agin, an' he
works terrible hard to make us feel that we'd rather be sprinkled on the
head than go under all over. A nice-mannered man he is, with a pretty
face, an' some folks hold it to be a pity that we can't change our ideas
about baptism and become Episcopals in our hearts, jest to oblige him.
The women have, mostly, bein' an accommodatin' sex in the main, with the
exception of Mrs. Mallory, the blacksmith's mother, who declars she'd
rather give up eternal damnation any day than immersion."

"I ain't goin' so fur as that," rejoined old Adam, "an' mo'over, when
it comes to the p'int, I've never found any uncommon comfort in either
conviction in time of trouble. I go to Mr. Mullen's church regular every
Sunday, seein' the Baptist one is ten miles off an' the road heavy, but
in my opinion he's a bit too zealous to turn over the notions of the
prophets an' set up his own. He's at the age when a man knows everything
on earth an' generally knows it wrong."

"You see pa had been settin' on the anxious bench for forty years,"
explained young Adam, "an' when Mr. Mullen came, he took it away from
under him, so to speak, while he was still settin' on it."

"'Twas my proper place," said old Adam resentfully, "when it comes to
crops or the weather I am firm fixed enough in my belief, but in matters
of religion I hold with the onsartain."

"Only his powerful belief in the Devil an' all his works keeps him from
bein' a heathen," observed young Adam in awe-stricken pride. "Even Mr.
Mullen can't move him, he's so terrible set."

"Well, he ain't my Redeemer, though doubtless he'd be cast down if he
was to hear as I'd said so," chuckled the elder. "The over earnest, like
the women folk, are better not handled at all or handled techily. I'm
near blind as it is, but ain't that the man yonder leadin' his horse out
of the Applegate road?"

"'Taint the rector, but the miller," responded his son. "He's bringin'
over Mrs. Bottom's sack of meal on the back of his grey mare."

"Ah, he's one of the folks that's gone over neck an' crop to the
Episcopals," said Solomon Hatch. "His folks have been Presbyterians over
at Piping Tree sence the time of Noah, but he recites the Creed now as
loud as he used to sing the doxology. I declar his voice boomed out so
in my ears last Sunday that I was obleeged to put up my hands to keep
'em from splittin'. Have you ever marked, Mr. Doolittle, havin' had the
experience of ninety years, that when a man