you cure their mumps; an' if you're hard-bitted an' can't stop
yourself easy when you're once headed, you may give saffron tea to
bring out the measles whether or no. Think of the prospect, or the
gals, or your soul's salvation, or anythin' but the sick folks,
before you get to 'em the first time and don't know what ails 'em."

In girls Jerome had, so far, no interest; in his soul's salvation he
had little active concern. The revivals which were occasionally
upstirred in the community by prayer, and the besom of threatened
destruction, passed over him like a hot wind, for which he had no
power of sensation, sometimes to his own wonder. Probably the cause
lay in the fact that he was too thoroughly, without knowing it,
rooted and grounded in his own creed to be emotionally moved by
religious appeals. Jerome had, as most have, consciously or not, and
vitally or not, his own creed. He believed simply in the
unquestionable justice of the intent of God, the thwarting struggles
against it by free man, and that his duty to apply his small strength
towards furthering what he could, if no more than an atom, of the
eternal will lay plain before him.

Jerome, who had not yet been disturbed by love of woman, who fretted
not over the salvation of his own soul, had therefore, in order to
follow his mentor's advice, to turn his attention to the prospect.
His way led in an opposite direction from the church, and he was
late, so met none of the worshippers bound to meeting. He was rather
glad of that. After he left the village the road lay through the
woods, and now and then between blueberry-fields or open spaces of
meadow, with green water-lines and shadows purple with violets in the
hollows. Red cows in the meadows stared at him as he passed, with
their mysterious abstraction from all reflection, then grazed again,
moving in one direction from the sun. The blueberry-patches spread a
pale green glimmer of blossoms, like a sheen of satin in a high
light; young ferns curled beside the road like a baby's fingers
grasping at life; the trees, which were late in leafing, also reached
out towards the sun little rosy clasping fingers whereby to hold fast
to the motherhood of the spring. The air was full of that odor so
delicate that it is scarcely an odor at all, much less a fragrance,
which certain so-called scentless plants give out, and then only to
wide recognition when they bloom in multitudes--it was only the
simplest evidence of life