ake him home in
his spring wagon. Brother Gyardner all this time was lookin' round for
young Amos, but he wasn't to be found high nor low, and that set folks
to laughin' again, and so many havin' to leave, the babtizin' was
clean broke up. Milly come up jest as Sam was gittin' into Old Man
Bob's wagon, and says she, 'Well, Sam, you've ruined your Sunday pants
this time.' And Sam says, 'Pants nothin'. The rest o' you all can save
your Sunday pants if you want to, but this here's a free country, and
I ain't goin' to stand by and see a man babtized against his will
while I'm able to save him.' And if Sam'd saved Amos' life, instead o'
jest savin' him from babtism, Amos couldn't 'a' been gratefuler. When
Sam broke his arm the follerin' summer, Amos went over and set up
with him at night, and let his own wheat stand while he harvested
Sam's.

"Well, the next time the 'Sociation met, the Babtists had somethin'
new to talk about. Old Brother Gyardner got up, and says he,
'Brethren, there's a question that's been botherin' me for some time,
and I'd like to hear it discussed and git it settled, if possible;'
and says he, 'If a man should be babtized accidentally, and against
his will, would he be a Babtist? or would he not?' And they begun to
argue it, and they had it up and down, and some was of one opinion and
some of another. Brother Gyardner said he was inclined to think that
babtism made a man a Babtist, but old Brother Bascom said if a man
wasn't a Babtist in his heart, all the water in the sea wouldn't make
him one. And Brother Gyardner said that was knockin' the props clean
from under the Babtist faith. 'For,' says he, 'if bein' a Babtist in
the heart makes a man a Babtist, then babtism ain't necessary to
salvation, and if babtism ain't necessary, what becomes o' the Babtist
church?'

"Somebody told Amos about the dispute they was havin' over his case,
and Amos says, 'If them fool Babtists want that question settled, let
'em come to me.' Says he, 'My father and mother was Presbyterians,
and my grandfather and grandmother and great-grandfather and
great-grandmother on both sides; I was sprinkled in infancy, and I
j'ined the Presbyterian church as soon as I come to the age of
accountability, and if you was to carry me over to Jerusalem and
babtize me in the river Jordan itself, I'd still be a Presbyterian.'"

Here Aunt Jane paused to laugh again. "There's some things, child,"
she said, as she wiped her glasses, "that p