“Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student! Don't you see proofs of my progress in my unctuous phraseology. I was taken suddenly upon the highway--a brand plucked from the burning--and to be stuck up on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern and lighthouse to other wayfarers--wandering rogues like yourself, who need some better lights than your own if it only be to show you how to sin decently. I am professedly a convert to the true faith, though which that is, I think, has not well been determined among you at Murkey's, or, indeed, anywhere else. I believe the vox populi, vox Dei, still comprises the only wholesome decision which has yet been made on the subject. The popular vote here declares it to be methodism; with you it is baptism or presbyterianism--which? I am a flexible student, however, and when I meet you again at Murkey's, shall be prepared to concur with the majority. “But, in sober fact, I am a professor--actually recognised by my neighbors as one of the elect--set apart to be and do mighty things. How I came so, will call for a long story, which I defer to another occasion. Enough to tell you that an accidental rencontre with a silly old preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy, which I recommended to him, under another name, as a sovereign remedy against flatulence, and which nearly strangled him he took such a premeditated swallow), brought me into one of the loveliest little villages in all this western country, and there I saw many things--among others--a woman!--