When a blacksmith goes out into company, folks don’t pester him with questions as to why tempered steel wasn’t stored up in handy caves, instead of havin’ nothin’ but rough ore hid away in the cellar of a mountain; and a carpenter is not held responsible because a sharp saw cuts better ’n a dull one; but it seems about next to impossible for a human bein’ to pass up a parson without insultin’ him a little about the ways o’ Providence, and askin’ him a lot o’ questions which would moult feathers out o’ the ruggedest angel in the bunch.
We could all see ’at the Friar had been havin’ a rough day of it; so Tank began by askin’ him questions simply to toll him away from himself; but soon he was shootin’ questions into the Friar as rough shod as though they was both strangers to each other.
“You say it was sheep-herders what saw the angels that night the Lord was born,” sez Tank. “How come the’ wasn’t any cow-punchers saw ’em?” Tank had about the deep-rootedest prejudice again’ sheep-herders I ever saw.
“The’ wasn’t any cow-punchers in that land,” sez the Friar. “It was a hilly land an’—”
“Well I’d like to know,” broke in ol’ Tank, “why the Lord picked out such a place as that, when he had the whole world to choose from.”
O’ course the Friar tried his best to smooth this out; but by the time he was through, Tank had got tangled up with another perdicament. “Then, there was ol’ Faro’s dream,” he said, “the one about the seven lean cows eatin’ the seven fat ones. I’ve punched cows all my life, and I saw ’em so thin once, when the snow got crusted an’ the chinook got switched off for a month, that the spikes on their backbones punched holes through their hides; but they’d as soon thought o’ flyin’ up an’ grazin’ on clouds, as to turn in an’ eat one another.”
By the time the Friar had got through explainin’ the difference between dreams and written history, Tank was ready with another query. “I heard tell once ’at the Bible sez, ‘If thy eye offends thee, pluck it out.’ Does the Bible say this?”
“Well, it does,” admitted the Friar; “but you see—”
“Well, my free eye offends me,” broke in Tank. “It never did offend me until Spike Groogan tried to pluck it out, and it don’t offend me now as much as it does other folks. Still, I got to own up ’at the blame thing does offend me whenever I meet up with strangers, ’cause it allus runs wilder in front of a stranger ’n at airy other time. Now, what I want to know is, why an’ when an’ how must I pluck out that eye—specially, when it sez in another place that if a man’s eye is single his whole body is full o’ light. My eye is single enough to suit any one. Fact is, it’s so blame single that some folks call it singular; but the’ ain’t no more light in my body ’n there is in airy other man’s.”
You couldn’t work off any spiritual interpretation stuff on Tank. He thought an allegory was the varmint which lives in the Florida swamps. Well, as far as that goes, I did, too, until the Friar pointed out that it was merely a falsehood used to explain the truth; but Tank, he didn’t join in with any new-fangled notions, an’ a feller had to talk to him as straight out as though talkin’ to a hoss. The’ was lots of times I didn’t envy the Friar his job.