then you must first put me out—­that’s a fact.  The Parson jist made a spring forrard, and kitched him up as quick as wink, and throwed him right over the fence whap on the broad of his back, and then walked on as if nothin had happened—­as demure as you please, and lookin as meek as if butter would’nt melt in his mouth.  Stop, said the boxer, as soon as he picked himself up, stop Parson, said he, that’s a good man, and jist chuck over my horse too, will you, for I swan I believe you could do one near about as easy as tother.  My! said he, if that don’t bang the bush; you are another guess chap from what I took you to be, any how.  Now, said Mr. Hopewell, says he, I won’t write, but if are a Unitarian crosses my path, I’ll jist over the fence with him in no time, as the parson did the boxer; for writin only aggravates your opponents, and never convinces them.  I never seed A convert made by that way yet, but I’ll tell you what I have seed, A man set his own flock A DOUBTIN by his own writin.  You may happify your enemies, CANTANKERATE your opponents, and, injure your own cause by it, but I defy you to sarve it.  These writers, said he, put me in mind of that are boxer’s pupils.  He would sometimes set two on ’em to spar; well, they’d put on their gloves and begin, larfin and jokin all in good humor.  Presently one on ’em would put in a pretty hard blow; well, tother would return it in airnest.  Oh, says the other, if that’s your play, off gloves and at it; and sure enough, away would fly their gloves, and at it they’d go tooth and nail.

No, Sam, the misfortin is, we are all apt to think Scriptur intended for our neighbors, and not for ourselves.  The poor all think it made for the rich.  Look at that are Dives, they say, what an all fired scrape he got into by his avarice, with Lazarus; and aint it writ as plain as any thing, that them folks will find it as easy to go to heaven, as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  Well, then, the rich think it all made for the poor—­that they sharnt steal nor bear false witness, but shall be obedient to them that’s in authority.  And as for them are Unitarians, and he always got his dander up when he spoke of them, why there’s no doin nothin with them, says he.  When they get fairly stumped, and you produce a text that they can’t get over, nor get round, why they say it tante in our varsion at all—­that’s an interpolation, its an invention of them are everlastin monks; there’s nothin left for you to do with them, but to sarve them as Parson Possit detailed the boxer—­lay right hold of ’em, and chuck ’em over the fence, even if they were as big as all out doors.  That’s what our folks ought to have done with ’em at first, pitched ’em clean out of the state, and let ’em go down to Nova-Scotia, or some such outlandish place, for they aint fit to live in no christian country at all.