begun wrong end first. What a sinner needs most of all is to know about
his hereafter."

"It's what's goin' on now, from day to day, that weighs hardest on me,
deacon. There's nothin' hard about dyin'; leastways, you'd think so if
you was built like me, an' felt like I have to feel sometimes."

"You're all wrong," said the deacon. "If you can't understand these
things for yourself, you ought to take the word of wiser men for it."

"S'posin' I was to do that about everythin': then when Judge Prency,
who's a square man an' a good deal smarter than I be, talks politics to
me, I ought to be a Republican instead of a Jackson Democrat."

"No," said the deacon, sharply, for he was a Jackson Democrat himself.
"I'll have to talk more to you about this, Samuel. Good night."

"Good night, deacon."

"He knows more'n you do about religion," said Mrs. Kimper, who had
followed closely behind, and who rejoined her husband as soon as the
deacon departed.

"He ought to, seein' his head-piece an' chances; an' yet I've heerd
some pooty hard things said about him."

When the couple reached home, Sam looked at the long heap of straw and
rags on which his children should have been sleeping, but which was
without occupant except the baby. Then, by the light of the coals still
remaining in the fire-place, he looked through some leaves of the