Sundays of the year for the day of their baptizing.

The font was of great nature's own providing, as was the mighty temple
housing it,--a clear pool in the creek, with the green-walled aisles in
the June forest leading down to it, and the blue arch of the flawless
June sky for a dome resplendent.

All Paradise was there to see and hear and bear witness, as a matter of
course; and there were not wanting farm-wagon loads from the great
valley and from the Pine Knob highlands. Major Dabney was among the
onlookers, sitting his clean-limbed Hambletonian, and twisting his huge
white mustaches until they stood out like strange and fierce-looking
horns. Also, in the outer ranks of skepticism, Major Dabney's foreman
and horse-trader, Japheth Pettigrass, found a place. On the opposite
bank of the stream were the few negroes owning Major Dabney now as
"Majah Boss," as some of them,--most of them, in fact--had once owned
him as "Mawstuh Majah"; and mingling freely with them were the laborers,
white and black, from the Gordon iron-furnace.

Thomas Jefferson brought up memories from that solemn rite administered
so simply and yet so impressively under the June sky, with the
many-pointing forest spires to lift the soul to heights ecstatic. One
was the singing of the choir, minimized and made celestially sweet by
the lack of bounding walls and roof. Another was the sight of his
father's face, with the grim smile gone, and the steadfast eyes gravely
tolerant as he--Thomas Jefferson--was going down into the water. A
third--and this might easily become the most lasting of all--was the
memory of how his mother clasped him in her arms as he came up out of
the water, all wet and dripping as he was, and sobbed over him as if her
heart would break.