ises all night long, that none of us had got a wink of sleep.

"Look," says she; "unless you are born again, and become like one of
these, there will be no chance that you will ever enter the kingdom of
Heaven."

I looked at the lovely children, and I looked at her.

"Excuse me," says I, "the object don't seem quite equal to the trouble.
I have no notion of going backward in my life. In the first place I was
too handsome a baby in the beginning to hanker after a change, and since
then--I say nothing; but really, I have seen a good many people that
claim to have been born again, and, so far as I can judge, they don't
look a mite better, or a day younger, after taking all the trouble,
which is discouraging."

"Discouraging!" said the woman; "why, you are talking of regeneration!
Come--come with me to the anxious-seat--hundreds are flocking there
now."

"Excuse me," says I, "if you please. Crabs may change their shells, and
snakes creep out of their skins--I rather think they do sometimes--but
born-again females look so much like the old pattern, that it don't seem
to me worth trying after one is grown up."

"Many an older person than you are has been born again," says she.

"You don't say so," says I, a-fanning myself with a palm-leaf, for every
drop of blood in my body grew hot when she talked about my age, and I
was mad enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two with my front teeth.

"Yes, I do say so, humble as I am," says Sugar-scoop. "Look out there.
See those women in Israel--three precious souls, just gathered into the
fold. For two days they have been constantly at the redemption-seat. The
spirit is upon them now. Their souls are struggling to be free. Before
another morning they will be born again."

I looked at a group of women she pointed out, and the human nature
within me yeasted over. They were three of the homeliest creatures I
ever set eyes on--long and lank, with faces like sour baked-apples.

"Oh, my beloved sister," says Sugar-scoop, a-laying her cotton-gloved
hand on mine; "can you look on that heavenly sight and not pray to be
like unto them?"

I shook the cotton glove from my arm, and the hand that was in it, just
as St. Paul shook off the viper.

"Like them, madam--like them! If I were one-half as lank and homely, I
should want to be born again once a week, at least."

Sugar-scoop lifted both hands in awful horror.

"There are souls," says she, "given up to eternal darkness, I fear. Oh,