COUNTIN’ THE COST
SIMON SLIMPSEY AND HIS MOURNFUL FOREBODIN’S.
Two or three weeks after this, Thomas Jefferson went to the school house to meetin’ one Sunday night, and he broke out to the breakfast table the next mornin’—
“Mother, I am sick of the Jews,” says he, “I should think the Jews had a hard enough time a wanderin’ for 40 years, it seems to me if I was in minister’s places I would let ’em rest a little while now, and go to preachin’ to livin’ sinners, when the world is full of ’em. There was two or three drunkards there last night, a thief, four hypocrites, and—”
“One little conceited creeter that thinks he knows more than his old minister,” says I in a rebukin’ tone.
“Yes, I noticed Shakespeare Bobbet was there,” says he calmly. “But wouldn’t it have been better, mother, to have preached to these livin’ sinners that are goin to destruction round him, and that ought to be chased up, and punched in the side with the Gospel, than to chase round them old Jews for an hour and a half? Them old men deserve rest, and ought to have it.”
Says I, “Elder Wesley Minkley used ’em as a means of grace to carry his hearers towards heaven.”
Says Thomas, “I can go out in the woods alone, and lay doun and look up to the sky, and get nearer to heaven, than I can by follerin’ up them old dead Jews.”