Now, Deacon Henzy, like so many other human creeters, wuz so intent on findin’ out and stunin’ other folks’es faults, that he didn’t have time to set down and find out about his own sins and stun himself, so to speak.
He never had thought, so I spoze, what a hard master he wuz, and how he had treated Zekiel Place.
But I knew it; and all the while he went on a talkin’ about “the ignorance and wastefulness and shiftlessness of this class of boys, and how impossible it wuz to manage ’em and keep ’em down in their places; how you had to set down on ’em and set heavy if you didn’t want to be bairded to your face and run over by ’em; how if you give ’em an inch they would take a ell, and destroy and waste more than their necks wuz worth,” etc., etc., etc.—
All the while he wuz a goin’ on and a sayin’ all this I kep’ up a thinkin’, for I knew that Zekiel was a middlin’ good boy, and had been misused by the Deacon, so I had hearn—had been worked beyend his strength, and whipped, and didn’t get enough to eat, so the boy said.
The Deacon had took him for his board and clothes; but his board wuz hard indeed, and very knotty, and his clothes wuz very light, very.
And so, bein’, as I spoze, sort o’ drove to it, he riz. And as I say, the Deacon was madder than any hen I ever see, wet or dry.
“The idee,” sez he, “of that boy, that I have took care on ever sence he wuz a child, took care on him in health, and nussed him, and doctored him when he wuz sick” (lobelia and a little catnip wuz every mite of medicine he ever give him, and a little paregoric, so I have been told)—“the idee of that boy a leavin’ me—a rizin’ up and a sayin’ as pert as a piper, ‘If you don’t want to hire me, let me go.’”
“Wall, which did you do, Deacon?” sez I.
“Why, I hired the dumb upstart! I couldn’t get along without his work, and he knew it.”
“‘The laborer,’ Deacon Henzy,” sez I, solemn, “‘is worthy of his hire.’”