wenn ich in Himmel werd 'eingeh'n.
Do you know that?" asked the old lady, proud of her correct recitation.
"Yes; that is Count Zinzendorff's hymn, which Wesley translated:—
Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
The translation is wonderfully free, and takes unpardonable liberties with the original."
"Graf Zinzendorff revived our Brethren when persecution had almost destroyed them. He was in America, too, and had his life saved by a rattlesnake. The Indians were going to kill him, when they saw him sleeping with the snake by his side, and thought it was his Manitou."
"I hope that is not a snake-story, Mrs. Hill. I had a boy once in my school who came from Illinois, and who said that his mother had seen a snake, which had stiffened itself into a hoop, and taken its thorny tail in its mouth, trundling along over the prairie after a man. The man got behind a tree just in the nick of time, for the hoop unbent, and sent the thorny tail into the tree instead of into the man. Then the man came out and killed it. That was a snake story."