"Now you see, don't you," he continued, the ghost of a smile glimmering
about his eyes, "how it was that after my disgrace I couldn't seem to
take an interest any more in anything? Then came the revival, and that
gave me a notion that religion might help me. I had heard, from a child,
that the blood of Christ had a power to wash away sins and to leave one
white and spotless with a sense of being new and clean every whit. That
was what I wanted, just what I wanted. I am sure that you never had a
more sincere, more dead-in-earnest convert than I was."

He paused a moment, as if in mental contemplation, and then the words
dropped slowly from his lips, as a dim self-pitying smile rested on his
haggard face.

"I really think you would be sorry for me if you knew how very bitter was
my disappointment when I found that, these bright promises were only
figurative expressions which I had taken literally. Doubtless I should
not have fallen into such a ridiculous mistake if my great need had not
made my wishes fathers to my thoughts. Nobody was at all to blame but
myself; nobody at all. I'm blaming no one. Forgiving sins, I should have
known, is not blotting, them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red
instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves them in the
memory. That day when I blotted my copybook at school, to have had the
teacher forgive me ever so kindly would not have made me feel the least
bit better so long as the blot was there. It wasn't any penalty from
without, but the hurt to my own pride which the spot made, that I wanted
taken away, so I might get heart to go on. Supposing one of you--and
you'll excuse me for asking you to put yourself a moment in my place--had
picked a pocket. Would it make a great deal of difference in your state
of mind that the person whose pocket you had picked kindly forgave you,