erta as a peace offering.

I must not forget to tell you about Roberta's Sunday School for little
negro children. If the child didn't always keep perfect order and make the
headway she would have liked, it wasn't because she didn't try. Her whole
heart was in the work. She really was very intelligent, and Aunt Betsy
said, "If there was such a thing as anybody being born in this world a
Christian, she believed Roberta was." I think she must have had the germ
of object teaching--that is the fad now--in her nature, she could paint
such vivid mental pictures to convey an idea. Once she was telling Polly
about God's punishment of sinners, and Polly said, "Lawdy, Lil Missus, I
feel dem blazes creepen' all over me dis minit." She had a great deal to
contend with, almost as much as Mrs. Marsden had, in getting the older
negroes to come in to prayers. Nine times out of ten, when she rang the
bell for them Sunday morning, Squire would put his head in the door and
say:

"Mis July, dat deviles hoss dun played me dat same trick ergin. He dun
lade down in de mud en roll ober en ober. 'T will take me clar up ter de
time to start ter chech ter git dat mud orf him, en hard wurk at dat. Dat
hoss knows ez well when Sad-day night comes ez you duz. Jes' de way he dun
las' week when I hetch him in de plow: lay down en groan lak he sick enuff
ter die, ter keep fum worken'; en half hour arfter I turn him luse
frolerken lak er colt--jes' kicken' up his heels, I kin tell you."

"Why not drive some of the others, Uncle Squire, so you can come in to
prayers?"

"I dun turn em all out, en dey's gorn, de Lord unly knows whar. If I'd
unly know'd it en time now. But I'll show 'im--I'll show 'im. I gwiner be
mity solid wid 'im, en mebbe heel larn arfter while dat he aint his own
master."

At other times it was a mule.

"Mis July, dat mule dun tore down dat rock fence ergin. I bounter fix it
or de stock will git out en go orf, you knows dat ez well az I duz. Dat
mule's yours, en you kin do what you please wid him, but ef he 'longter me
I'd sell him de fus chance I git. Dat mule nuff ter mek er man strike hees
gran-daddy."

Now, it was a well-known fact that Mrs. Marsden had tried several times to
sell the mule, and old Squire had always declared "the mule was the most
valuable animal on the place, and it was just giving him away to sell him
at the price offered."

Polly was Squire's granddaughter, and inherited his want of reverence for
sacred