, as they call him, Sam Joynes, from
'way down South. In my day he'd 'a' been called the Rev. Samuel
Joynes. Folks didn't call their preachers Tom, Dick, and Harry, and
Jim and Sam, like they do now. I'd like to 'a' seen anybody callin'
Parson Page 'Lem Page.' He was the Rev. Lemuel Page, and don't you
forgit it. But things is different, as I said awhile ago, and even the
little boys says 'Sam Joynes,' jest like he played marbles with 'em
every day. I went to the Tabernicle three or four times; and of all
the preachers that ever I heard, he certainly is the beatenest. Why,
I ain't laughed so much since me and Abram went to Barnum's circus,
the year before the war. He was preachin' one day about cleanliness
bein' next to godliness, which it certainly is, and he says, 'You old
skunk, you!' But, la! the worse names he called 'em the better they
'peared to like it, and sinners was converted wholesale every time he
preached. But there wasn't no goin' to the mourners' bench and
mournin' for your sins and havin' people prayin' and cryin' over you.
They jest set and laughed and grinned while he was gittin' off his
jokes, and then they'd go up and shake hands with him, and there they
was all saved and ready to be baptized and taken into the church."

Just here the old yellow rooster fluttered up to the door-step and
gave a hoarse, ominous crow.

"There, now! You hear that?" said Aunt Jane, as she tossed him a
golden peeling from her pan. "There's some folks that gives right up
and looks for sickness or death or bad news every time a rooster crows
in the door. But I never let such things bother me. The Bible says
that nobody knows what a day may bring forth, and if I don't know, it
ain't likely my old yeller rooster does.

"What was I talkin' about? Oh, yes--the big meetin'. Well, I never was
any hand to say that old ways is best, and I don't say so now. If you
can convert a man by callin' him a polecat, why, call him one, of
course. And mournin' ain't always a sign o' true repentance. They used
to tell how Silas Petty mourned for forty days, and, as Sally Ann
said, he had about as much religion as old Dan Tucker's Derby ram.

"However, it was the organ I set out to tell about. It's jest like me
to wander away from the p'int. Abram always said a text would have to
be made like a postage stamp for me to stick to it. You see, they'd
jest got a fine new organ at Mary Frances' church, and she was tellin'
me how they paid for it.