en within striking distance.

I have known Christians to turn their children from their doors,
especially a daughter, and then get down on their knees and pray to God
to watch over them and help them. I will never ask God to help my
children unless I am doing my level best in that same wretched line. I
will tell you what I say to my girls: "Go where you will; do what crime
you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; in all the storms
and winds and earthquakes of life, no matter what you do, you never can
commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms or my heart to you.
As long as I live you have one sincere friend." Call me an atheist;
call me an infidel because I hate the God of the Jew--which I do. I
intend so to live that when I die my children can come to my grave and
truthfully say: "He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain."

When I was a boy there was one day in each week too good for a child to
be happy in. In these good old times Sunday commenced when the sun
went down on Saturday night and closed when the sun went down on Sunday
night. We commenced Saturday to get a good ready. And when the sun
went down Saturday night there was a gloom deeper than midnight that
fell upon the house. You could not crack hickory nuts then. And if
you were caught chewing gum, it was only another evidence of the total
depravity of the human heart. Well, after a while we got to bed sadly
and sorrowfully after having heard Heaven thanked that we were not all
in Hell. And I sometimes used to wonder how the mercy of God lasted as
long as it did, because I recollected that on several occasions I had
not been at school, when I was supposed to be there. Why I was not
burned to a crisp was a mystery to me. The next morning we got ready
for church--all solemn, and when we got there the minister was up in
the pulpit, about twenty feet high, and he commenced at Genesis about
"The fall of man," and he went on to about twenty thirdly; then he
struck the second application, and when he struck the application I
knew he was about half way through. And then he went on to show the
scheme how the Lord was satisfied by punishing the wrong man. Nobody
but a God would have thought of that ingenious way. Well, when he got
through that, then came the catechism--the chief end of man. Then my
turn came, and we sat along on a little bench where our feet came
within about fifteen inches of the floor, and the dear old mi