I rather guess they have been telling this one ever since the War between the States. Indeed, for all I know to the contrary it may date back as far as the first and second Punic wars. For a good story never really dies. It merely goes into retirement for a season or a decade or a century and rises up again when occasion suits, with its youth miraculously restored. The narrative runs that in the last days of the war a ragged, wornout, hungry, half-crippled, half-dead Confederate straggler was limping along a Virginia highway striving to catch up with his command. Where there was a puddle in the ruts he stopped to bathe his bruised and bleeding feet. As he sat at the roadside dabbling his swollen toes in the water a Union skirmisher, well fed and lusty, stepped from behind a tree with his musket raised to his shoulder and yelled out exultantly: “Now I got you!” “Yas,” drawled the Southerner, “an’ a hell of a git you got!” § 80 There’d Be a Popular Uprising The revivalist was the mouthpiece of a new cult. In his interpretations of the Scriptures he saw no possible hope for any member of the human family who refused to accept his particular brand of religion. Before an awe-struck congregation he was describing what would come to pass with regard to those stiff-necked and perverse non-believers who were found outside the fold on the day of judgment. “My brethren,” he clarioned, “there is no middle course. By the word of the Holy Writ I have proved to you that mankind either must take the true doctrine as it has been expounded here or accept the awful consequences. I can close my eyes and see the picture right now. “Over there in shining robes stand the little group of the elect and the saved. And down below in the fiery pits of perdition millions of the unregenerate are roasting in the undying fires through all eternity while the minions of the Devil heap hot coals upon their heads and give them molten lead when they beg for water to cool their parched tongues. That, my brethren, is what will come to pass.” From the body of the house a small elderly gentleman rose up. “Excuse me for interruptin’,” he said, “but there ain’t no chance fur sich a thing to happen. Why, the people jest natchelly wouldn’t stand fur it.” § 81 From the Book of Moses Mose Morris used to live near Frankfort, Ky. He was a small, meek person of color who cultivated a truck patch for a living, and was generally liked by the white population. He remained a bachelor until he was nearing middle age. Then, in an unthoughted hour, he suffered himself to be shackled in the holy bonds of wedlock with a large, truculent, overbearing black woman nearly twice his size. He led his bride away to his little house seven miles from town. Within two weeks’ time he came driving into Frankfort in a two-mule wagon, which was piled high with household effects. As he crossed the bridge over the Kentucky River a white gentleman hailed him.