was mad; they was all in their high-heeled boots one way
or another, and he enraged 'em more. So he says, finally, 'The Jews
fell,' he says, 'because they wouldn't receive their Messiah, the
Shiloh, the Saviour. They wet their hands,' he says, 'in the best blood
that had flowed through the lineage of Judah, and they had to pay the
cost. And so will you cowards of Illinois,' he says, 'have to pay the
penalty for sheddin' the blood of Joseph Smith, the best blood that has
flowed since the Lord's Christ,' he says. 'The wrath of God,' he says,
'will abide upon you.' The old gentleman was a powerful denouncer when
he was in the spirit of it--"

"Come, come, Keaton, hurry, for God's sake--get on!"

"And he made 'em so mad, a-settin' up there so peart and brave before
'em, givin' 'em as good as they sent--givin' 'em hell right to their
faces, you might say, that at last they made for him, some of them that
you could see had been puttin' a new faucet into the cider barrel. I saw
they meant to do him a mischief--but Lord! what could I do against
fifty, being then in the midst of a chill? Well, they drug him off the
seat, and said, 'Now, you old rat, own up that Holy Joe was a danged
fraud;' or something like that. But he was that sanctified and
stubborn--' Better to suffer stripes for the testimony of Christ,' he
says, 'than to fall by the sin of denial!' Then they drug him to the
bank, one on each side, and says, 'We baptise you in the holy name of
Brockman,' and in they dumped him--backwards, mind you! I saw then they
was in a slippery place where it was deep and the current awful strong.
But they hauled him out, and says again, 'Do you renounce Holy Joe Smith
and all his works?' The poor old fellow couldn't talk a word for the
chill, but he shook his head like sixty--as stubborn as you'd wish. So
they said, 'Damn you! here's another, then. We baptise you in the name
of James K. Polk, President of the United States!' and in they threw him
again. Whether they done it on purpose or not, I wouldn't like to say,
but that time his coat collar slipped out of their hands and down he
went. He came up ten feet down-stream and quite a ways out, and they
hooted at him. I seen him come up once after that, and then they see he
couldn't swim a stroke, but little they cared. And I never saw him
again. I jest took hold of the team and drove it on the boat, scared to
death for what you'd do when you come,--so I kept still and they kept
still.