But the
"Hardshell Baptists," or, as they are otherwise called, the "Whisky
Baptists," and the "Forty-gallon Baptists," exist in all the old Western
and South-western States. They call themselves "Anti-means Baptists"
from their Antinomian tenets. Their confession of faith is a caricature
of Calvinism, and is expressed by their preachers about as follows: "Ef
you're elected, you'll be saved; ef you a'n't, you'll be damned. God'll
take keer of his elect. It's a sin to run Sunday-schools, or temp'rince
s'cieties, or to send missionaries. You let God's business alone. What
is to be will be, and you can't hender it." This writer has attended a
Sunday-school, the superintendent of which was solemnly arraigned and
expelled from the Hardshell Church for "meddling with God's business" by
holding a Sunday-school. Of course the Hardshells are prodigiously
illiterate, and often vicious. Some of their preachers are notorious
drunkards. They sing their sermons out sometimes for three hours at a
stretch[21].

Ralph found that he was to ride the "clay-bank mare," the only one of
the horses that would "carry double," and that consequently he would
have to take Miss Hawkins behind him. If it had been Hannah instead,
Ralph might not have objected to this "young Lochinvar" mode of riding
with a lady on "the croup," but Martha Hawkins was another affair. He
had only this consolation; his keeping the company of Miss Hawkins might
serve to disarm the resentment of Bud. At all events, he had no choice.
What designs the Squire had in this arrangement he could not tell; but
the clay-bank mare carried him to meeting on that December morning,
with Martha Hawkins behind. And as Miss Hawkins was not used to this
mode of locomotion, she was in a state of delightful fright every time
the horse sank to the knees in the soft, yellow Flat Creek clay.

"We don't go to church so at the East," she said. "The mud isn't so deep
at the East. When I was to Bosting--" but Ralph never heard what
happened when she was to Bosting, for just as she said Bosting the mare
put her foot into a deep hole molded by the foot of the Squire's horse,
and already full of muddy water.

As the mare's foot went twelve inches down into this track, the muddy
water spurted higher than Miss Hawkins's head, and mottled her dress
with golden spots of clay. She gave a little shriek, and declared that
she had never "seen it so at the East."

The journey seemed a little long to Ralph,