f he had one stick,
since Thanksgivin', and I'd sent her two o' my best moulds of
candles,--nice ones that Cerinthy Ann run when we killed a crittur; but
nothin' would do but the Deacon must get right out his warm bed and
dress himself, and hitch up his team to carry over some wood to Beulah.
Says I, 'Father, you know you'll be down with the rheumatis for this;
besides, Beulah is real aggravatin'. I know she trades off what we send
her to the store for rum, and you never get no thanks. She 'xpects,
'cause we has done for her, we always must; and more we do, more we may
do.' And says he to me, says he, 'That's jest the way we sarves the
Lord, Polly; and what if He shouldn't hear us when we call on Him in
our troubles?' So I shet up; and the next day he was down with the
rheumatis. And Cerinthy Ann, says she, 'Well, father, _now_ I hope
you'll own you have got _some_ disinterested benevolence,' says she;
and the Deacon he thought it over a spell, and then he says, 'I'm
'fraid it's all selfish. I'm jest a-makin' a righteousness of it.' And
Cerinthy Ann she come out, declarin' that the best folks never had no
comfort in religion; and for her part she didn't mean to trouble her
head about it, but have jest as good a time as she could while she's
young, 'cause if she was 'lected to be saved she should be, and if she
wa'n't she couldn't help it, any how."

"Mr. Brown says he came onto Dr. H.'s ground years ago," said Mrs.
Brown, giving a nervous twitch to her yarn, and speaking in a sharp,
hard, didactic voice, which made little Mrs. Twitchel give a gentle
quiver, and look humble and apologetic. "Mr. Brown's a master thinker;
there's nothing pleases that man better than a hard doctrine; he says
you can't get 'em too hard for him. He don't find any difficulty in
bringing his mind up; he just reasons it out all plain; and he says,
people have no need to be in the dark; and that's _my_ opinion. 'If
folks know they ought to come up to anything, why _don't_ they?' he
says; and I say so too."

"Mr. Scudder used to say that it took great afflictions to bring his
mind to that place," said Mrs. Katy. "He used to say that an old
paper-maker told him once, that paper that was shaken only one way in
the making would tear across the other, and the best paper had to be
shaken every way; and so he said we couldn't tell, till we had been
turned and shaken and tried every way, where we should tear."

Mrs. Twitchel responded to this sentimen