“And I don’t want to pass any boy’s or girl’s house without stoppin’, gran’daddy, even if they’s Pistopals; I ain’t mad at ary one of ’em but Williebelle Greenlee, and now I done forgot what I’m mad at her for.”
“I don’t aim to ’lowance you, Grover Cleveland. I aim to let you get a stick of peppermint or horehoun’ for every boy and girl in Junaluska. I aim to let you show Old Sandy how the thing ought to be did. And I don’t reckon I’ll pass by any old woman, either, jes’ ’cause she’s been misled and jined the wrong church; it’s bad enough to lose your way without bein’ hounded for it besides.”
“What makes Baptises and Methdises an’ Presaterians an’ all them, gran’daddy? Was they borned that way?”
“You an’ me was, Grover Cleveland; our kinfolks was Methdises from way back before the flood I reckon; but the rest of ’em they’re mostly jes’ mixin’s.”
“When I come acrost the cattle on the mountings, I can tell by the slits in their ears who owns ’em; but I can’t tell what church owns the people round yer ’thout it’s meetin’-Sunday and I can see what meetin’-house they’re headin’ for. Have they got any ear-marks that you know ’em by, gran’daddy?”
“No they ain’t Grover Cleveland; they ain’t none of ’em branded that-a-way.”
“What makes ’em diff’rent, gran’daddy?”
“It’s the way they b’lieve, gran’son. The Methdises they b’lieve in free grace and sprinklin’, and the Baptises they b’lieve in sousin’, and the Presaterians—they’re right mean, they are—they b’lieve in ’lection.”
“Mighty nigh every somebody round yer went to ’lection and voted that Tuesday, gran’daddy.”
“So we did gran’son, so we did; but this yer Presaterian ’lection is somehow diff’rent. It’s a powerful low-down kind of ’lection—I reckon it’s favourin’ niggers votin’.”