I demanded coldly.

He gave some stammering reply. But that was the beginning of the end
of his spiritual peace in our house. After that I consistently
punctured his ecstasies, quoting some of the sternest Scriptures I
could remember to confound him.

William remonstrated with me. He said Dunn said my lack of
spirituality "depressed him."

"And, William, his lack of reverence incenses me. If you don't get rid
of that cotton haloed evangelist everybody in this town will claim a
'blessing' without repenting or being converted," I replied.

Fortunately Dunn dismissed himself. He said that it was impossible to
have a revival in such an atmosphere. He implied as plainly as he
could that he was sorry for William, accepted the sum of ten dollars
which had been promised him for his services and left.

I have never known what to think of such preachers. No one who ever
knew one can doubt his sincerity. But they cultivate a kind of
spiritual idiocy and frenzy that is more damaging to souls than any
amount of hypocrisy.

I have always been thankful that the joy of William in the religious
life was a stern and great thing, no more resembling this lightness,
this flippancy than integrity resembles folly.

CHAPTER XIV

CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT THE NATURE OF A PRIEST

What we call history is a sorry part of literature, confined to a few
great wars and movements in national life and to the important events
in the lives of a few important people. The common man has never
starred his role in it. Therefore, it has never been written according
to the scientific method. It is simply the spray--the big
splash--humanity throws up as it goes down in the sea forever. It is
what most of us do and what we think perishes with us, leaving not a
record behind of the little daily deeds and wingflappings of our
spirits that really make us what we are. This is why we make so little
progress. The history of the great majority is never compiled for
reference. We are always bunched in a paragraph, while the rest of the
chapter is given to his Excellency the President, or some other
momentary figure of the times.

Nobody knows exactly how the planters of Thomas Jefferson's day lived.
We must depend upon fiction to give a sort of romantic impression of
it. And fifty years from now no one will know how the farmers and
brickmasons, grocers and merchants, managed their affairs in our own
times. We shall be obliged to accept the s