And I said I would give ’em a couple of hens in welcome, and a male hen and a pair of ducks, if he spozed he would get water enough to keep ’em contented. Somehow I kep’ thinkin’ of the Desert of Sarah—I couldn’t seem to keep Sarah out of my mind.
But he said there wuz plenty of water where they wuz goin’. And he sot and promulgated his idees to me for some time. And I looked on him with admiration and a considerable amount of deep respect.
He wuz a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome fellow, with very courteous, winnin’ manners.
He had a clear-cut, resolute face, and silky brown hair that fell down over a broad white forwerd, and a mustache of the same color.
His eyes would fairly melt sometimes, and be soft as a woman’s, and then agin they would look you through and through and seem to be piercin’ through the hull dark path ahead out into the light of safety.
And his lips, that wuz resolute and firm enough sometimes, could anon, or oftener, grow tremulous with feelin’ and eloquence.
He wuz a earnest Christian, a professor of religion, and, what is fur better, a practicer of the same.
He give his idees to me in full that day in confidence (and a desire to linger till Genieve got back).
Some of these idees he got from Genieve, some on ’em he learned from books, and kindred minds, and close observation, and remembrance of talks he had hearn when such things sunk deep in his heart, and some on ’em sprung up from seeds God had planted in his soul, onbeknown to him; in a woman we call it intuition.
But anyway, no matter by what name we call these seeds, they lay in the soul till the Sun of Occasion warms ’em into life, and then they open their star flowers and find the way to the Right and the True.