stumped about the kitchen a minute
before answering, holding himself down. His face was blood-red when he
did speak, quite savage, the young speaker said afterward.

"I don't go to church, Sir. My wife does. I don't say _now_, 'Damn the
churches!' or that you, an' the likes of you, an' yer Master, are all
shams an' humbugs. I know Him now. He's 'live to me. So now, when I
see you belie Him, an' keep men from Him with yer hundreds o' wranglin'
creeds, an' that there's as much honest love of truth outside the Church
as in it, I don't put yer bigotry an' foulness on Him. I on'y think
there's an awful mistake: just this: that the Church thinks it is
Christ's body an' us uns is outsiders, an' we think so too, an' despise
Him through you with yer stingy souls an' fights an' squabblins; not
seein' that the Church is jes' an hospital, where some of the sickest of
God's patients is tryin' to get cured."

The preacher never went back; spoke in a church-meeting soon after of
the prevalence of Tom Paine's opinions among the lower classes. Half
of our sham preachers take the vague name of "Paine" to cover all of
Christ's opponents,--not ranking themselves there, of course.

Adam thought he had won a victory. "Ef you'd heard me flabbergast the
parson!" he used to say, with a jealous anxiety to keep Christ out of
the visible Church, to shut his eyes to the true purity in it, to the
fact that the Physician was in His hospital. To-night some more infinite
gospel had touched him. "Good evenin', Mr. Pitts," he said, meeting
the Baptist preacher. "Happy Christmas, Sir!" catching a glance of
his broken boots. "Danged ef I don't send that feller a pair of shoes
unbeknownst, to-morrow! He's workin' hard, an' it's not for money."

The great Peace held even its erring Church, as Adam dully saw. The
streets were darkening, but full even yet of children crowding in and
out of the shops. Not a child among them was more busy or important, or
keener for a laugh than Adam, with his basket on his arm and his hand in
his pocket clutching the money he had to lay out. The way he had worked
for that! Over-jobs, you know, done at night when Jinny and the baby
were asleep. It was carrying him through splendidly, though: the basket
was quite piled up with bundles: as for the turkey, hadn't he been
keeping that in the back-yard for weeks, stuffing it until it hardly
could walk? That turkey, do you know, was the first thing Baby ever took
any notice of, exc