he millennium.

Mrs. Abigail Anderson was a woman who did nothing by halves. She was
vixenish, she was selfish, she was dishonest and grasping; but she was
religious. If any man think this paradox impossible, he has observed
character superficially. There are criminals in State's-prison who have
been very devout all their lives. Religious questions took hold of Mrs.
Anderson's whole nature. She was superstitious, narrow, and intense. She
was as sure that the day of judgment would be proclaimed on the eleventh
of August, 1843, as she was of her life. No consideration in opposition
to any belief of hers weighed a feather with her. Her will mastered her
judgment and conscience.

And so she determined that Samuel must sell his property for a trifle.
How far she was influenced in this by a sincere desire to square all
outstanding debts before the final settlement, how far by a longing to
be considered the foremost and most pious of all, and how far by
business shrewdness based on that feeling which still lurks in the most
protestant people, that such sacrifices do improve their state in a
future world, I can not tell. Doubtless fanaticism, hypocrisy, and a
self-interest that looked sordidly even at heaven, mingled in bringing
about the decision. At any rate, the property was to be sold for a few
hundred dollars.

Getting wind of this decision, Andrew promptly appeared at his brother's
house and offered to buy it. But Mrs. Abigail couldn't think of it.
Andrew had always been her enemy, and though she forgave him, she would
not on any account sell him an inch of the land. It would not be right.
He had claimed that part of it belonged to him, and to let him have it
would be to admit his claim.

"Andrew," she said, "you do not believe in the millennium, and people
say that you are a skeptic. You want to cheat us out of what you think a
valuable piece of property. And you'll find yourself at the last
judgment with the weight of this sin on your heart. You will, indeed!"

"How clearly you reason about other people's duty!" said the
Philosopher. "If you had seen your own duty half so clearly, some of us
would have been better off, and your account would have been
straighter."

Here Mrs. Anderson grew very angry, and vented her spleen in a solemn
exhortation to Andrew to get ready for the coming of the Master, not
three weeks off at the farthest, and she warned him that the archangel
might blow his trumpet at any moment. Then