sister, how I tremble for yours!"

I was trembling with indignation. What right had this woman to assault
me in this fashion? I did not know her; she did not know me. My white
feather was a badge of noble patriotism; my gaiter boots fitted a foot
that has been an object of encomium with every shoemaker who has been
honored by taking its measure--to say nothing of a glance given it by
imperial eyes. Does religious zeal justify uncivil intrusion? What right
had this sugar-scoopy woman to exhort me? How did she know that my heart
was not already in the right path?

I asked this very question:

"Madam," says I, "by what right do you pretend to teach me, a stranger,
of whose life you can know nothing?"

"I'm in the service of the Lord," says she, "looking up lost sheep. When
I find one, torn and draggled with sin, it is my duty to drive it into
the fold, where its fleece can be worked white as snow."

"But how can you tell? By what authority do you claim the right to judge
of a person you have never seen?"

"Are we not told to go out into the highways and the hedges, and force
them to come in?" says she.

"Whether they want to or not?" says I.

"Exactly," says she; "their not wanting to come into the fold shows the
state of wickedness into which they have fallen."

"But how do you know that I am wicked?" says I.

She looked at me a long time, as if the idea were new to her. She had
been so eager in raking up sinners, that it seemed to hurt her feelings
to think that any human being she met wasn't on the high road to--well,
what's its name?

"That feather," says she, "isn't a mark of regeneration."

"No," says I, "but it is the badge of a patriotic idea."

The creature didn't take in this delicate political hint. In fact,
anything fine or keen is sure to puzzle your woman of one idea.

"Where do you go to meeting?" says she, as abrupt as a cracked stick.

"Where my father did, generally," says I.

She looked at me queerly from under her sugar-scoop.

"Haven't backslid, nor nothing; because, if you have, remember, before
it is too late, that the last state of a backsliding sinner is worse
than the first."

LXXXVI.

THE BLACKSMITH'S CONVERSION.

Before I could answer that audacious woman, a man came along with green
spectacles on his eyes, and a broad straw hat on his head.

"What, sister, hard at work? got hold of a case, I reckon; but press
forward to the mark of the prize."

"Oh, brother,"