But some time durin’ that day he found out his mistake. I don’t know exactly how Faith managed to pierce the rhinocerous hide of his self-conceit with the truth, but she did somehow let him know that his attentions wuz futile, futiler than he ever mistrusted his attentions could be.
But he wuzn’t danted and down-casted more’n several minutes, I guess, for anon I see him walkin’ with a woman almost as ponderous as he wuz, and as she wuz all janglin’ with black jet and as humbly as humbly could be, I mistrusted that he had gone back to his allegiance to the widder, and I think he looked happier than I had ever seen him. He looked as if he wuz rejoiced that his temporary thraldom to sentiment wuz over, and common sense and practical gain wuz in the ascendancy agin. 160 And though it hain’t much matter, I will say I read his marriage in the paper the next week:
“Amaziah Pomper to Euphrasia, relict of Elnathan Fatt.”
But I d’no as Faith knew anything about it, for she didn’t stay with us only a few days longer, she went on to visit her aunt Petrie and so on to the Ohio, makin’ a solemn promise to me to stop and visit us on her way home the last of September. Well, I will now onhitch the boat and row back, and then let it sail on down the stream of history. As I said, the next day after that singular experience of Faith’s wuz Sunday, and my pardner and I went to the Tabernacle. We wuz told that there wuz to be oncommon exercises that day owin’ to the visit of a great Evangelist from the West. Lots of folks had come on the night boats so as to be there to hear him. For if the angel Gabriel wanted to preach there to lost sinners, he couldn’t land there on Sunday unless he swum or come cross lots (that is, unless he flowed down). The folks on that island are too good to let anyone come there to meetin’ unless they come sarahuptishously. I asked a trustee once why it wuz wicked for folks to ride there to meetin’. 161
And he said, “A merciful man is merciful to his beast.”
Sez I, “A steamer hain’t a beast, and if it wuz, it wouldn’t tucker it out much to come over from the bay or Clayton.” And he said the sailors would have to toil to git ’em there.
“So the driver and the horses have to toil to git sinners to meetin’ on the main land,” sez I. And he said, “The steamers would make noise and confusion, and disturb the sweet Sabbath calm.” I felt there wuz some truth in this, though it wouldn’t make nigh so much noise as the thousands of church bells clangin’ out church time in cities and villages.
Sez he, “If we allowed boats to land here we should be overrun with excursionists who don’t care for Sunday as a day of holy quiet and rest, and our peaceful Sabbath would be turned into a carnival of pleasure seekers, flirtations, giggles, brown paper parcels, egg shells, cigar smoke and sandwiches.”
And I sez, “Like as not that is so.” And I felt that mebby he wuz in the right on’t. But some don’t like it and feel that they’d ort to take the resk.