enough,
but after getting laughed at a few times at home for making them
public, I escaped mortification by forming a habit of great reserve as
to my Sabbath-day thoughts.

When the minister read, "Cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?"? I
thought he meant to say "cu-cumbereth." These vegetables grew on the
ground, and I had heard that they were not very good for people to eat.
I honestly supposed that the New Testament forbade the cultivation of
cucumbers.

And "Galilee" I understood as a mispronunciation of "gallery." "Going
up into Galilee" I interpreted into clattering up the uncarpeted stairs
in the meeting-house porch, as the boys did, with their squeaking
brogans, looking as restless as imprisoned monkeys after they had got
into those conspicuous seats, where they behaved as if they thought
nobody could see their pranks. I did not think it could be at all nice
to "go up into Galilee."

I had an "Aunt Nancy," an uncle's wife, to whom I was sometimes sent
for safe-keeping when house-cleaning or anything unusual was going on
at home. She was a large-featured woman, with a very deep masculine
voice, and she conducted family worship herself, kneeling at prayer,
which was not the Orthodox custom.

She always began by saying,--

"Oh Lord, Thou knowest that we are all groveling worms of the dust." I
thought she meant that we all looked like wriggling red earthworms, and
tried to make out the resemblance in my mind, but could not. I
unburdened my difficulty at home, telling the family that "Aunt Nancy
got down on the floor and said we were all grubbelin' worms," begging
to know whether everybody did sometimes have to crawl about in the dust.

A little later, I was much puzzled as to whether I was a Jew or
Gentile. The Bible seemed to divide people into these two classes only.
The Gentiles were not well spoken of: I did not want to be one of them.
The talked about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the rest, away back to
Adam, as if they were our forefathers (there was a time when I thought
that Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were our four fathers); and yet I
was very sure that I was not a Jew. When I ventured to ask, I was told
that we were all Christians or heathen now. That did not help me for I
thought that only grown-up persons could be Christians, from which it
followed that all children must be heathen. Must I think of Myself as a
heathen, then, until I should be old enough to be a Christian? It was a
shoc