frock. Her hair was twisted and bound into two upright tags
that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a
gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the
aforementioned _antennae_, albeit lessened by the baby she always carried
on some portion of her wiry frame. She was the toughest, most supple,
and most versatile creature I ever saw, of any color or clime. The baby
was disposed decorously across her knees on this occasion, and she was
one of the five auditors who had brought along their own crickets or
chairs. She had confiscated some older woman's splint-bottomed
rocking-chair and lugged it to the very front, as she had a right to do.

I had heard Mam' Chloe say of one of Rev. Wesley Greene's sermons, "I
tell you, Miss Ma'y, the Sperrit struck him that day, an' he jes'
_r'arred_!"

Something struck my worthy lieutenant during my reading of the white,
red, black, and pale horses of the Apocalypse and their awesome riders,
and the others following her lead, my voice was drowned by the
"Hum-_hums_!" and "Glorys!" and "Hallelujahs!" and "Bless de Lords!"
arising from all sides.

"It isn't polite for folks in the seats to talk louder than the
preacher," I had to admonish them in my natural voice and manner. "I
hope you won't be so noisy while I'm preaching."

Nevertheless, when I gave out my text, the struck Mariposa, rolling
from side to side with the motion of a "weaving" horse on her
rocking-chair--that squeaked dismally--was so wrought upon by the ring
of unknown and high-sounding syllables as to set up a dreary drone like
the hum of an exaggerated bumblebee, and to keep it up. This did not
disconcert me. I had expected to stir the imagination of my hearers, for
my own was aglow.

Mary 'Liza, in reciting her geography lesson on Friday, had several
times spoken of "Van Diemen's Land." Without the remotest conception of
where or what it was--whether continent, or island, or town--I fastened,
in fancy, upon her words, and constructed a hypothesis relative to the
mysterious locality. Why I should have strung it upon the same strand of
condemnation and doom with Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, Capernaum
and Chorazin, I may have known then. I have no idea now why this was
done, or the derivation of the inclusive curse.

Van Diemen's Land, thus damned, fell naturally into line with the "Come
and see!" of the "living creatures," and the "Death and Hell," and the
prophecy of killing