I have read “Adam’s Diary,” by Mark Twain, in which he tells what events were forward in Eden on Monday, what on Tuesday, and so on throughout the week till he came to Sunday, and his only comment on that day was “Pulled through.”  In the New England Primer we gather the solemn information that “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”  I admit the fact freely, but beg to be permitted to plead extenuating circumstances.  Adam could go to church just as he was, but I had to be renovated and, at times, almost parboiled and, in addition to these indignities, had to wear shoes and stockings; and the stockings scratched my legs, and the shoes were too tight.  If Adam could barely manage to pull through, just think of me.  Besides, Adam didn’t have to wear a paper collar that disintegrated and smeared his neck.  The more I think of Adam’s situation, the more sorry I feel for myself.  Why, he could just reach out and pluck some fruit to help him through the services, but I had to walk a mile after church, in those tight shoes, and then wait an hour for dinner.  And I was supposed to feel and act religious while I was waiting, but I didn’t.

If I could only have gone to church barefoot, with my shirt open at the throat, and with a pocket full of cookies to munch ad lib throughout the services, I am sure that the spiritual uplift would have been greater.  The soul of a boy doesn’t expand violently when encased in a starched shirt and a paper collar, and these surmounted by a thick coat, with the mercury at ninety-seven in the shade.  I think I can trace my religious retardation back to those hungry Sundays, those tight shoes, that warm coat, and those frequent jabs in my ribs when I fain would have slept.

In my childhood there was such a host of people who were pushing and pulling me about in an effort to make me good that, even yet, I shy away from their style of goodness.  The wonder is that I have any standing at all in polite and upright society.  So many folks said I was bad and naughty, and applied so many other no less approbrious epithets to me that, in time, I came to believe them, and tried somewhat diligently to live up to the reputation they gave me.  I recall that one of my aunts came in one day and, seeing me out in the yard most ingloriously tousled, asked my good mother:  “Is that your child?” Poor mother!  I have often wondered how much travail of spirit it must have cost her to acknowledge me as her very own.  One thumb, one great toe, and an ankle were decorated with greasy rags, and I was far from being ornamental.  I had been hulling walnuts, too, and my stained hands served to accentuate the human scenery.