“But I wish you would go and see him,” continued the Deacon.  “Perhaps you can make something out of him.  I can’t.  I have tried again and again, and I always get the worst of it.  He is well read, I assure you, and keen as—­as,” the Deacon failed in his search for a simile and closed his sentence with—­“a great deal keener than I am.  He’s a real good fellow, but he doesn’t believe in anything.  There is no use in quoting Scripture, because he thinks it’s nothing but a collection of old legends.  I once tried to argue the question of inspiration with him.  ‘Deacon,’ said he to me, ’suppose a father should start off one fine morning to carry his son up to the top of Huricane Hill and put him to death there, and should pretend he had a revelation from God to do it, what would you do to him?’ ’Put him in the insane asylum,’ said I.  ‘Exactly,’ said he.  ’My boys came home from your Sabbath School the other Sunday full of the sacrifice of Isaac, and Will, who takes after his father, asked me if I didn’t think it was cruel for God to tell a father to kill his own son.  What could I say?  I don’t often interfere, because it troubles my wife so.  But I couldn’t stand that, and I told him very frankly that I didn’t believe the story, and if it was true I thought Abraham was crazy.’  He had me there, you know,” continued the Deacon, good-naturedly, “but then I never was good for anything in discussion.  I wish you would go to see him, may be you would bring him to terms.”

And so I was going now, not without misgivings, and with no great faith in any capacity on my part to “bring him to terms,” as the Deacon phrased it, but buoyed up a good deal, notwithstanding, by the remembrance of those promised prayers.

And yet though Mr. Gear is an infidel he is not a bad man.  Even Dr. Argure, and he is fearfully sound on the doctrine of total depravity, admits that there are some good traits about him, “natural virtues” he is careful to explain, not “saving graces.”

Of his thorough, incorruptible honesty, no man ever intimated a doubt.  In every business transaction he is the soul of honor.  His word is a great deal better than Jim Wheaton’s bond.

In every good work he is a leader.  When the new school-house was to be built, Mr. Gear was put, by an almost unanimous consent, upon the Board, and made its treasurer.  When, last Fall, rumors were rife of the mismanagement of the Poor-house, Mr. Gear was the one to demand an investigation, and, being put upon the Committee, to push through against a good deal of opposition, till he secured the reform that was needed.  In his shop there is not a man whose personal history he does not know, not one who does not count him a personal friend.  That there has not been a strike for ten years is due to the workmen’s personal faith in him.  When Robert Dale was caught in the shafting and killed last winter, it was Mr. Gear who paid the widow’s rent out of his own pocket, got the eldest son a place on a farm, and