I GUESS Jobe and me are goners. Jobe is nearly broken-hearted, and I feel kind a faint like. We will have to go to hell. Our preacher says so.

Last Sunday Jobe wanted me to go to meetin. I said Ide go. So I jist put on that hat I got from Jane Summers, and the blue cambric dress I have wore now for some three years, and we hitched poor old crippled Tom to the spring wagon and we went.

We tied Tom under a shade tree jist outside of town and walked in.

They was singin when we got there. As we walked up the ile of that big Methodist church, crowded full of leadin men and women, they pinted and whispered and snickered at my straw hat and Jobe’s linen coat, with a muslin patch on the sleeve, till I was really ashamed of some of them. High-toned people do sometimes act so silly that its shockin.

Well, the preacher took a hard text to preach from.

It was about Jesus tellin a young feller “to go sell all he had and give it to the poor.”

I thought the preacher had his foot in it the minit he read that text.

But then he got out of it in a way that cast a gloom over Jobe and me. He went on to explain that Jesus dident mean what he said; that he was jist a jokin with the feller.

He said Jesus wanted to make a preacher out of the young man, and he told him that jist to try him; but when he told him to do that the young feller went off sorry and dident go to preachin.

I jist thought if that was what Jesus intended to do and why he told him that, Jesus was a poor judge of timber to make a preacher out of.C

Then the preacher went on to show that the young feller Jesus failed to make a preacher out of was the only one he meant should give anything to the poor; that he dident mean anybody in that Methodist meetin-house; that they and everybody else could git all they could and keep all they can git; that the more they git and the less they give to the poor the surer they would be of gittin to heaven.

He said the rich all belong to church and were good; that that was the reason they were rich—because God loved them and prospered them; that God had made them his bankers, and they were his bankers.

Well, when he said all that I jist felt gone like.

I looked at Jobe, and he was as pale as a ghost. He was skeert.

We both felt that we were doomed to eternal torment, because the Lord knows he hasent prospered us.

We are old and poor. If riches is evidence that God favors the rich, and that they are good, and that He will take them to heaven because they are rich, to be poor is a sign that God does not favor the poor, and that they are bad and will go to hell.

We have worked hard, Jobe and me.

We have plowed and sowed and rept; we have labored in sunshine and in rain; we have paid interest on interest, taxes on taxes; we have caught bushels of pertater bugs and killed thousands of cut-worms, tryin to git rich and thus gain the favor of the church and reach the kingdom of heaven.

We have picked the lice from spring calves and buried many a sheep that died of the rot, tryin to gain the praises of the preachers and the world and git on equal footin, in the race for eternal bliss, with the fellers who live on interest and rent and taxes and dividends and sich, and in all our efforts we have failed. So now in our old age, with late frosts in the spring and airly frosts in the fall, with drouth when it ort to be wet, and wet when it ort to be dry, I can see no chance to gain the praises of the church and the necessary qualification for God’s favor this late in our lives.

Feelin this way, I can see nothin for us to do but to work day and nite to pay interest and taxes, so as to help the money-lenders, monopolists and officeholders git there.

Its bad, but I suppose it must be that way. The preacher knows.

Jobe has been buildin great hopes on havin it easier in the hereafter. His hopes are blasted. It looks now as though he would not have the pleasure of even votin the strait ticket in the great beyond.

Poor Jobe! Its a great disappintment to him.

But whats to be done?

He will jist have to submit. He cant help it.