spot,
and the Proverbs _are_ first-rate. I tell _you_ he knew something of
human nature, that wrote _them_."

"There's one thing you might have learned, before you got far over in
Genesis," said Mrs Nasmyth, gravely, "that you are a condemned sinner.
You should have settled that matter with yourself, before you began to
look for comfort."

"Yes. I knew that before, but I couldn't seem to make it go. Then I
thought, maybe I didn't understand it right, so I talked with folks and
went to meeting, and did the best I could, thinking surely what other
folks had got, and I hadn't, would come sometime. But it didn't. The
talking, and the going to meeting, didn't help me.

"Now there's Deacon Sterne; he'd put it right to me. He'd say, says he,
`Sampson, you're a sinner, you know you be. You've got to give up, and
bow that stiff neck o' your'n to the yoke.' Well, `I'd say, I'd be glad
to, if I only knew how to.' Then he'd say, `But you can't do it
yourself, no how. You're clay in the hands of the potter, and you'll
have to perish, if the Lord don't take right hold to save you.' Then
says I, `I wish to mercy He would.' Then he'd talk and talk, but it all
came to about that, `I must, and I couldn't,' and it didn't help me a
mite.

"That was a spell ago, after Captain Jennings' folks went West. I
wanted to go awfully, but father he was getting old, and mother she
wouldn't hear a word of it. I was awful discontented, and then, after a
spell, worse came, and I tell _you_, I'd ha' given most anything, to
have got religion, just to have had something to hold on to."

Mr Snow paused. There was no doubting his earnestness now. Janet did
not speak, and in a little while he went on again.

"I'd give considerable, just to be sure there's anything in getting
religion. Sometimes I seem to see that there is, and then again I
think, why don't it help folks more. Now, there's Deacon Sterne, he's
one of the best of them. He wouldn't swerve a hair, from what he
believed to be right, not to save a limb. He is one of the real old
Puritan sort, not a mite like Fish and Slowcome. But he ain't one of
the meek and lowly, I can tell you. And he's made some awful mistakes
in his lifetime. He's been awful hard and strict in his family. His
first children got along pretty well. Most of them were girls, and
their mother was a smart woman, and stood between them and their
father's hardness. And besides, in those days when the