"'Thar,' says he, 'don't you see, the judgment's a comin', close follerin' at our heels?'
"'And you are the very old feller himself, I do b'lieve,' says I."
"What were his doctrines, did they correspond with himself?"
"A-hem y-e-s,—his doctrines was enough to set the world a-fire without any stove-pipe with the smell o' the brimstone as the words come out of his mouth. His favorite text was the lake of brimstone and fire that come rainin' down out of heaven. I said to him one day, says I, 'Sykes, rain and fire don't agree very well together and seems to me it would be more consistent and sort o' christian-like to take for your text where it says,
"He sendeth his rain on the evil and on the good; on the just and on the unjust."
"'Yes,' says he, 'that's pleasin' to the ear, and shows that you are born of your father, the adversary and devil, thinkin' you shall escape the burnin' lake.'
"'Why Sykes,' says I, 'we can't have but one father, and if God is our father, how can the devil be too?' That sort o' staggered him, though I don't pretend to be divine, nor know nothin' about necrology or what you call it, but I could talk him down any day, and make him go and study his cataplasm all over again."
"If you should try I wonder if you couldn't use words more at random. This is a profitable way of spending time listening to your raillery."
