gation. Indeed, if the desire "to eat with sinners"
insured salvation, there would be less cause for alarm about my miraculous
future state. The attraction, you understand, depends not upon the fact of
their being sinners, but upon the sincerity of their mortality. The more
unassumingly these reprobates live in their share of the common flesh, far
below spiritual pretences, the more does my wayward mind tip the scales of
unregenerate humour in their direction. My instincts hobnob with their
dust. But do not infer that I have identified you with these undisciplined
characters. When I was a child, out of the rancour of a well-tutored
Southern imagination I honestly believed that every man the other side of
Mason and Dixon's line had a blue complexion, thin legs, and a long tail.
And once when I was still very young, as I hurried from school through a
lonely wood, I actually _saw_ one of these monsters quite plainly. And I
thought I observed that his tail was slightly forked at the end! I have
long since forgiven you these terrifying caudal appendages, of course,
but, for all that, I keep a wary eye upon my heavenly bodies and at least
one wing stretched even unto this day when my guardian angel introduces a
Northern man. My patriotic instincts recommend at once the wisdom of
strategy. And it is well the "personal demands" come from me to you; for,
had the direction been reversed, by this time I should have sought refuge
somewhere in my last ditch and run up a little tattered flag of rebellion
to signify the state of my mind.

It is just as well that you advise me against trying my fortunes in your
"literary metropolis." My father is set with all his scriptures against
the idea. "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal
life"; and, having predestined me for a deaconess in his church, he is
firmly convinced that the strait and narrow way for me does not lie in the
direction of New York. However, I have already whispered to my
confidential hole-in-the-ground that nothing but the extremity of old-maid
desperation will ever induce me to accept the vocation of a deaconess.
Thus do a man's children play hide and seek with the beam in his eye while
he practises upon the mote in theirs! But if, some day when the heavens
are doubtful between sun and rain, you espy a little ruffled rainbow,
propelled by a goose-quill pen, coquetting northward with the retiring
clouds, know that 'tis the spirit of Jessica Doane ar