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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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