“But the sea opened before ’em, and they passed through on dry land.
“Now they are encamped in the wilderness, and the tall, dark shapes of Ignorance and Hereditary Weakness and Vice are a stalkin’ along by their sides, and coverin’ ’em with their black shadows. The stumps are thick in their way. The old trees of Custom and Habit, though their haughty tops may have been cut off a little by the lightnin’ of war, yet the black, solid, onbroken stumps stand thick in their way—so thick they can’t force their way through ’em—and the black mud of Open Enmity, and Arrogance, and Prejudice is on one side of ’em, and on the other the shiftin’, treacherous quicksands of Mistaken Counsel.
“Their way is blocked up, and the light is dim over their heads. Religion and Education is the light that is goin’ ahead on ’em; but that piller of fire is some ways ahead of ’em, and its rays are hindered by the branchin’ shadows over their heads. And who will be the Moses to lead ’em out of this wilderness into their own land?”
I wuz almost entirely by the side of myself with deep emotions of pity and sympathy and a desire to help ’em, and I felt riz up, too, in my mind—awful riz up—and I spoke out agin, entirely onbeknown to myself:
“Who will be the Moses to lead ’em into the Promised Land?”
“Wall, it won’t be me,” sez Josiah. “I am goin’ out to bed down the horses.”
I wuz took aback, and brung down too sudden from the Mount of Eloquence I had been standin’ on.
And I put on my nightcap and went to bed.