All He Knew | Page 9

"I thought not. You haven't got things right at all. You haven't been
converted: that's what's the matter with you."
"Do you mean, Deacon," said Sam, after a moment, "that what I'm
believin' about Jesus is all wrong an' there ain't nothin' in it?"
"Why, no; I can't say that," the deacon replied, "but--but you've begun
wrong end first. What a sinner needs most of all is to know about his
hereafter."
"It's what's goin' on now, from day to day, that weighs hardest on me,
deacon. There's nothin' hard about dyin'; leastways, you'd think so if
you was built like me, an' felt like I have to feel sometimes."
"You're all wrong," said the deacon. "If you can't understand these
things for yourself, you ought to take the word of wiser men for it."
"S'posin' I was to do that about everythin': then when Judge Prency,
who's a square man an' a good deal smarter than I be, talks politics to
me, I ought to be a Republican instead of a Jackson Democrat."
"No," said the deacon, sharply, for he was a Jackson Democrat himself.
"I'll have to talk more to you about this, Samuel. Good night."
"Good night, deacon."
"He knows more'n you do about religion," said Mrs. Kimper, who had
followed closely behind, and who rejoined her husband as soon as the
deacon departed.
"He ought to, seein' his head-piece an' chances; an' yet I've heerd some
pooty hard things said about him."

When the couple reached home, Sam looked at the long heap of straw
and rags on which his children should have been sleeping, but which
was without occupant except the baby. Then, by the light of the coals
still remaining in the fire-place, he looked through some leaves of the
little book which the prison visitor had given him. When he arose from
the floor, he said to himself,--
"I'll stick to Him yet, deacon or no deacon,--stick to Him as if He was
Andrew Jackson."
CHAPTER V.
Sam Kimper spent several days in looking about his native town for
work. He found many sympathetic assurances, some promises, and no
work at all. Everybody explained to everybody else that they were
sorry for the poor wretch, but they couldn't afford to have a jail-bird
around.
Meanwhile, Sam's stock of money, accumulated by overwork in the
State prison, and augmented by Judge Prency's present, was running
low. He kept his family expenses as low as possible, buying only the
plainest of food-material and hesitating long to break a bill, though it
were only of the denomination of one dollar. Nevertheless the little wad
of paper money in his pocket grew noticeably thinner to his touch.
His efforts to save the little he had in his possession were not assisted
by his family. His wife, thanks and perhaps blame to the wifely sense
of dependence upon her husband, had fallen back upon him entirely
after what he had said about his intention as to the future of the family,
and she not only accepted his assurances as bearing upon the material
requirements of several mouths from day to day, but she also built
some air-castles which he was under the unpleasant necessity of
knocking down. The poor woman was not to blame. She never had seen
a ten-dollar bill since the day of her marriage, when, in a spasm of
drunken enthusiasm, her husband gave a ten-dollar Treasury note to the
clergyman who officiated on that joyous occasion.
One evening Sam took his small change from his pocket to give his son

Tom money enough to buy a half-bushel of corn-meal in the village. As
he held a few pieces of silver in one hand, touching them rapidly with
the forefinger of the other, his son Tom exclaimed,--
"You're just overloaded with money, old man! Say, gi' me a quarter to
go to the ball game with? I'm in trainin', kind o' like, an' I ain't afeard to
say that mebbe I'll turn out a first-class pitcher one of these days."
"Tom," said his father, trying to straighten his feeble frame, as his eyes
brightened a little, "I wish I could: I'd like you to go into anything that
makes muscle. But I can't afford it. You know I'm not workin' yet, an'
until I do work the only hope of this family is in the little bit of money
I've got in my pocket."
"Well," said Tom, thrusting out his lower lip, slouching across the
room, and returning again, "I don't think a quarter's enough to trouble
anybody's mind about what'll happen to his family afterwards. I've
heard a good deal from the mother about you bein' converted, and
changin' into a different sort of a man, but I don't think much of any
kind of converted