“Never drank anyding, eh? never in your life?  Vell, vell!” said the proprietor, caressing the beer-shop cat for a moment, “dat explains a good many dings about you dat I never understood before.  I tell you vat I tink, deacon:  if you’d been brought up in my country, mit all de brains you’ve got in your head, and yoost could’a’had a lot of German beer put inside of you besides, you’d been about de finest man in de United States now.  Den, besides dat, of course, you ought to belong to my shurch, too.”

“Your church!” sneered the deacon.

“Come, now, deacon,” said the shopkeeper, abruptly dropping the cat, “you can turn up your nose at my ideas all you vant, but you mustn’t turn it up at my shurch.  I don’t do dat to you, and don’t you forget it, eider.”

“That’s all right, Conrad; I didn’t mean to do it.  Of course, every man will believe the way he is brought up.  But I hope you won’t go to telling anybody else in this town that that poor convict ought to be drinking and will have to do it again; because it might get to his ears, you know, and if it did it might break him down, and then he’d go to lying and stealing and loafing and fighting again, and there is no knowing whose chicken-coops and wood-piles would have to suffer.  Yours might be one of the first of the lot.”

“Vell,” said the German, “is dat de vay you look at the question?”

“It’s a fact, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I s’pose it is.  But I didn’t tink dat vas de first ding for a man like you to tink about ven you vas talkin’ about a feller dat has broke off all his bad habits and is tryin’ to be yoost right.”

The deacon felt awkward for a moment.  He did not like to be reminded of any of his faults by a neighbor, much less by one who belonged to a church so widely different from his own.

“Why, of course not,” said he; “of course, I am thinking about the man’s eternal salvation and about his future; but, to tell you the truth, I haven’t got much faith in his professions.  A man that don’t get any further than he has done, and that don’t seem willing to learn from them that’s his betters and has gone into such things a good deal deeper than he has, ain’t very likely to hold out.  And the last condition of that man will be worse than the first.”

“Vell,” said the shop-keeper, “a good deal depends on dat.  You vas a member of von shurch and I vas a member of anoder, deacon, and we can talk togeder like brudders,—­a little vay, anyhow.  Now, I tell you vat it is:  dere’s a good many men in dis town dat’s behavin’ very decent dat don’t belong to any shurch at all, and you’d yoost as lief discount deir notes as you vould any oder man’s, and you’d go into business mit dem yoost as qvick, and you’d take deir word for anyding yoost as qvick.  If dat’s de vay mit dem men, vy isn’t it true dat Sam Kimper is a good deal better off mit vat he’s got dan he vould be midout anyding at all in de vay of religion?”