do not wish to give offence.
I have something else now to occupy my time besides talking for your
entertainment."

"O, by all means, brother," said the reverend roarer, "tell what you
experience; we will not be displeased, but I hope edified. I have
prayed earnestly to the Lord Jesus for thee, and he has answered me--I
have been heard."

"Well, my experience and conviction are, that there is no real religion,
but superstition or infidelity, in all the sects that I ever yet knew
around here. My experience is, that I led a very worthless and careless
life, for which I expect God's pardon; but I fear ye parsons will have a
hard account to settle for the contradiction and confusion ye have
introduced into the Christian religion. Ye first attempted to make an
infidel of me, by your glaring contradictions and hypocritical
pretensions; and now, on the very brink of eternity, ye would deceive my
soul into the delusion that I am fit for glory direct, in the blossom of
my sins, 'unhouselled, unanointed, and unannealed.' Retire from my
presence, ye deceivers, and make way for the minister of God's church,
who can absolve me from my sins in the person of Christ, give me his
true body to repair the ruins in my own body and soul, and strengthen
me, by the oil of faith, against the terrible struggle that I must
encounter, and the awful journey over which I must pass. O Lord," he
cried, "forgive these persecutors of my soul; and, O virgin mother of
Jesus, obtain for me to confess my sins and repent ere I die."

All were astonished at the foregoing impassioned speech of uncle Jacob.
The parson retired like an evil spirit exorcised by the powerful words
of holy writ. The room was empty, and the priest was soon after at the
dying man's bedside. After a full, sincere, and humble confession,
conditional baptism was administered; and, confirmed by all the rites of
the church, purified by penance, strengthened by the holy eucharist, and
healed by the holy unction of heaven, that pure soul passed away to God
in two days after, having become speechless in about an hour after the
administration of the sacrament.

"Now," said the priest, addressing Paul, "did I not tell you God had
some mysterious design in view by the succession of trials which he
enabled you to pass through? But for you, probably, this good soul would
not have heard of the Catholic church; but for your mother's death you
could not be out here, where the malice of those who