“How do you know it happened?” ventured the younger one.

Flossy gave a rapid and animated answer.

“There are about a hundred reasons why I know it; it would take me all day to tell you half of them.  But one is, that I read it in a book which good men who know a great deal, and who have been studying all their lives to find out about it, say they know is true; and I believe what they tell me about Washington and Lincoln and other men whom I never saw, so I ought to believe them when they tell me about this man.”

“But there’s one thing you don’t know.  You don’t know that he can cure folks now, and he don’t do it.”  This was spoken with a quiet positiveness, and with the air that said, “That can’t be disputed, and you know it can’t.”

Flossy hesitated just a moment; the glow on her face deepened and spread.  Then she answered in much the same tone that the boy had used: 

“I know he can, and I have good reason for knowing.  I’ll tell you a secret; you are the very first persons I have told about it, but he has cured me.  I have been sick all my life, when I came here to Chautauqua I was sick.  I could not do anything that I was made to do, and I kept doing things all the time that were not meant for me to do, but he has cured me.”

The boys looked at her in absolute incredulous wonder.

“Was you sick in bed when you came?” ventured one of them at last.

“No; it is not that kind of sickness that I mean.  That is when the body is sick, the body that when the soul goes away looks like nothing but marble, can not move, nor feel, nor speak; that isn’t of much consequence, you know, because we are sure that the soul will go away from it after awhile.  It is this soul of mine that is going to live forever that was cured.”

“How do you know it was?” came again from these wondering boys.  Flossy smiled a rare, bright smile that charmed them.

“If yours had been cured you would not ask me that question,” she said; “you would know how I know it.  But I can’t tell you how it is don’t you know there are some things that you are sure of that you can’t explain?  You are sure you can think, aren’t you? but how would you set to work to explain to me that you are sure?  The only way that you can know how is by going to this doctor and getting cured; then you will understand.”

“I’d like him if he would cure folks’ bodies,” began the boy who had a sick mother, speaking in a doubtful, somewhat dissatisfied tone.

“He does,” Flossy said, quickly.  “Don’t people’s bodies get well sometimes? and who can cure bodies except the one who made them?  If you want your mother cured you ought to try him.  If she is to be made well you may be sure that he can do it; but why should he so long as you do not care enough about it to ask him?”