em that should carry the
souls off; besides, they could be heeled again.

The woman shook her sugar-scoop bonnet at me, mournfully, and said
something about a wicked and perverse generation, as if all mankind were
standing in my gaiter boots, and she was rebuking it in a lump.

"Oh, sister!" says she, "if I could only make you see with my eyes, and
hear with my ears! Why will you be so perverse? Have you no fear of the
eternal flame that burneth and burneth forever?"

"Fear!" says I, a-looking up at the hot sun, and wiping my forehead. "I
should think so! If all creation has a hotter place than this, I'm too
big a coward to hurry that way. If there is an ice-house in the
neighborhood, I should prefer that by all manner of means, by way of a
punishment, if I deserve any."

"Ice!" says she, solemnly. "Ice! have you never read the Scriptures?"

"Several times," says I, with sarcastic forbearance. "My father had a
book of that kind, which he sometimes opened."

She could not understand the delicate irony of this answer; but pressed
forward like an old camp-meetinger as she was.

"Did that good father never read of a place where a drop of water could
not be found to cool a certain person's tongue?" says she. "If not, your
paternal ancestor fell short of his duty. It is no wonder his child
should have gone half through life without a ray of saving grace, and
with a white feather in her hat."

Sisters, I was riled. "Half through life," says I. "Madam, do you know
how old I am?"

She looked at me half a minute, with all the eyes in her head; then,
with the cool air of a woman counting money, said, "about for--"

Sisters, I _cannot_ repeat the audacious falsehood of that creature's
calculation. It was enough to rile up venom in the heart of a born
cherubim. If ever a fiend took the disguise of a sugar-scoop bonnet, I
have encountered one. A heart of stone lay under the innocent folds of
that muslin half-shawl.

"Madam," said I, with a look of overpowering indignation, "you must have
begun and ended your arithmetic in multiplication. Take off half of the
years you have mentioned."

The woman smiled so knowingly, that I longed to-- Well, no matter, she
smiled, and says she:

"At any rate, you are not too old for the mercy-seat."

"I should think not," says I.

"Look yonder."

I looked at half a dozen children jumping, kneeling, praying, and
singing before the revival tent, which had been so full of worrying
no