feller-travelers to etarnity. To treat the last head first, beloved, I
admonish you not to believe a blackleg, unless it's under sarcumstances
when he's got onusual and airresistible temptations to tell the truth. I
don't advise yer to spit on the slate and rub it out in this case. Break
the slate and throw it away. To come to the second pertikeler, which is
the first in the order of my text, my attentive congregation. She didn't
look at you in meetin'. Now, I 'spose you don't know nothin' of her
mother's heart-disease. Heart-disease is trumps with Abigail Anderson.
She plays that every turn. Just think of a young gal who thinks that ef
she looks at her beau when her mother's by, she might kill her
invalooable parient of heart-disease. Fer my part, I don't take no stock
in Mrs. Abby Anderson's dyin' of heart-disease, no ways. Might as well
talk about a whale dyin' of footrot."

"Well, Jonas, what counsel do you give our young friend? Your sagacity
is to be depended on."

"Why, I advise him to speak face to face with the angel of his life. Let
him climb into my room to-night. Leave meetin' jest afore the
benediction--he kin do without that wunst--and go double-quick acrost
the fields, and git safe into my stoodio. Ferther pertikelers when the
time arrives."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE WRONG PEW.

August's own good sense told him that the advice of Jonas was not good.
But he had made many mistakes of late, and was just now inclined to take
anybody's judgment in place of his own. All that was proud and
gentlemanly in him rebelled at the thought of creeping into another
man's house in the night. Modesty is doubtless a virtue, but it is a
virtue responsible for many offenses. Had August not felt so distrustful
of his own wisdom, nothing could have persuaded him to make his love for
Julia Anderson seem criminal by an action so wanting in dignity. But
back of Jonas's judgment was that of Andrew, whose weakness was
Quixotism. He wanted to live and to have others live on the
concert-pitch of romantic action. There was something of chivalry in the
proposal of Jonas, a spice of adventure that made him approve it on
purely sentimental grounds.

The more August thought of it, and the nearer he was to its execution,
the more did he dislike it. But I have often noticed that people of a
rather quiet temperament, such as young Wehle's, show _vis inertiae_ in
both, ways--not very easily moved, they are not easily checked when once