He wound up his sermon by deploring the tendency to atheism which he had noticed “among those merchants who had recently gone up with the caravans to Babylon for spices” (this was just his high-toned way of describing Deacon Wiggleford’s trip to Chicago in a day-coach for groceries), and hoped that the goods which they had brought back were better than the theology.  Of course, the old folks on the mourners’ bench looked around to see how the Deacon was taking it, and the youngsters back on the gigglers’ bench tittered, and everybody was happy but the Deacon.  He began laying for the Doc right there.  And without meaning to, it seems that I helped his little game along.

Doc Hoover used to write me every now and then, allowing that hams were scarcer in Missouri and more plentiful in my packing-house than they had any right to be, if the balance of trade was to be maintained.  Said he had the demand and I had the supply, and he wanted to know what I was going to do about it.  I always shipped back a tierce by fast freight, because I was afraid that if I tried to argue the point he’d come himself and take a car-load.  He made a specialty of seeing that every one in town had enough food and enough religion, and he wasn’t to be trifled with when he discovered a shortage of either.  A mighty good salesman was lost when Doc got religion.

Well, one day something more than ten years ago he wrote in, threatening to make the usual raid on my smoke-house, and when I answered, advising him that the goods were shipped, I inclosed a little check and told him to spend it on a trip to the Holy Land which I’d seen advertised.  He backed and filled over going at first, but finally the church took it out of his hands and arranged for a young fellow not long out of the Theological Seminary to fill the pulpit, and Doc put a couple of extra shirts in a grip and started off.  I heard the rest of the story from Si Perkins next fall, when he brought on a couple of car-loads of steers to Chicago, and tried to stick me half a cent more than the market for them on the strength of our having come from the same town.

It seems that the young man who took Doc’s place was one of these fellows with pink tea instead of red blood in his veins.  Hadn’t any opinions except your opinions until he met some one else.  Preached pretty, fluffy little things, and used eau de Cologne on his language.  Never hit any nearer home than the unspeakable Turk, and then he was scared to death till he found out that the dark-skinned fellow under the gallery was an Armenian. (The Armenian left the church anyway, because the unspeakable Turk hadn’t been soaked hard enough to suit him.) Didn’t preach much from the Bible, but talked on the cussedness of Robert Elsmere and the low-downness of Trilby.  Was always wanting everybody to lead the higher life, without ever really letting on what it was, or at least so any one could lay hold of it by the tail.  In the end, I reckon he’d have worked around to Hoyle’s games—­just to call attention to their wickedness, of course.