“But we wuz readin’ it by course, mother, we had to read the whole thing.”
“Well,” sez I, “that hain’t the way Nater duz when she sets out to make a white lily: she takes from rich Mother Earth all the qualities necessary to make a lily, she selects what will make the dainty whiteness, the delicious fragrance of the flower; she don’t take the blackness of the soil, the dinginess and dirt. No, out of the rich storehouse she selects the best, what she needs. Now, the Bible is so full, Tirzah Ann, of all wisdom, divine knowledge, tenderest love, and divine pity, full of the glory of the Great Father of us all, why can’t you select out of it what you and your children need instead of settin’ up that puny reason of readin’ it by course, and gettin’ by that process all the earth of the human natures through which God’s inspiration is filtered down into our comprehension? You don’t need all that talk about slaughter and vengeance, nor genealogies, etc., though I have seen folks read ’em right through at family prayer, Johab begat Ehod, and Ehod begat Ichabod, and etc. They had to be begot, of course, ’twas necessary to be; but I could never git any good or inspiration out of readin’ ’em in the mornin’ as food for the spiritual needs of the day. Howsumever, I wuz never one to set up my way as the only way, but I will say that after Delight heard you read about it she might have thought she would foller the example of them old patriarchs with her enemies, for I do spoze the prickin’ and jerkin’ of the little torment made her feel that he wuz her enemy. And, anyway, if them old prophets are held innocent for talkin’ in this way, with the experience of a lifetime and the inspiration of the Lord to lead ’em, what do you think of a little child like Delight? Not that I approve on’t in her, nor in them either, and I don’t believe the Lord had much to do with such sanguinary desires, nor I don’t believe the Lord wants you to read about it to the children.”
“Well,” sez Tirzah Ann, “I wuz mortified most to death. And once in the parlor, full of company, a hard thunderstorm came up, and Delight wuz awfully frightened, and she knelt right down and prayed for the Lord to stop that thunder, and got up and stamped her little foot to think it didn’t stop to the very minute, and hollered out, ‘Stop it, dear Lord! Stop it this minute!’ What do you think of that?”
Sez I, “I think of that as I do of other human creeters who are scared and overthrown with the sorrow and pain of life. They pray to the Lord to stop their agony, and because He don’t stop it at once they grow impatient and onbelievin’, and mebby, as Miss Job did, feel to curse God and die. We can’t wait no more than Delight did for the storm to clear the sky; we don’t realize no more than she that mebby it wuz needed to cleanse the air from impurities and make us appreciate the sunshine and calm better. No, Delight and Jack and all the rest of us are blind creeters, and it don’t do for one of us to condemn the other too much.”
And then Tamer went on to tell how Jack had mortified her when she took him on a visit to some very stylish people.
That very forenoon, so Anna told me afterwards, Tamer had whipped Jack because she mistrusted he had not told her the exact truth—whipped him for not bein’ open and candid.
And Tamer had warned Jack to be very polite at the table, to eat whatever was put before him, and make no remarks about it.
So Jack, I suppose, felt he had done his full duty, and deserved and desired credit, when he leaned back in his chair and said he had finished his supper, and added:
“I have done just what you told me to do, mother. I have eat my rossberrys, worms and all, and said nothin’.”
“I thought,” said Tamer, “I should sink through the floor; and another time I thought I should expire with shame. Jack had been to Sunday-school and the teacher” (the Born Baptist) “made him sign the pledge. Jack loved sweet cider, and I wuz afraid he would break the pledge, he wuz so little, and I thought I would ruther have him wait till he got older and could feel the importance of it, and I told Jack I would have his teacher take his name off the pledge. And that very day she called, and I told her I thought Jack had better wait till he wuz older, and she turned her eyes in a solemn way to Jack and said, ‘Jack, do you want to take your name off the pledge?’