the grizzled one:
“Me and you, gran’daddy, me and you, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; do we?”
“No-o sir-ee!That settles it, Carliny; Grover Cleveland and me we want a golden rule title to every thing we claim.”
So Colonel Ledbetter got his ink bottle and pen off the shelf, a sheet and a half of writing-paper out of the front of the Bible, and three envelopes out of the back, and laboriously indited the letters to the veneering mills, while out in the shadow of the prize pumpkin his grandson cracked butternuts for the tame gray squirrels. But all the while new ideas were whirling through the little boy’s head, and they concentred in that curly walnut.
That night “when there was naught but starre light” a little human figure, bareheaded, barefooted, and clad in a single, loosely hanging garment came out of the Ledbetter house. It proceeded noiselessly, though without stealth, for it kept in the open, taking the middle of the road with a free and fearless tread. Though the eyes were partly shut and the night was dark, it made no false or stumbling step; some intuition or spiritual sight or maybe an angelic presence was guiding it. Dixie came yawning and stretching to the edge of the porch, settled meditatively upon his haunches, watched it to the first bend in the road, then followed boundingly until he came abreast when, demurely dropping head and tail, he fell behind but kept so close that the little wind-blown shirt fluttered in his face.
When half a mile had been travelleda branching wagon track, scarcely discernible even in the daytime, led up to some bars in the worm-fence that outlined the road. The little dreamer climbed over and took the rough road beyond without a sign of doubt or hesitation. It zigzagged through the woods but steadily upward to where those walnut trees, with a goodly company of peers, oak, chestnut, and whitewood had crowned a summit. He had followed it a few times before, but wide-awake beside his grandfather in the ox wagon, with Butterfly and Bonaparte for motive power. It was overgrown with grass and weeds that shed their dew upon his little feet and perfumed them with pennyroyal and dittany, while overhead interweaving branches hid even the stars from sight.
Though tempted from duty’s path by many a springing cotton tail, Dixie kept close behind his masteruntil the sound of an axe came thudding through the forest, at which he cocked his remnant for ears, stood for a second on thequi vive, then shot away in the direction of the sound.
He returned panting and, planting himself in front of the little sleepwalker, tried to head him in a different direction, but the child only swerved and continued his upward course. Again the dog headed him off, again and again until he had turned him quite out of the road way, but the boy threaded his way through undergrowth and over rocks and hummocks as easily as if he had been of spiritual rather than material substance.
Finally Dixie grabbed in his teeth the border of the little shirt and tugged so lustily that his master could not advance a single step farther, and as he tugged he whined in thorough frenzy; and if his languagecould have been rendered into the vernacular it would have been:
“There’s danger ahead, Grover Cleveland! There’s a bad old man up there, a man that never sees me without making a lick at me with his stick, and if he does you mean and there’s only I left to tell the tale, who’ll I tell it to, I’d like to know? for there’s not a human that’s smart enough to understandmylanguage, though I’ve understood English ever since I was a pup. Come back, Grover Cleveland!come back, I say, come back!” and with that last “come back,” Dixie gave such a sudden and powerful jerk that Grover Cleveland came tumbling backward into a bed of galax.
He righted himself and sat there with a hand on either side pressing the leaves down into the turf, the dog crouched close with his pawsacross the little bare knees and his tongue spasmodically licking the bewildered face.
The child heaved a slow, sobbing sigh or two and became his conscious self, a little boy alone at night in the dark, silent woods, frightened, not by darkness or silence or apprehension of danger, but by the thought of that mysterious power that could convey him so far from home and gran’daddy, and Aunt Carliny without any of their knowledge or consent. So he laid his head upon Dixie’s neck and cried it out and then got upon his feet, once more a practical little mountaineer with a mind curious to see and to understand, a loving heart and willing, eager little hands and feet to wait upon its promptings.
He knew that downward must be homeward and cautiously (less confident now than when guided by that unconscious mentality) he beganto grope for his footing. Then again the sound of that axe came cleaving the silence and this time Grover Cleveland heard it as plainly as Dixie did.
He turned to investigate the phenomenon, Dixie following contentedly now that his master was himself again. The undergrowth had become thinner as they had ascended and soon they came out where great trees rose in stately exclusiveness unintruded upon by lesser growths. Here the darkness was less dense, stars looked down through rifts in the leafy canopy, and a little farther up the hill one fixed star gleamed scarcely eight feet from the ground as if intercepted upon an earthward trip and impaled upon a bough. It dispensed only a dim circle of light, but in it the boy could discern the figure of the wood chopper, could even catch an occasional glint reflected from the blade of the swingingaxe. He had come up against a fallen tree and he climbed up and sat upon the trunk, hugging his knees while he peered into the gloom.
All at once a suspicion of his whereabouts entered his head and to confirm it he got off the log and made his way to its larger end. Yes, there stood the stump from which it had been cut but recently and green chips littered the ground. He explored farther. Nearby lay another log, just over there another—why they were all about him! He knew perfectly well where he was. On old man Sumter’s hill and these were his grandfather’s walnut trees!
But that man! Why was he here in the dark, dark night chopping away with might and main? The boy made his way toward him, Dixie quiet but alert and as full of curiosity as his master.
That star was a lantern pendantfrom a chestnut limb; its light shone upon the man’s face. Why it was old man Sumter himself! and that log was the curly walnut, for it was the one highest on the hillside, and he was gashing it all along its length! And he was right mad at that curly too (just like gran’daddy said he was always mad at everything), for he kept talking right ugly to it!
“Hi!” the child sprang forward shouting to the full capacity of his sturdy lungs and caught the old man by the coat tails. “Wake up! oh, wake up! Don’t you see what you’re a-doin’!”
Grover Cleveland tugged and shouted, Dixie barked and leaped and growled and the echoes multiplied the tumult. Stunned by the suddenness of the attack the old man let the axe slip from his hand and backed round against the log. He was feeble, he had been exerting himself beyond his strength and hewas frightened too—had it not been for Dixie’s very earthly performance he would have been sure he had met up with a ha’nt.
“What be you anyway?” he asked quaveringly, sinking to a seat upon the log.
“Why I’m Grover Cleveland, gran’daddy’s grandson.”
The boy looked the man over with a face full of compassion. Here was a big man afflicted just as he was, and that fellow-feeling that makes us all so wondrous kind enthralled him.
“Are you sure you’re broad awake now?” he asked coming very close and laying his hand upon the old man’s knee. “It’s awful to walk in your sleep; I feel mighty sorry for you.” He scrambled up on the log, wriggled himself as close to the night-walker as he could get, took a coarse, limp old hand in his, and patted it. “I certainly am sorryfor you ’cause I know jes’ how it feels to be woked up in the dark, away off from home and not know how you got there. I walk in my sleep too—that’s how I come out yer to-night—but you’ve got it worse than me, you have; for I don’t do mischief when I’m took, but you—why-e-e-e!” twisting himself about and surveying the log—“you’ve done hacked your tree all to pieces and ’twon’t be no more good for veneerin’! Gran’daddy says they don’t want nary snag in it.
“‘What be you anyway?’ he asked quaveringly, sinking to a seat upon the log.”
“‘What be you anyway?’ he asked quaveringly, sinking to a seat upon the log.”
“‘What be you anyway?’ he asked quaveringly, sinking to a seat upon the log.”
“But maybe this ain’t the curly,” he peered eagerly into the woods; “it ain’t ’less it’s the furtherest one up.”
“This is the curly wa’nut all right,” growled Sumter with a malevolent twang unintelligible to the child.
“I certainly am sorry for you. Gran’daddy wrote three letters ’boutthis yer tree and he was goin’ to turn the answers over to you so’t you could take up with ary one you’d a mind to—that’s what he said——”
“You say he did? Didn’t he ’low he’d bought the tree fair ’nough?”
“That ain’t the way he thought about it—and me and gran’daddy, you know, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; he said you could sell it for enough money to pay all you owed. He was plumb glad of it and now he’ll be mighty nigh as sorry as you and me is.”
For a moment sad, silent thought held sway.
“There’s one good thing about it though,” the child tucked his garment tightly under his knees, “you don’t get out without dressin’ yourself, the way I do; you ought to be glad about that. Gran’daddy saysthere’s always some good even in the baddest things if we watch out for it.”
His companion made no response and the boy resumed his role of sympathizer.
“I reckon you was borned that-a-way, jes’ like me, and it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; and you ain’t got any Dixie to watch out for you. And Aunt Carliny, she makes me sleep with her and Jakey, so’s she can catch me at it, but I don’t guess you’ve got any Aunt Carliny either.”
“Naw,” old man Sumter got up and reached for his lantern, “I ain’t got nary somebody that cares what becomes of me.”
The boy got down off the log and pityingly took his hand.
“Le’s go home,” he said, “I know where I be now an’ if you’re kind o’ mixed up yet, why I can show you the trail,” and he led away asshamefaced an old sinner as ever trod the mountains.
(Seeing the pair on friendly terms, Dixie indulged in a brief interview with a ’possum.)
“As I was a-sayin’,” comforted the child as they picked their way by the lantern’s light, “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; but don’t you go to takin’-on about it, for we’re bound to outgrow it—so gran’daddy says. And there’s another thing where you’re worse off than me: gran’daddy says you was borned mad at everybody all the time—that must be powerful mizzable too, but I reckon you’ll outgrow that too.”
They parted at Sumter’s door and then Grover Cleveland and Dixie sped homeward. Noiselessly the little fellow entered the house, crept into bed beside his Aunt Carliny and straightway forgot his “mizzable” inheritance.
But he had it embarrassingly recalled to his mind next morning at breakfast when Aunt Carliny said as she gave him his second helping of hominy:
“Grover Cleveland’s getting right good ’bout stayin’ in bed o’ nights; he ain’t tried to get up in a dog’s age. Of course he couldn’t get up without my catchin’ him, for I’m always sleepin’ with one eye open, but seem like he don’t try any more.”
“I reckon he’s outgrowin’ them kind of capers,” gran’daddy reached out, stroked the yellow pate and the yellow pate bent lower and lower and finally the whole boy went down under the table.
He next appeared tagging dumbly at the heels of the old gentleman as he was making his morning tour among his stock, who, when a sudden turn brought them into collision, reached behind him and brought the boy out of his obscurity.
“’Pears like you ain’t a mite peart this morning, Grover Cleveland; you got something on your mind?”
The child bored the soil with his toes:
“I—wasn’t in bedallnight, gran’daddy, notevery minute, I wasn’t.”
“You been a-walkin’ in your sleep again?”
The child nodded guiltily and a very awkward pause ensued. Gran’daddy looked serious, but as soon as distressful symptoms began to develop in the little culprit, he applied, as usual, the healing balm of consolation.
“I wouldn’t take-on about it, Grover Cleveland, not a mite, I wouldn’t, for you’re plumb sure to outgrow it. Gran’daddy used to be up to them same tricks but he’s outgrowed ’em. I jes’ go to bed and I lay there as firm as a island in a goose pond and you couldn’tdrag me out—not with Butterfly and Bonaparte you couldn’t—not unless something was the matter with Grover Cleveland andhewanted me in the night; if he did, if he ever does, I’ll shoot out of that bed like lightning out of a thunder cloud.” And so he coaxed and petted until the shamed little face was ready to look the world squarely in the eyes again.
“Where was you at, last night, eh?”
“When I come to, I was up to Sundown Hill where them wa’nut trees is.”
“Was you ’way off there, grandson?” Gran’daddy settled to a seat on a wagon tongue and put a snug arm about the boy who grew suddenly voluble in the recollection of stirring times.
“Hi, gran’daddy! Cap’n Sumter,hewalks in his sleep jes’ like me! He does a heap of things in his sleep! An’ he talks right out loud too; that’s a heap worse’n me, ain’t it?”
“If he does it, it’s a heap worse’n you. Did you meet up with him last night?”
“Why he was a-doin’ mischief,hewas! He was choppin’ up that ar curly wa’nut and every lick he hit, he says, ‘Nowwill you bring twelve-hundred dollars for veneerin,’ and he chopped big holes in it!”
“That curly?”
“Ye-e-s, that ar one that lays furtherest up the hill.”
The old man loosened his hold of the lad and rose slowly to his feet, a look on his face that Grover Cleveland had never seen there before and that he could only vaguely interpret, but it made him feel sorry for his companion in misery. So he took his grandfather’s hand and as they walked toward the house he discoursed:
“He can’t help doin’ things in his sleep for he was borned that-a-way,and he can’t help bein’ mad all the time for he was borned that-a-way too; and I reckon he feels mighty shamed of hisself now—that’s the way I feel.”
Receiving no response he squeezed the hand he held in both his own demanding recognition of his reiterated sentiment:
“It’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help.”
And gran’daddy replied:
“So it is, Grover Cleveland, so it is.”
For two or three days the lives of our heroes ran along in the usual quiet channels, and then one morning Colonel Ledbetter drove up in front of Captain Sumter’s broken-spirited-looking dwelling-place. On the seat beside him was a “city-dressed fellow” and Grover Cleveland swung his legs over the pendant tail board.
In response to a call old man Sumter appeared.
“This yer man” (the mountaineer is apt to be off-hand in his introductions), “is the owner of that veneerin’ mill in Kentucky. He’s come to look at that ar curly wa’nut and to make you a offer for it; and here’s two letters from two other men that runs that kind of mills. One of ’em bids ’leven-hundred-an’-fifty dollars for it and the other a hundred or two more.”
Sumter fumbled with the letters, affecting even more than his habitual gruffness.
“Looks like you ain’t been to look at your property lately. That ar curly wa’nut ain’t no good for veneerin’ nor nothin’ else; it’s done chopped to pieces.”
Apparently his neighbour was absorbed in switching a fly off the white mule’s back, for he replied with his eye following the fly:
“I was up thar yesterday evening an ’twas all right then. You jump in thar ’long side of my boy and we’ll go up and look at it,” and the embarrassed old man got in because he didn’t know what else to do or what to say.
When next they halted they were among the felled trees. It was strange, but Colonel Ledbetter’s eyes never happened to light on that scarred log as he led his party past it and toward the summit of the hill.
“There’s only ten trees lying here,” he said, “that curly I left standing. Sometimes the man that buys it will give more for it that-a-way because he wants to have it cut particular; sometimes they count on gettin’ root and all.”
“Thar she is neighbour,” he said to the Kentuckian, slapping the old tree’s sides as proudly as if it had been a three-year-old thoroughbred and his own, “and if you don’t ’lowshe’s a giant and a beauty, you want to go out of the lumber business.”
He waited to hear his sentiment confirmed and then hand in hand with his grandson walked away leaving Sumter to make his own bargain.
“You see, Grover Cleveland,” he said as they came up to the hacked log, “he was too mad to see straight and he lit on the wrong tree.”
“Why gran’daddy, he was walkin’ in his sleep!”
“Sure ’nough; gran’daddy plumb forgotthatpart of the story”—he sorted some chips about with the toe of his boot—“but, Grover Cleveland, don’t you never go to actin’thatspiteful, sleepin’ or wakin’.”
Two days afterward Sal stood sampling a pile of choice limber-twigs while her master sat on the Ledbetter porch. It is difficult to describe the expression of his hard old face. Its obduracy was therebut less marked; as if a thin lava-flow of astonishment had hardened upon his features.
“That thar feller,” he said, “’lowed me fo’teen hundred dollars for the curly wa’nut and yesterday evening I druv over to the cou’t-house and—nary man’s got a nickel’s worth of claim on my farm now.”
Colonel Ledbetter grabbed his hand and shook it heartily.
“I certainly am glad, Sam,” he said, “I certainly am.”
“Looks like you think as you say, Jake.” The old fellow hoisted himself on his feet and, after the distortions of figure necessary to get possession of his pocket-book, said: “Here’s the thirty dollars you give me for the curly and here’s another thirty for the log that got hacked.” Without another word he stumped clumsily out to his wagon, Colonel Ledbetter following in a neighbourly way.
“That’s a fine heifer you’ve got tied behind, Sam; tollable much Holstein in her, ain’t there?”
“Looks like thar is; g’long!”
He turned into the road, but a second thought made him look back.
“See here”; Colonel Ledbetter went to him.
“That thar line fence that Higgins has been a-snarlin’ ’bout for twenty year—he says it b’longs on my side the branch. It was on yon side when the property come into my hands but, ’cordin’ to the records over to the cou’t-house, looks like there’s a chance of him bein’ in the right of it. And I’m like you and Grover Cleveland, Jake; I don’t want nothin’ ’tain’t mine. I don’t reckon Higgins’ll have anything to say to me, but if you’re a mind to go over and talk to him ’bout it, we’ll have it straightened out. G’long.”
Over the hill he went, jerked Salto a stand in front of Mis’ Jimson’s log-cabin, clambered out of the wagon, and began to untie the cow. The old woman came limping down the walk with surprise but no welcome in her face.
“Where’ll you have her?” he asked with his eyes on his fingers.
“Whatever do you mean, Sam Sumter?”
“Mis’ Jimson, you ’lowed I’d put my brand onto the ears of your calf. This ’ere creeter run with mine up on the mounting the whole season and when they brought my cattle down she was with ’em; but if you say she’s yours——”
“Sheismine, I know her by the shape of the white blanket on her back. ’Tain’t hard to know your own when one is all you’ve got.”
“Here she is,” he opened the gate, put the animal into the yard and had regained his seat before she recovered her speech.
“How’s all the folks, Cap’n Sumter?”
“Tollable; g’long!”
The cow was too wild to let her mistress come near so she stood and admired her afar off:
“Looks like the millenyum has done come,” she said, “and I’m mighty glad I’ve lived to see it.”
“Well what about it!” exclaimed Aunt Dicey the next Sunday, pointing to her dingy little wooden clock, “she’s done stopped—a hour ago for all I know. We’ll be late to church an’ I wouldn’t miss what Preacher Carr has got to say this mornin’—not for a pretty. Why, Zeb’lon, they’re a-sayin’ that ole man Sumter’s sure ’nough got religion!”
“You say he has!” Zeb’s tone was as wrathy as it was incredulous.
“Sure ’nough; Mis’ Campbell says he’s a-restorin’ fourfold!”
“Thar’s the old sinner now,” grumbled Zeb; “talk about good folks and they’re plumb sure to heave into sight.”
“Well, what about it? He’s a-drivin’ up!”
“Hullo in there! Zeb’lon!”
Just within the door but out of the old man’s sight, Aunt Dicey counseled her grandson:
“You speak him fair, Zeb’lon, for they say he sure has got religion; but I’ll stand on the porch with the gun whar he can see me good; maybe that’ll keep him from backslidin’ all of a suddent.”
They went out together. Zeb said “Mornin’” but his tone was not conciliatory.
“I’ve got a mighty pretty year-old colt up to my place; come of first-class Kentucky stock. If you’re a mind to, you can come up and git him, to pay for that thar tame deer I shot. G’long!”
Church was “in” when Aunt Dicey and Zeb drove up, and before they had alighted and found a place to hitch among the two score beasts of draught or burden that were disposed in the surrounding woods, church was “out.” But the congregation didn’t disperse; they stood about in groups discussing the wonderful events of the past week. Preacher Carr came and stood in the doorway:
“Give me that old-time religion,” he sang out lustily, and his people joined joyously in the refrain. Arsula Garrett always led the singing and she followed him with:
“It was good for the Hebrew children,” and they kept on chanting the efficacy of the “old-time religion” in the case of “the prophet Daniel,” “the good Elijah,” “the psalmist David,” “poor old Noah,” “the patriarch Abr’ham,” and, when they had exhausted Arsula’slist of sacred-history heroes, they sang:
“It was good for my old mother,”“It will be good in the time of trouble,”“It will be good when the world’s on fire,”
“It was good for my old mother,”“It will be good in the time of trouble,”“It will be good when the world’s on fire,”
“It was good for my old mother,”“It will be good in the time of trouble,”“It will be good when the world’s on fire,”
“It was good for my old mother,”
“It will be good in the time of trouble,”
“It will be good when the world’s on fire,”
and finally they rounded up the catalogue of human experiences and human apprehensions with:
“It will be good when I am dying,It is good enough for me.”
“It will be good when I am dying,It is good enough for me.”
“It will be good when I am dying,It is good enough for me.”
“It will be good when I am dying,
It is good enough for me.”
But Grover Cleveland wasn’t ready to go home yet and, tugging at Arsula’s skirt, he piped timorously:
“It will be good while I’m a-livin,”—probably it was only dislike of the thought of dying that inspired his improvisation, but Arsula and the rest took it up with all their heart:
“It will be good while I am living,It is good enough for me.”
“It will be good while I am living,It is good enough for me.”
“It will be good while I am living,It is good enough for me.”
“It will be good while I am living,
It is good enough for me.”