"I'm comin' to the p'int now. I live with Marster Kennedy, and went
with him to church, and when I see how he carried on week days, and
how peart like he read up Sabba' days, sayin' the Lord's Prar and
'Postle's Creed, I began to think thar's somethin' rotten in
Denmark, as the boys use to say in Virginny; so when mother, who
allus was a-roarin' Methodis', asked me to go wid her to meetin', I
went, and was never so mortified in my life, for arter the elder had
'xorted a spell at the top of his voice, he sot down and said there
was room for others. I couldn't see how that was, bein' he took up
the whole chair, and while I was wonderin' what he meant, as I'm a
livin' nigger, up got marm and spoke a piece right in meetin'! I
never was so shamed, and I kep' pullin' at her gownd to make her set
down, but the harder I pulled the louder she hollered, till at last
she blowed her breath all away, and down she sot."

"And did any of the rest speak pieces?" asked Mrs. Kennedy,
convulsed with laughter at John's vivid description.

"Bless your heart," he answered, with a knowing look, "'twarn't a
piece she was speaking--she was tellin' her 'sperience; but it
sounded so like the boys at school that I was deceived, for I'd
never seen such work before. But I've got so I like it now, and I
believe thar's more 'sistency down in that schoolhouse than thar is
in--I won't say the 'Piscopal church, 'case thar's heaps of shinin'
lights thar, but if you won't be mad, I'll say more than thar is in
Marster Kennedy, who has hisself to thank for my bein' a Methodis'."

Whatever Mrs. Kennedy might have thought she could not help laughing
heartily at John, who was now a decided Methodist, and adorned his