unshine, from the winds, plenty to eat and warm of
nights on your boats and in your cabins. It's easy to remember the
little evil things, the punishments that are visited upon us for our
sins or because we're ignorant and don't know; but reckon up the
happiness you have, the times you are blessed with riches of comfort and
pleasure, and you'll find yourself so much happier than you are sad that
you'll know how well you are cared for.

"I cayn't preach no reg'lar sermon, with text-tes and singing and all
that. Seems like I jes' want to talk along rambling like, and tell you
how happy you are all, for I don't reckon you're much wickeder than you
are friendly on the average. I keep a-hearing about murdering and
stealing and whiskey boating and such things. They're signs of the
world's sinfulness. We talk a heap about such things; they're real, of
course, and we cayn't escape them. At the same time, look at me!

"I came down here, sorry with myse'f, and you make me glad, not asking
if I'd done meanness or if I'd betrayed my friends. You 'lowed I was
jes' a man, same's you. I couldn't tell you how to be good, because I
wasn't no great shakes myse'f, and the worse I was the better you got.
Buck an' Jock gives me this boat for a mission boat; I'm ignorant, an' a
woman gives me----"

He choked up. What the woman had given him was too immeasurable and too
wonderful for mere words to express his gratitude.

"I'm just one of those shoutin', ignorant mountain parsons. I could
out-whoop most of them up yonder. But down yeah, Old Mississip' don't
let a man shout out. When yo' play dance music, hit's softer and sweeter
than some of those awful mountain hymns in which we condemn lost souls
to the fire. Course, the wicked goes to hell, but somehow I cayn't git
up much enthusiasm about that down yeah. What makes my heart rejoice is
that there's so much goodness around that I bet 'most anybody's got a
right smart chanct to get shut of slippin' down the claybanks into
hell."

"Jest Prebol?" someone asked, seeing Prebol's face in the window of the
little red shanty-boat moored close by, where he, too, could listen.

"Jest Prebol's been my guide down the riveh," the Prophet retorted. "I
can say that I only wish I could be as good a pilot for poor souls and
sinners toward heaven as Jest is a river pilot for a wandering old
mountain parson on the Mississippi----"

"Hi-i-i!" a score of voices laughed, and someone shouted, "So row me
dow