“David, I am very sorry to say, had some very serious personal faults. He always slept with his mouth open. I've knowed him to snore so loud after dinner that the folks on the adjoining farm thought it was the dinner horn.”
“Now Hillard,” said Uncle Dave, rising—“do you think it necessary to bring in all that?”
“A man's fun'ral,” said the Bishop, “ain't intended to do him any good—it's fur the coming generation. Boys and girls, beware of sleepin' with yo' mouth open an' eatin' with yo' fingers an' drinkin' yo' coffee out of the saucer, an' sayin' them molasses an' I wouldn't choose any when you're axed to have somethin' at the table.
“Dave Dickey done all that.
“Brother Dave Dickey had his faults as we all have. He was a sprinklin' of good an' evil, a mixture of diligence an' laziness, a brave man mostly with a few yaller crosses in him, truthful nearly always, an' lyin' mostly fur fun an' from habit; good at times an' bad at others, spiritual at times when it looked like he cu'd see right into heaven's gate, an' then again racked with great passions of the flesh that swept over him in waves of hot desires, until it seemed that God had forgotten to make him anything but an animal.
“Come to think of it, an' that's about the way with the rest of us?
“But he aimed to do right, an' he strove constantly to do right, an' he prayed constantly fur help to do right, an' that's the main thing. If he fell he riz agin, fur he had a Hand outstretched in his faith that cu'd lift him up, an' knew that he could go to a Father that always forgave—an' that's the main thing. Let us remember, when we see the faults and vices of others—that we see only what they've done—as Bobby Burns says, we don't kno' what they have resisted. Give 'em credit for that—maybe it over-balances. Balancin'—ah, my bretherin, that's a gran' thing. It's the thing on which the whole Universe hangs—the law of balance. The pendulum every whar swings as fur back as it did furra'd, an' the very earth hangs in space by this same law. An' it holds in the moral worl' as well as the t'other one—only man is sech a liar an' so bigoted he can't see it. But here comes into the worl' a man or woman filled so full of passion of every sort,—passions they didn't make themselves either—regular thunder clouds in the sky of life. Big with the rain, the snow, the hail—the lightning of passion. A spark, a touch, a strong wind an' they explode, they fall from grace, so to speak. But what have they done that we ain't never heard of? All we've noticed is the explosion, the fall, the blight. They have stirred the sky, whilst the little white pale-livered untempted clouds floated on the zephyrs—they've brought rain that made the earth glad, they've cleared the air in the very fall of their lightnin'. The lightnin' came—the fall—but give 'em credit fur the other. The little namby-pamby, white livered, zephyr clouds that is so divine an' useless, might float forever an' not even make a shadow to hide men from the sun.
“So credit the fallen man or woman, big with life an' passion, with the good they've done when you debit 'em with the evil. Many a 'oman so ugly that she wasn't any temptation even for Sin to mate with her, has done more harm with her slanderin' tongue an' hypocrisy than a fallen 'oman has with her whole body.
“We're mortals an' we can't he'p it—animals, an' God made us so. But we'll never fall to rise no mo' 'less we fail to reach up fur he'p.
“What then is our little sins of the flesh to the big goodness of the faith that is in us?