nthy
Ann's ready," said Jonas with enthusiasm.

And for a moment the look of overstrained scrupulosity on Cynthy Ann's
face relaxed and a strange look of happiness came into her eyes.

And the time was fixed then and there.

Brother Hall was astonished.

And Brother Goshorn drew down his face, and said that he didn't know
what was to become of good, old-fashioned Methodism and the rules of the
Discipline, if the presiding elders talked in that sort of a way. The
church was going to the dogs.

CHAPTER XL.

SELLING OUT.

The flight of the Hawk did not long dampen the ardor of those who were
looking for signs in the heaven above and the earth beneath. I have
known a school-master to stand, switch in hand, and give a stubborn boy
a definite number of minutes to yield. The boy who would not have
submitted on account of any amount of punishment, was subdued by the
awful waiting. We have all read the old school-book story of the
prison-warden who brought a mob of criminals to subjection by the same
process. Millerism produced some such effect as this. The assured belief
of the believers had a great effect on others; the dreadful drawing on
of the set time day by day produced an effect in some regions absolutely
awful. An eminent divine, at that time a pastor in Boston, has told me
that the leaven of Adventism permeated all religious bodies, and that he
himself could not avoid the fearful sense of waiting for some
catastrophe--the impression that all this expectation of people must
have some significance. If this was the effect in Boston, imagine the
effect in a country neighborhood like Clark township. Andrew, skeptical
as he was visionary, was almost the only man that escaped the
infection. Jonas would have been as frankly irreverent if the day of
doom had come as he was at all times; but even Jonas had come to the
conclusion that "somethin' would happen, or else somethin' else."
August, with a young man's impressibility, was awe-stricken with
thoughts of the nearing end of the world, and Julia accepted it
as settled.

It is a good thing that the invisible world is so thoroughly shut out
from this. The effect of too vivid a conception of it is never
wholesome. It was pernicious in the middle age, and clairvoyance and
spirit-rapping would be great evils to the world, if it were not that
the spirits, even of-the ablest men, in losing their bodies seem to lose
their wits. It is well that it is so, for if Washingto