"
"Brother!" Hank yells out, "don't ye brother
me, you sniffling, psalm-singing, yaller-faced,
pigeon-toed hippercrit, you! Get me a ladder,
gol dern you, and I'll come out'n here and learn
you to brother me, I will." Only that wasn't
nothing to what Hank really said to that preacher;
no more like it than a little yaller, fluffy canary is
like a buzzard.
"Brother Walters," says the preacher, ca'am but
firm, "we have all decided that you ain't going to
come out of that cistern till you sign the pledge."
And Hank tells him what he thinks of pledges and
him and church doings, and it wasn't purty. And
he says if he was as deep in eternal fire as what he
now is in rain-water, and every fish that nibbles
at his toes was a preacher with a red-hot pitchfork
a-jabbing at him, they could jab till the hull here-
after turned into snow afore he'd ever sign nothing a
man like Mr. Cartwright give him to sign. Hank
was stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes
onto, and proud of being that stubborn. That
town was a awful religious town, and Hank he
knowed he was called the most onreligious man in it,
and he was proud of that too; and if any one called
him a heathen it jest plumb tickled him all over.
"Brother Walters," says that preacher, "we are
going to pray for you.
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