humorously over me, and then kiss me as if I
was still young and beautiful.

Never in all our married life did he get the best of me in an argument.
His arguing faculty was not highly developed. It was easier to silence
him than to stir him into opposing speech. But whenever he entered the
sacred parsonage parlor and closed the door after him, I always knew he
would have the best of me one way or another when he came out.

But it was not this faith in prayer that confused me most, it was the
answers that William, and others like him, received to their prayers.
We never went to any church where there was not at least one man or
woman who knew, actually knew, how to reach his or her empty hands up
to God and get them filled. And they were always people of rare
dignity in the community, although some of them bordered on the
simplicity of childhood mentally.

I recall in this connection Sister Carleton. She was a very old woman
who seemed to have settled down to be mostly below her waist. Her
shoulders were thin, her bosom flat, but she widened out in the hips
amazingly. Her face was the most beautifully wrinkled countenance I
ever beheld. Every line seemed to enhance some celestial quality in
her expression. And she had the dim look of the very old after they
begin to recede spiritually from the ruthlessness of mere realities.
She had palsy and used to sit in the Amen Corner of the church at
Eureka, gently, incessantly wagging her lovely old head beneath a
little black horseshoe bonnet that was tied under her chin with long
black ribbons. Sabbath after Sabbath, year after year she was always
to be seen there, sweetly abstracted like an old saint in a dream. She
had one thought, one purpose left in life. This was to live to see all
of her "boys saved." These were three middle-aged men, all of whom had
been wild in their youth. Her one connection now with the church was
expressed, not by any personal interest in the preacher or his sermons,
but in this thought for her children. Some time during every
experience meeting we always knew that Sister Carleton would rise
trembling to her feet, steady herself with both hands on the bench in
front of her, look about her vaguely and ask the prayers of "all
Christian people" that her boys might repent and be saved from their
sins. They were already excellent and prosperous citizens and
remarkable for their devotion to her, but she was not the woman to
mince matters.