The idea of a separation from Mary troubled Tom, but full of incredulity he sat down to listen, more to please her, and find something in the adding up of the catastrophe that would upset it. Mary commenced reading, and Tom quietly listening, but as she read the awful evidences of a general conflagration, the signs of the times, the adding up of the times, the proof of their meaning, and the dreadful consequences of being unprepared—with ascension robes, Tom grew serious, and at length looked a little frightened. He didn't want Mary to see its effect upon him, and so assumed an over quantity of indifference, but it was useless for him to attempt hiding his feelings from her prying eyes—she saw Miller's doctrine was grinding a hopper of fear in Tom's heart, and felt glad to see its effect. When she ceased he remarked, with a half-frightened laugh, that Father Miller ought to be burnt for thus trying to frighten people, and, “as for them eastern fellars, they are half their life crazy any how!”
Having tried thus to whisper unconcern to his troubled spirit, Tom set out for the boat, with the firm resolve, if he caught a Millerite to save him from the threatened burning by drowning him, for disseminating any such fiery doctrines. When he got on board he told the captain what had transpired at home,—how his wife had got hold of a Miller document from a travelling disciple, and, as well as he could, rehearsed the awful contents which she had read to him. The captain, observing the effect they had produced on Tom, seriously answered that the matter looked squally, and he was afraid them documents were all too true.
“True!” shouted Tom, “why, you aint green enough to swallow any such yarn—its parfectly rediculous to talk about burnin' every thing up. I'd like to see old Miller set fire to the Massissippi!”
“Its 110 funny matter, Tom,” replied the captain, “and if you keep going on this way you will find it so.”
“Here, give us somethin' to drink!” shouted Tom to the bar-keeper, (he began to get terrified at the serious manner with which the captain treated Millerism) “come, Bill,” said he, addressing the clerk, “let's take a drink.”
The clerk, who was a wag, saw through the captain's joke in a minute and when he winked at him, refused to taste, adding as an apology that “on the eve of so awful an event as the destruction of the world, he couldn't daringly indulge as he formerly did, so he must excuse him.”
“Well, go to h—ll, then,” says Tom, half mad.
The captain sighed, and the clerk put his hand upon his heart, and turned his eyes upward, as if engaged in inward prayer for his wicked friend. Tom swallowed his glass, and bestowing a fierce look upon the pair remarked, that “they couldn't come any of them thar shines over him, he wasn't any of that chicken breed!”
“Poor fellow,” muttered the captain.
“Alas! Thomas,” chimed in the clerk.