Yes, I like our episcopal churches, they teach, persuade, guide, and paternally govern, but they have no dungeons, no tortures, no fire and sword. They ain’t afraid of the light, for, as minister used to say, “their light shines afore men.” Just see what sort of a system it must be that produces such a man as Jehu Judd. And yet Jehu finds it answer his purpose in his class to be what he is. His religion is a cloak, and that is a grand thing for a pick-pocket. It hides his hands, while they are fumblin’ about your waistcoat and trousers, and then conceals the booty. You can’t make tricks if your adversary sees your hands, you may as well give up the game.
But to return to the evangelical trader. Before we recommenced dancing again, I begged the two Gaelic girls, who were bouncing, buxom lasses, and as strong as Shetland ponies, to coax or drag him up for a reel. Each took a hand of his and tried to persuade him. Oh, weren’t they full of smiles, and didn’t they look rosy and temptin’? They were sure, they said, so good-lookin’ a man as he was, must have learned to dance, or how could he have given it up?
“For a single man like you,” said Catherine.
“I am not a single man,” said Old Piety, “I am a widower, a lonely man in the house of Israel.”
“Oh, Catherine,” sais I, a givin’ her a wink, “take care of theeself, or thy Musquodobit farm, with its hundred acres of intervale meadow, and seventy head of horned cattle, is gone.”
He took a very amatory look at her after that hint.
“Verily she would be a duck in Quaco, friend Jehu,” said I.
“Indeed would she, anywhere,” he said, looking sanctified Cupids at her, as pious galls do who show you the place in your prayer-book at church.
“Ah, there is another way methinks she would be a duck,” said I, “the maiden would soon turn up the whites of her eyes at dancin’ like a duck in thunder, as the profane men say.”
“Oh, oh,” said the doctor, who stood behind me, “I shall die, he’ll kill me. I can’t stand this, oh, how my sides ache.”