head’ bunched around her like cherubim’.  And Marthy!  Right here, women, I ax your pardon if I stop a spell, for of a truth words fails me and tears squenches me.  What did I see in that kind, gentle, patient face of hern?  Women, it were the very living sperrit of Christ hisself I seed thar—­the sperrit that returned love for hate, mercy for revilement, joy and life for curses and death.  Yes, when them eyes of hers was turnt on me so full of love, right thar my heart broke.  I had bemeaned and berated and faulted her so continual’, and belt her up as a pore, doless creetur’, without no backbone or ambition; and now I knowed that if thar ever were a tender, ginuwine, angel daughter on this here earth, it were her to me.  Women, when she tuck me to her bosom, I just slid right down thar on ’my unworthy knees thar on the ground at her feet thar, and with bitter tears beseeched of her to forgive and forgit my hard-heartedness and stone-blindness and dog-meanness, which of course, being Marthy, she had already done allus-ago.

“Then, friends, my cup were running over; and as we journeyed up creeks and down mountains nigh these three days, we was the nunitedest and joyfullest family that ever follered a trail; and all the way I laid my plans for to set the farm on its feet ag’in, and clear new ground, and maul rails for the fence, and rive boards for the roof, and quairy out rock for a new chimbly, and bring up the yield of corn, and weed out the eatingest of the cattle, and git my loom sot up and running so ’s to have a-plenty of kivers and linsey for sale come cold weather; and we all rejoiced amazing, knowing prosperity wa’ n’t no further from us than yan side the mountain.

“And now, fellow-sisters, you see before you a ree-surrected woman.  I hain’t only got the sight of my eyes; I got mind-sight, heart-sight, soul-sight.  I hain’t only got these fine store-teeth and a tamed and biddable stummick; but the innard power to chaw and digest speritual truth.  I hain’t only wearing these gayly, boughten clothes, I ’m a-fla’nting the robes of joy and the gyarments of praise.  I know the Lord don’t hate me and never did; I know I am free, restored, and saved; I know my Redeemer liveth, and has fotch me up out of the blackness of darkness on to the top-most peaks of joy and peace and thanksgiving.

“And don’t think, women,—­don’t never, never think I hain’t aiming to let my light shine!  I aim to use my faculty not for worldly betterment alone, but to turn it loose likewise in the line of religion and preachifying.  Yes, every night this enduring winter will see me a-s’arching the Scriptur’; and what I can’t read I can ricollect; and come August, when the craps is laid by and the funeral occasions sets in, I will be ready for ’em.  There won’t be one in twenty mile’ that won’t see me a-coming, and a-taking my stand by the grave-houses in these reesurrection gyarments, for to norate the wonders of my experience, and to shame and confound and drownd out Uncle Joshuay and t’other blind leaders of the blind whatever they dare raise their gray heads and hoary lies, and gin’rally to publish abroad, world-without-eend, the ons’archable riches and glory and power of the love of God.”