drouth. She had heard complaint, censure, innuendo, and downright abuse
of poor Gus. These were the first generous words. They confirmed her
judgment, they comforted her heart, they made her feel grateful, even
affectionate toward the fop, in spite of his watch-seals, his curled
mustache, his straps, his cold eyes, and his artificial smile. Poor fool
you will call her, and poor fool she was. For she could have thrown
herself at the feet of Humphreys, and thanked him for his words. Thank
him she did in a stammering way, and he did not hesitate to repeat his
favorable impressions of Germans, after that. What he wanted was, not to
break the hold of August until he had placed himself in a position to be
next heir to her regard.

CHAPTER XI.

THE COON-DOG ARGUMENT.

The reader must understand that all this time Elder Hankins continued to
bombard Clark township with the thunders and lightnings of the
Apocalypse, continued to whirl before the dazed imaginations of his
rustic hearers the wheels within wheels and the faces of the living
creatures of 'Zek'el, continued to cipher the world out of existence
according to formulas in Dan'el, marched out the he-goat, made the seven
heads and ten horns of the beast do service over and over again. And all
the sweet mysteries of Oriental imagery, the mystic figures which
unexpounded give so noble a depth to the perspective of Scripture, were
cut to pieces, pulled apart, and explained, as though they were tricks
of legerdemain. Julia was powerfully impressed, not by the declamations
of Hankins, for she had sensibility enough to recoil from his
vivisection of Scripture, though she had been all her life accustomed to
hear it from other than Millerites, but she was profoundly affected by
the excitement about her. Her father, attracted in part by the promise
that there should be no marrying there, had embraced Millerism with all
his heart, and was in such a state of excitement that he could not
attend to his business. Mrs. Anderson was in continual trepidation about
it, though she tried not to believe it. She was on the point of
rebelling and declaring that the world _should_ not come to an end. But
on the whole she felt that the government of the universe was one affair
in which she would have to give up all hope of having her own way.
Meantime there was no increase of religion. Some were frightened out 

 Prev. P 29/164 next