I felt meachin’. I felt small enough to have gone to bed through my bedroom key-hole. But I thought I wouldn’t. I only sez—“Wall, I guess it is about bed-time.”
Josiah had already sought repose in our bedroom.
And Al Faizi got up at once and took his night-lamp, and bid me good-night with one of his low, reverential bows.
WITH ONE OF HIS LOW, REVERENTIAL BOWS.
I knew what he said wuz the truth. I had meditated on it. And in my own way I had tried to break it up—the tight-lacin’, train-dragglin’, high-heeled doin’s.
But, as I say, it galded me deeply to hear these truths discanted on by a heathen.
I love my sect, and wish her dretful well, and I can’t bear to see heathens a-lookin’ down on her.
And then Al Faizi hearn about how little children are put to work at a tender age down in the damp, dark mines, shet away from Heaven’s light, through long, long days, until their youth is gone and old age dims their eyes.
And he sot off for a distant part of the country to see the owners of the mines, and see for himself, and use his influence to have this evil abolished.