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get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a
low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks
as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The
more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the
more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit
me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in
the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from
up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't
ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the
lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur
and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the
best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up
wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept say-
ing, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done
it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting about that
nigger goes to everlasting fire." ssssssssss
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I
couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled
down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use
to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why
they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I
warn't square; is was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up
sin, but away inside of me I was holding on'to the biggest one of all. I was
trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing,
and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down
in me I knowed it was a lie -- and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie -- I found
that out. ssssssssss
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At
last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter -- and then see if I can
pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight
off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad
and excited, and set down and wrote: ssssssssss
ssssssssss
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