"I shall be very much indebted to you, doctor, if you can help me, as
it suits me to stay here for the present."

"That's all right. Fur one, there's Adam Oberholzer; he 'll be an easy
guy when it comes to his wote. Fur if I want, I can bring a bill ag'in'
the estate of his pop, disceased, and make it 'most anything. His pop
he died last month. Now that there was a man"--the doctor settled
himself comfortably, preparatory to the relation of a tale--"that there
was a man that was so wonderful set on speculatin' and savin' and
layin' by, that when he come to die a pecooliar thing happened. You
might call that there thing phe-non-e-ma. It was this here way. When
ole Adam Oberholzer (he was named after his son, Adam Oberholzer, the
school director) come to die, his wife she thought she'd better send
fur the Evangelical preacher over, seein' as Adam he hadn't been inside
a church fur twenty years back, and, to be sure, he wasn't just so well
prepared. Oh, well, he was deef fur three years back, and churches
don't do much good to deef people. But then he never did go when he did
have his sound hearin'. Many's the time he sayed to me, he sayed, 'I
don't believe in the churches,' he sayed, 'and blamed if it don't keep
me busy believin' in a Gawd!' he sayed. So you see, he wasn't just what
you might call a pillar of the church. One time he had such a cough and
he come to me and sayed whether I could do somepin. 'You're to leave
tobacco be,' I sayed. Ole Adam he looked serious. 'If you sayed it was
caused by goin' to church,' he answered to me, 'I might mebbe break
off. But tobacco--that's some serious,' he says. Adam he used to have
some notions about the Bible and religion that I did think, now, was
damned unushal. Here one day when he was first took sick, before he got
so deef yet, I went to see him, and the Evangelical preacher was there,
readin' to him that there piece of Scripture where, you know, them that
worked a short time was paid the same as them that worked all day. The
preacher he sayed he thought that par'ble might fetch him 'round oncet
to a death-bed conwersion. But I'm swanged if Adam didn't just up and
say, when the preacher got through, he says, 'That wasn't a square deal
accordin' to MY way of lookin' at things.' Yes, that's the way that
there feller talked. Why, here oncet--" the doctor paused to chuckle at
the recollection--"when I got there, Reverend was wrestlin' with Adam
to get hisself conwerted, and i