hopeless as to the best way of
inculcating the undesirability of the Adamic plane of thought at this
early age. "While we stay here, Sue, we ought both to be very careful to
do exactly as the Shakers do."

By this time mother and child had reached the orchard end of a row,
and Brother Ansel was thirstily waiting to deliver a little more of the
information with which his mind was always teeming.

"Them Boston people that come over to our public meetin' last Sunday,"
he began, "they was dretful scairt 'bout what would become o' the human
race if it should all turn Shakers. 'I guess you need n't worry,' I
says; 'it'll take consid'able of a spell to convert all you city folks,'
I says, 'an' after all, what if the world should come to an end?' I
says. 'If half we hear is true 'bout the way folks carry on in New York
and Chicago, it's 'bout time it stopped,' I says, 'an' I guess the
Lord could do a consid'able better job on a second one,' I says, 'after
findin' out the weak places in this.' They can't stand givin' up their
possessions, the world's folks; that's the principal trouble with 'em!
If you don't have nothin' to give up, like some o' the tramps that
happen along here and convince the Elder they're jest bustin' with the
fear o' God, why, o' course 't ain't no trick at all to be a Believer."

"Did you have much to give up, Brother Ansel?" Susanna asked. "'Bout's
much as any sinner ever had that jined this Community," replied Ansel,
complacently. "The list o' what I consecrated to this Society when I was
gathered in was: One horse, one wagon, one two-year-old heifer, one axe,
one saddle, one padlock, one bed and bedding, four turkeys, eleven hens,
one pair o' plough-irons, two chains, and eleven dollars in cash. Can
you beat that?"

"Oh, yes, things," said Susanna, absent-mindedly. "I was thinking of
family and friends, pleasures and memories and ambitions and hopes."

"I guess it don't pinch you any worse to give up a hope than it would a
good two-year-old heifer," retorted Ansel; "but there, you can't never
tell what folks'll hang on to the hardest! The man that drove them
Boston folks over here last Sunday, did you notice him? the one that had
the sister with a bright red dress an' hat on?--Land! I could think just
how hell must look whenever my eye lighted on that girl's gitup!--Well,
I done my best to exhort that driver, bein' as how we had a good chance
to talk while we was hitchin' an' unhitchin' the team; a