perfect confidence and utter frankness. And he used the dialect of
the country in which he lived.

"As I was tellin' ye," he said, "I allers loved fishin' an' knowed
't was the best thing in the hull airth. I knowed it larnt ye more
about creeters an' yarbs an' stuns an' water than books could tell
ye. I knowed it made folks patienter an' commonsenser an'
weather-wiser an' cuter gen'ally; gin 'em more fac'lty than all the
school larnin' in creation. I knowed it was more fillin' than
vittles, more rousin' than whisky, more soothin' than lodlum. I
knowed it cooled ye off when ye was het, an' het ye when ye was
cold. I knowed all that, o' course--any fool knows it. But--will
ye b'l'eve it?--I was more 'n twenty-one year old, a man growed,
'fore I foun' out why 't was that away. Father an' mother was
Christian folks, good out-an'-out Calv'nist Baptists from over
East'n way. They fetched me up right, made me go to meetin' an'
read a chapter every Sunday, an' say a hymn Sat'day night a'ter
washin'; an' I useter say my prayers mos' nights. I wa'n't a bad
boy as boys go. But nobody thought o' tellin' me the one thing,
jest the one single thing, that 'd ha' made all the diffunce. I
knowed about God, an' how he made me an' made the airth, an'
everything an' once I got thinkin' about that, an' I asked my
father if God made the fishes. He said 'course he did, the sea an'
all that in 'em is; but somehow that did n't seem to mean nothin'
much to me, an' I lost my int'rist agin. An' I read the Scripter
account o' Jonah an' the big fish, an' all that in Job about
pullin' out levi'thing with a hook an' stickin' fish spears in his
head, an' some parts in them queer books nigh the end o' the ole
Test'ment about fish-ponds an' fish-gates an' fish-pools, an' how
the fishers shall l'ment--everything I could pick out about fishin'