more like that of a campmeeting
Methodist than any other disciple's. As a child its presence there at
the end of the shaded village street was real to me, like my mother's.
I did not repent in it as one must do in a Methodist or Baptist church,
but I grew up in it like a daughter in the house of the Lord. As a
girl on Sabbath mornings I entered it with all the mincing worldliness
of my young mind unabashed. Later I was "confirmed" in it and
experienced some of the vanity of that high spiritual calm which
attends quick conversions in other churches. And to this day there is
something ineffably sweet and whimsically inconsistent to me in an
Episcopal saint. The fastidious stamina of their spirituality which
never interferes with their worldliness is so satisfyingly human.
Piety renders them increasingly graceful in manners and appearance. In
Heaven I believe Episcopalian saints will be distinguished from all
others by stiff ruffs worn around their redeemed necks.

But all was different in the church to which William belonged, and in
which he had been brought up for three generations. The "best
families" are never in the majority there. You will find, instead,
besides a few "prominent members," the poor, the simple-minded, the
ne'er-do-wells morally, who have always flocked to the Methodist fold
for this pitying reason, because they find that, if fallen, it is
easier to rise in grace according to the doctrines of that church.

So, while William's father and further fathers had been engaged in the
tedious mercy of healing and rehealing these lame, indigent souls
according to various hallelujah plans, my mother and foremothers had
been engaged in embroidering altar-cloths and in making durable Dorcas
aprons for the unknown poor. This made the difference in our natures
that love bridged. That is the wonderful thing about love--it comes so
tremendously new and directly from God to recreate in us, and it is so
divinely unprejudiced by what our ancestors did religiously or
sacrilegiously.

To all appearances it would have been better for William if he had
chosen for his wife one of those pallid prayer-meeting virgins who so
naturally keep their lamps trimmed and burning before the pulpits of
unmarried preachers. They are really the best women to be found in any
church. They never go astray, they are the gentle maiden sisters of
all souls, the faded feminine love-psalms of a benighted ministry who
wither and grow o