“I believe he is guilty,” says she with a radiant look.
“Well I don’t,” says I almost warmly. “I don’t believe it no more than I believe my pardner is a drumedary.” And says I firmly, “I will come out still plainer; I don’t believe it no more than I believe Josiah Allen is an ostridge.”
“Oh!” says she with a still more delighted and lively mean, “I never see anybody talked about quite so bad as he has been; and that shows that meetin’ house folks haint no better than common folks.”
Miss Bean is a Nothingarian in good standin’, and loves to see meetin’ house folks brought low; loves it dearly. “Jest think,” says she with that proud and raptuous look on her, “how high he has stood up on a meetin’ house, and how he has been run down it.”
But I interrupted of her by askin’ her this conundrum, in about as cold a tone as they make.
“Miss Bean, which would be apt to have the biggest, blackest shadder at its feet; a mullien stalk, or a meetin’ house?”
“Why, a meetin’ house, of course,” says she.
“Well,” says I, “that is reasonable. I didn’t know,” says I in a very dry tone, “but you would expect to see a shadder as black and heavy as a meetin’ house shadder, a taggin’ along after a mullien stalk. But it wouldn’t be reasonable; the cloud of detraction and envy and malice that follers on at the feet of folks is generally proportioned to their size.” Says I, “Jonathan Beans’es wife, you are not a runnin’ at Henry, you are runnin’ at Religion.”
Says I, “If Christianity can stand ag’inst persecution and martyrdom, if it is stronger than death and the grave, do you s’pose Jonathan Beans’es wife, and the hull Nothingarian church is a goin’ to overthrow it?”
Says I, “Eighteen hundred years ago the unbelievers thought they had hurt it all it could be; they thought they had crucified it, buried it up, and rolled a stun ag’inst it; but it was mightier than death and the grave, it rose up triumphant. And the fires of martyrdom in which they have tried to destroy it ever sense, has only burnt away the chaff; the pure seed has remained, and the waves of persecution in which time and again they have tried to drownd it, has only scattered the seed abroad throughout the world, wafted it to kinder shores: friendlier soils, in which it has multiplied and blossomed a thousand fold more gloriously. And,” says I, “the wave of infidelity that is sweepin’ over it now, will only sweep away the dross, the old dry chaff of dead creeds, superstitions, and bigotry—it can no more harm religion than you can scatter dust on the floor of heaven.”