I looked at a group of women she pointed out, and the human nature within me yeasted over. They were three of the homeliest creatures I ever set eyes on—long and lank, with faces like sour baked-apples.
"Oh, my beloved sister," says Sugar-scoop, a-laying her cotton-gloved hand on mine; "can you look on that heavenly sight and not pray to be like unto them?"
I shook the cotton glove from my arm, and the hand that was in it, just as St. Paul shook off the viper.
"Like them, madam—like them! If I were one-half as lank and homely, I should want to be born again once a week, at least."
Sugar-scoop lifted both hands in awful horror.
"There are souls," says she, "given up to eternal darkness, I fear. Oh, sister, how I tremble for yours!"
I was trembling with indignation. What right had this woman to assault me in this fashion? I did not know her; she did not know me. My white feather was a badge of noble patriotism; my gaiter boots fitted a foot that has been an object of encomium with every shoemaker who has been honored by taking its measure—to say nothing of a glance given it by imperial eyes. Does religious zeal justify uncivil intrusion? What right had this sugar-scoopy woman to exhort me? How did she know that my heart was not already in the right path?
I asked this very question:
"Madam," says I, "by what right do you pretend to teach me, a stranger, of whose life you can know nothing?"
"I'm in the service of the Lord," says she, "looking up lost sheep. When I find one, torn and draggled with sin, it is my duty to drive it into the fold, where its fleece can be worked white as snow."