"Oh! what a blessed young man!" said Mrs. Quackenbosh.
"How I wish it was he that was to preach for us to-day," responded
that gem from the antique, Miss Polly Entwistle, who had joined
every church in Kentucky in turn, without having been made a spouse
in either.
"How handsome he is!" simpered Miss Julia Evergreen--a damsel of
seventeen, upon whom the bilious eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast
with such an expression as the devil is said to put on when suddenly
soused in holy water.
"Handsome is that handsome does!" was the commentary of a venerable
cormorant to whom Brother Cross had always appeared the special
and accepted agent of heaven.
"I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I wonder if
he believes in the new-light doctrine?" purred one of the ancient
tabbies of the conventicle.
"The new light is but the old darkness, Sister Widgeon," responded
an old farmer of sixty four, who had divided his time so equally
between the plough and the prayer-book, that his body had grown
as crooked as the one, while his mind was bewildered with as many
doctrines as ever worried all sense out of the other.
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