His bizness now up North wuz to see about some money that had been subscribed for a freedmen’s school and meetin’ house. But he promised to write to us now and then, and he spoke with deep feelin’ about the “sweet rest he had had there,” and how he never should forget it; he talked real eloquent about it, and flowery, but he meant every word, we could see he did.
It happened curius about the chapter Josiah read that mornin’—he most always reads the first one he opens to. And it wuz the one where Paul tells about his hard work and trials, and how the Lord had brought him out of ’em all.
How he wuz beaten with rods, and stuned, and wuz in perils of waters, and perils by his own countrymen, and perils by the heathen, and in the wilderness, and amongst false brethren, in weariness, and painfulness, and hunger and thirst, and cold and nakedness.
And how he gloried in his weakness and infirmities, if so God’s strength should be made perfect and His will be accomplished.
I declare for it, I couldn’t help thinkin’ of Cousin John Richard, though mebby it hain’t right to compare one of our relations to Paul, and then agin I didn’t spoze Paul would care. I knew they both on ’em wuz good, faithful, earnest creeters anyway.
Then Cousin John Richard prayed a prayer that almost caught us up to the gates of Paradise, it wuz so full of heavenly love, and tenderness, and affection for us, and devotion to his work, and everything good, and half saintly.
And then most imegiatly he went away on the mornin’ stage.
And at the very last, when most every other man would be a thinkin’ of umberells or shawl straps, he took our hands in hisen and sez:
“Stand fast in the faith! be strong!” And then he bid us “good-bye, and God bless us!” and wuz gone.
Good, faithful, hard-workin’ creeter. The views he had promulgated to us wuz new and startlin’, and Josiah and he couldn’t agree on ’em; but where is there two folks who think alike on every subject?