when ye was het, an' het ye when ye was
cold. I knowed all that, o' course--any fool knows it. But--will
ye b'l'eve it?--I was more 'n twenty-one year old, a man growed,
'fore I foun' out why 't was that away. Father an' mother was
Christian folks, good out-an'-out Calv'nist Baptists from over
East'n way. They fetched me up right, made me go to meetin' an'
read a chapter every Sunday, an' say a hymn Sat'day night a'ter
washin'; an' I useter say my prayers mos' nights. I wa'n't a bad
boy as boys go. But nobody thought o' tellin' me the one thing,
jest the one single thing, that 'd ha' made all the diffunce. I
knowed about God, an' how he made me an' made the airth, an'
everything an' once I got thinkin' about that, an' I asked my
father if God made the fishes. He said 'course he did, the sea an'
all that in 'em is; but somehow that did n't seem to mean nothin'
much to me, an' I lost my int'rist agin. An' I read the Scripter
account o' Jonah an' the big fish, an' all that in Job about
pullin' out levi'thing with a hook an' stickin' fish spears in his
head, an' some parts in them queer books nigh the end o' the ole
Test'ment about fish-ponds an' fish-gates an' fish-pools, an' how
the fishers shall l'ment--everything I could pick out about fishin'
an' seen; but it did n't come home to me; 't wa'n't my kind o'
fishin' an' I did n't seem ter sense it.

"But one day--it's more 'n forty year ago now, but I rec'lect it
same 's 't was yest'day, an' I shall rec'lect it forty thousand
year from now if I 'm 'round, an' I guess I shall be--I
heerd--suthin'--diffunt. I was down in the village one Sunday; it
wa'n't very good fishin'--the streams was too full; an' I thought I
'd jest look into the meetin'-house 's I went by. 'T was the ole
union meetin'-house, down to the corner, ye know, an' they had n't
got no reg'lar s'pply, an' ye never knowed what sort ye 'd hear, so
't was kind o' excitin'.

"'T was late, 'most 'leven o'clock, an' the sarm'n had begun.
There was a strange man a-preachin', some one from over to the
hotel. I never heerd his name, I never seed him from that day to
this; but I knowed his face. Queer enough I 'd seed him a-fishin'.
I never knowed he was a min'ster; he did n't look like one. He
went about like a real fisherman, with ole clo'es an' an ole hat
with hooks stuck in it, an' big rubber boots, an' he fished, reely
fished, I mean--ketched 'em. I guess 't was that made me liss'n a
leetle sharp