stop calling him "Thomas
Jefferson." To be sure, it was his name, or at least two-thirds of it;
but he liked the "Buddy" of his father, or the "Tom-Jeff" of other
people a vast deal better.

Further, the thought of studying Sunday lessons begot rebellion. At
times, as during those soul-stirring revival weeks, now seemingly
receding into a far-away past, he had moments of yearning to be wholly
sanctified. But the miracle of transformation which he had confidently
expected as the result of his "coming through" was still unwrought. When
John Bates or Simeon Cantrell undertook to bully him, as aforetime,
there was the same intoxicating experience of all the visible world
going blood-red before his eyes--the same sinful desire to slay them,
one or both. And as for Sunday lessons on a day when all outdoors was
beckoning--

He stole a glance at the open window of the living-room. His mother had
gone about her housework, and he could hear her singing softly, as
befitted the still, warm day:

"O for a heart to praise my God!"

and it nettled him curiously. All hymns were beginning to have that
effect, and this one in particular always renewed the conflict between
the yearning for sanctity and a desire to do something desperately
wicked; the only middle course lay in flight. Hence, the battle being
fairly on, he stole another glance at the window, sprang afoot, and ran
silently around the house and through the peach orchard to clamber over
the low stone wall which was the only barrier on that side between the
wilderness and the sown.

Once under the trees on the mountain side, the pious prompting knocked
less clamorously at the door of his heart; and with its abatement the
temptation to say or do the desperate thing became less insistent, also.
It was always that way. When he was by himself in the forest, with no
particularly gnawing hunger for righteousness, the devil let him alone.
The thick wood was the true whisk to brush away all the naggings and
perplexities that swarmed, like house-flies in the cleared lands. Nance
Jane, the cow that did not know enough to come home at milking-time,
knew that. In the hot weather, when the blood-sucking horse-flies and
sweat-bees were worst, she would crash through the thickest underbrush
and so be swept clean of her tormentors.

Emulating Nance Jane, Thomas Jefferson stormed through the nearest
sassafras thicket and emerged regenerate. What next? High up on the
mountain