Ol’ Tank Williams was a serious-minded old relic, and he was feelin’ so sheepish just then that it seemed to him as though the Friar had imposed on him by lurin’ him into such a fix; so he roars out in earnest: “If you ain’t got no money, why the deuce do ya tote those guns about with ya all the time?”
“Would you just as soon tie me to a tree, or take some other measures of defence?” asked the Friar politely. “My arms are gettin’ weary and I could talk more comfortable with ’em hanging’ down.”
“Aw put ’em down, and talk on,” sez George Hendricks.
“Thank you,” sez the Friar. “Well, now, boys, the man who doesn’t take the time to put a value on his own life, isn’t likely to make that life very much worth while. He mustn’t overvalue it to such an extent that he becomes a coward, nor he mustn’t undervalue it to such an extent that he becomes reckless—he must take full time to estimate himself as near as he is able.
“I don’t know that I can allus keep from judgin’ my fellow men; but I am sure that I would not judge one to the extent of sayin’ that my life was worth more than his, so I should never use a gun merely to save my own life by takin’ away the life of another man—much less would I use a gun in defence of money; but I am a purty good shot, and sometimes I can get a man interested by shootin’ at a mark with him. This is why I carry firearms. Do you want the two bits?”
“Aw, go on,” yells ol’ Tank, madder at himself ’n ever. “We didn’t intend to rob ya. All we wanted was to hear ya sing and preach a bit”; and he pulled off his mask and shook the Friar’s hand. All the rest o’ the boys did the same; and I clumb up on my rock, flapped my wings, and crowed like a rooster.
Well, we sat on the ground, and he sang for us; and then he sobered and began to talk about cussin’. It used to hurt the Friar to hear some o’ the double-jointed swear words we used when excited. He tried not to show it, because he didn’t want anything to shut us away from him at any time; but whiles his face would wrinkle into lines of actual pain.
“Now, boys,” he began, “I know, ’at you don’t mean what you say in a profane way. You call each other terrible names, and condemn each other to eternal punishment; and if a man said these things in earnest, his life would be forfeit; but you take it merely as a joke. Now, I do not know just how wicked this is. I know that it is forbidden to take the name o’ the Lord thy God in vain; so it is a dangerous thing to be profane even in thoughtlessness; but I have heard the Lord’s name used by the perfectly respectable in a way which must have hurt his tender nature more.
“Once in the crowded slum district of a large eastern city, I saw a freight car back down on a child and kill it. The mother was frantic; she was a foreigner and extra emotional, and she screamed, and cursed the railroad. A man had come to comfort her, and he put his hand on her arm and said, ‘My dear woman, you must not carry on this way. We must always bow our heads in submission to the Lord’s will.’
“For years the poor people o’ that neighborhood had begged protection for their children; and I cannot believe that it was the Lord’s will that even one o’ the least of ’em should have been slain in order to drive the lesson a little deeper home; so, as I said before, I am not going to talk to you of the wickedness of swearing—but I am goin’ to talk about its foolishness, its vulgarity, and its brutality.”