“’Member one night last winter, after the Deacon got warm in bed, there come a rap at the door; and who should it be but old Beulah Ward, wantin’ to see the Deacon?—­’twas her boy she sent, and he said Beulah was sick and hadn’t no more wood nor candles.  Now I know’d the Deacon had carried that crittur half a cord of wood, if he had one stick, since Thanksgivin’, and I’d sent her two o’ my best moulds of candles,—­nice ones that Cerinthy Ann run when we killed a crittur; but nothin’ would do but the Deacon must get right out his warm bed and dress himself, and hitch up his team to carry over some wood to Beulah.  Says I, ’Father, you know you’ll be down with the rheumatis for this; besides, Beulah is real aggravatin’.  I know she trades off what we send her to the store for rum, and you never get no thanks.  She ’xpects, ’cause we has done for her, we always must; and more we do, more we may do.’  And says he to me, says he, ’That’s jest the way we sarves the Lord, Polly; and what if He shouldn’t hear us when we call on Him in our troubles?’ So I shet up; and the next day he was down with the rheumatis.  And Cerinthy Ann, says she, ’Well, father, now I hope you’ll own you have got some disinterested benevolence,’ says she; and the Deacon he thought it over a spell, and then he says, ’I’m ‘fraid it’s all selfish.  I’m jest a-makin’ a righteousness of it.’  And Cerinthy Ann she come out, declarin’ that the best folks never had no comfort in religion; and for her part she didn’t mean to trouble her head about it, but have jest as good a time as she could while she’s young, ’cause if she was ’lected to be saved she should be, and if she wa’n’t she couldn’t help it, any how.”

“Mr. Brown says he came onto Dr. H.’s ground years ago,” said Mrs. Brown, giving a nervous twitch to her yarn, and speaking in a sharp, hard, didactic voice, which made little Mrs. Twitchel give a gentle quiver, and look humble and apologetic.  “Mr. Brown’s a master thinker; there’s nothing pleases that man better than a hard doctrine; he says you can’t get ’em too hard for him.  He don’t find any difficulty in bringing his mind up; he just reasons it out all plain; and he says, people have no need to be in the dark; and that’s my opinion.  ’If folks know they ought to come up to anything, why don’t they?’ he says; and I say so too.”

“Mr. Scudder used to say that it took great afflictions to bring his mind to that place,” said Mrs. Katy.  “He used to say that an old paper-maker told him once, that paper that was shaken only one way in the making would tear across the other, and the best paper had to be shaken every way; and so he said we couldn’t tell, till we had been turned and shaken and tried every way, where we should tear.”

Mrs. Twitchel responded to this sentiment with a gentle series of groans, such as were her general expression of approbation, swaying herself backward and forward; while Mrs. Brown gave a sort of toss and snort, and said that for her part she always thought people knew what they did know,—­but she guessed she was mistaken.