or-house soup for
dinner, and coarse poor-house bread and vile molasses for supper, and
that without change for three years. But I can not tell you how it
seemed that evening to Miss Nancy Sawyer, as the poor English lady sat
in speechless ecstacy, rocking in the old splint-bottomed rocking-chair
in the fire-light, while she pressed to her bosom with all the might of
her enfeebled arms, the form of the little Shocky, who half-sobbed and
half-sang, over and over again, "God ha'n't forgot us, mother; God
ha'n't forgot us."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Some time after this book appeared Dr. Brown-Sequard
announced his theory of the dual brain. A writer in an English magazine
called attention to the fact that the discovery had been anticipated by
an imaginative writer, and cited the passage in the text as proving that
the author of "The Hoosier School-Master" had outrun Dr. Brown-Sequard
in perceiving the duality of the brain. It is a matter for surprise that
an author, even an "imaginative" one, should have made so great a
discovery without suspecting its meaning until it was explained by some
one else.]

[Footnote 25: The reader may be interested to know that "Phil" was drawn
from the life, as was old Mowley and in part "General Jackson" also.
Between 1867 and 1870, I visited many jails and poor-houses with
philanthropic purpose, publishing the results of my examination in some
cases in _The Chicago Tribune_. Some of the abuses pointed out were
reformed, others linger till this day, I believe.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN.

The Methodist church to which Mrs. Matilda White and Miss Nancy Sawyer
belonged was the leading one in Lewisburg, as it was in most county-seat
villages in Indiana. If I may be permitted to express my candid and
charitable opinion of the difference between the two women, I shall have
to use the old Quaker locution, and say that Miss Sawyer was a Methodist
and likewise a Christian; Mrs. White was a Methodist, but I fear she was
not likewise.

As to the first part of this assertion, there was no room to doubt Miss
Nancy's piety. She could get happy in class-meeting (for who had a
better right?), and could witness a good experience in the quarterly
love-feast. But it is not upon these grounds that I base my opinion of
Miss Nancy. Do not even the Pharisees the same? She never dreamed that
she had any right to speak of "Christian Perfection" (which, as Mrs.
Partington said of total de