them
Rank infidels thet go agin the Scriptur'l cus o' Shem?
Not by a jugfull! sooner 'n thet, I 'd go thru fire an' water;
Wen I hev once made up my mind, a meet'nhus aint sotter;
No, not though all the crows thet flies to pick my bones wuz cawin',--
I guess we 're in a Christian land,--

Yourn,

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN.

[Here, patient reader, we take leave of each other, I trust with some
mutual satisfaction. I say _patient_, for I love not that kind which
skims dippingly over the surface of the page, as swallows over a pool
before rain. By such no pearls shall be gathered. But if no pearls
there be (as, indeed, the world is not without example of books
wherefrom the longest-winded diver shall bring up no more than his
proper handful of mud), yet let us hope that an oyster or two may reward
adequate perseverance. If neither pearls nor oysters, yet is patience
itself a gem worth diving deeply for.

It may seem to some that too much space has been usurped by my own
private lucubrations, and some may be fain to bring against me that old
jest of him who preached all his hearers out of the meeting-house save
only the sexton, who, remaining for yet a little space, from a sense of
official duty, at last gave out also, and, presenting the keys, humbly
requested our preacher to lock the doors, when he should have wholly
relieved himself of his testimony. I confess to a satisfaction in the
self act of preaching, nor do I esteem a discourse to be wholly thrown
away even upon a sleeping or unintelligent auditory. I cannot easily
believe that the Gospel of St. John, which Jacques Cartier ordered to be
read in the Latin tongue to the Canadian savages, upon his first meeting
with them, fell altogether upon stony ground. For the earnestness of the
preacher is a sermon appreciable by dullest intellects and most alien
ears. In this wise did Episcopius convert many to his opinions, who yet
understood not the language in which he discoursed. The chief thing is,
that the messenger believe that he has an authentic message to deliver.
For counterfeit messengers that mode of treatment which Father John de
Plano Carpini relates to have prevailed among the Tartars would seem
effectual, and, perhaps, deserved enough. For my own part, I may lay
claim to so much of the spirit of martyrdom as would have led me to go
into banishment with