digest speritual truth. I hain't only wearing these gayly, boughten
clothes, I 'm a-fla'nting the robes of joy and the gyarments of
praise. I know the Lord don't hate me and never did; I know I am
free, restored, and saved; I know my Redeemer liveth, and has fotch
me up out of the blackness of darkness on to the top-most peaks of
joy and peace and thanksgiving.

"And don't think, women,--don't never, never think I hain't aiming
to let my light shine! I aim to use my faculty not for worldly
betterment alone, but to turn it loose likewise in the line of
religion and preachifying. Yes, every night this enduring winter
will see me a-s'arching the Scriptur'; and what I can't read I can
ricollect; and come August, when the craps is laid by and the
funeral occasions sets in, I will be ready for 'em. There won't be
one in twenty mile' that won't see me a-coming, and a-taking my
stand by the grave-houses in these reesurrection gyarments, for to
norate the wonders of my experience, and to shame and confound and
drownd out Uncle Joshuay and t'other blind leaders of the blind
whatever they dare raise their gray heads and hoary lies, and
gin'rally to publish abroad, world-without-eend, the ons'archable
riches and glory and power of the love of God."




Afterword

In the heart of the Kentucky mountains, that romantic and
little-known region popularly regarded as the "home of feuds and
moonshine," a rural social settlement, the first in the world, was