of several inches right out of the ground, as stiff as a poker, straight
up and down, with a spick and span new green coat and a red nose, as
proud as Lucifer. Well, I call all upstarts 'hops,' and I believe it's
only "hops" arter all that's scorny.

"Yes, I kinder like an English country church, only it's a leetle, jist
a leetle too old fashioned for me. Folks look a leetle too much like
grandfather Slick, and the boys used to laugh at him, and call him a
benighted Britisher. Perhaps that's the cause of my prejudice, and yet I
must say, British or no British, it tante bad, is it?

"The meetin' houses 'our side of the water,' no matter where, but away
up in the back country, how teetotally different they be! bean't they?
A great big, handsome wooden house, chock full of winders, painted so
white as to put your eyes out, and so full of light within, that inside
seems all out-doors, and no tree nor bush, nor nothin' near it but
the road fence, with a man to preach in it, that is so strict and
straight-laced he will do _any thing_ of a week day, and _nothin'_ of
a Sunday. Congregations are rigged out in their spic and span bran new
clothes, silks, satins, ribbins, leghorns, palmetters, kiss-me-quicks,
and all sorts of rigs, and the men in their long-tail-blues, pig-skin
pads calf-skin boots and sheep-skin saddle-cloths. Here they publish a
book of fashions, there they publish 'em in meetin'; and instead of a
pictur, have the rael naked truth.

"Preacher there don't preach morals, because that's churchy, and he
don't like neither the church nor its morals; but he preaches doctrine,
which doctrine is, there's no Christians but themselves. Well, the
fences outside of the meetin' house, for a quarter of a mile or so,
each side of the house, and each side of the road, ain't to be seen for
hosses and waggons, and gigs hitched there; poor devils of hosses
that have ploughed, or hauled, or harrowed, or logged, or snaked, or
somethin' or another all the week, and rest of a Sunday by alterin'
their gait, as a man rests on a journey by a alterin' of his sturup, a
hole higher or a hole lower. Women that has all their finery on can't
walk, and some things is ondecent. It's as ondecent for a woman to
be seen walkin' to meetin', as it is to be caught at--what shall I
say?--why caught at attendin' to her business to home.

"The women are the fust and the last to meetin'; fine clothes cost
sunthin', and if they ain't showed, what's the