I looked at half a dozen children jumping, kneeling, praying, and singing before the revival tent, which had been so full of worrying noises all night long, that none of us had got a wink of sleep.
"Look," says she; "unless you are born again, and become like one of these, there will be no chance that you will ever enter the kingdom of Heaven."
I looked at the lovely children, and I looked at her.
"Excuse me," says I, "the object don't seem quite equal to the trouble. I have no notion of going backward in my life. In the first place I was too handsome a baby in the beginning to hanker after a change, and since then—I say nothing; but really, I have seen a good many people that claim to have been born again, and, so far as I can judge, they don't look a mite better, or a day younger, after taking all the trouble, which is discouraging."
"Discouraging!" said the woman; "why, you are talking of regeneration! Come—come with me to the anxious-seat—hundreds are flocking there now."
"Excuse me," says I, "if you please. Crabs may change their shells, and snakes creep out of their skins—I rather think they do sometimes—but born-again females look so much like the old pattern, that it don't seem to me worth trying after one is grown up."
"Many an older person than you are has been born again," says she.
"You don't say so," says I, a-fanning myself with a palm-leaf, for every drop of blood in my body grew hot when she talked about my age, and I was mad enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two with my front teeth.
"Yes, I do say so, humble as I am," says Sugar-scoop. "Look out there. See those women in Israel—three precious souls, just gathered into the fold. For two days they have been constantly at the redemption-seat. The spirit is upon them now. Their souls are struggling to be free. Before another morning they will be born again."