"
"I thought not. You haven't got things right at all. You haven't been
converted: that's what's the matter with you."
"Do you mean, Deacon," said Sam, after a moment, "that what I'm
believin' about Jesus is all wrong an' there ain't nothin' in it?"
"Why, no; I can't say that," the deacon replied, "but--but you've
begun wrong end first. What a sinner needs most of all is to know about
his hereafter."
"It's what's goin' on now, from day to day, that weighs hardest on me,
deacon. There's nothin' hard about dyin'; leastways, you'd think so if
you was built like me, an' felt like I have to feel sometimes."
"You're all wrong," said the deacon. "If you can't understand these
things for yourself, you ought to take the word of wiser men for it."
"S'posin' I was to do that about everythin': then when Judge Prency,
who's a square man an' a good deal smarter than I be, talks politics to
me, I ought to be a Republican instead of a Jackson Democrat."
"No," said the deacon, sharply, for he was a Jackson Democrat himself.
"I'll have to talk more to you about this, Samuel. Good night."
"Good night, deacon."
"He knows more'n you do about religion," said Mrs. Kimper, who had
followed closely behind, and who rejoined her husband as soon as the
deacon departed.
"He ought to, seein' his head-piece an' chances; an' yet I've heerd
some pooty hard things said about him.
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