“I am afraid,” said Madam Rachel, as she sauntered along the walk, the children around her, “that you will not like the verse that I am going to talk with you about this evening, very well, when you first hear it.”
“What is it mother?” said Dwight.
“'And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.'”
“What does quickened mean?” asked David.
“Made alive, or brought to life. Quick means alive, sometimes; as for instance, the quick and the dead, means the living and the dead. And so we say, 'cut to the quick,' that is, cut to the living flesh, where it can feel.”
“Once I read in a fable,” said David, “of a horse being stung to the quick.”
“What, by a hornet?” said Dwight.
“No,” said David, “by something the ass said.”
“O, yes,” said Madam Rachel, “that means it hurt his feelings. If a bee should sting any body so that the sting should only go into the skin, it would not hurt much; but if it should go in deep, so as to give great pain, we should say it stung to the quick, that is, to the part which has life and feeling. So I suppose that something that the ass said, hurt the horse's feelings.”
“What was it, David, that the ass said?” asked Dwight.