"Likely that’s because most of’m’s Jews," Martha observed calmly. "But that’s as far as the difference goes. Their lungs needs just as much good air to breathe as little Christians’ lungs. An’ their stummicks call for the same sorta nourishment. My childern can say off the creed, an’ their colic, fine, but I wouldn’t wanta have my life depend on bein’ able to tell the dirt on their shoes from the dirt on the little Sheenies’. Nor I wouldn’t want to die for the number o’ times mine wriggle less than they do. Childern is childern, the world over, an’ this idea of your bein’ nearer heaven when you was a child, like Cora’s piece says, is rot—I beg your pardon!—nonsense! There’s where lots o’ folks slip up on childern. They go on the idea that young ’uns are angels to begin with, an’ they break their hearts to see ’em runnin’ down, as they grow up. The truth is, it’s just the other way ’round. Childern is little animals at the start. You got to housebreak’m, an’ train’m, till they learn the tricks o’ decent people, an’ it’s only little by little they get sense to _know_. Every time I lick my young ’uns, I feel kinda mean. They’re doin’ _almost_ as good as they know how, like the rest of us. Only o’ course it can’t be helped. You got to lick’m some, to make’m understand. Their constitutions seem to demand it. I try to bring mine up the way, it looks to me, as if the Lord was tryin’ to bring up us. Lick’m thora, when necessary, an’ then, bear no malice. As I make it out, that’s His way, an’ I don’t see how to improve on it much. But I interrupted you. You was talkin’ about how you don’t like city folks, an’ you’d got as far as the childern." Mrs. Peckett’s nearsighted eyes searched Martha’s face shrewdly, for a second. "I was just thinking that city folks’ ways ain’t our ways, that’s all. Now, I’d think pretty poorly of myself to go out of my gate, of a morning, and not pass the time of day with a neighbor. But I hear tell, that’s what city folks do. They would let you live next door—in the same street with them, for a year, and never know you." "Sure!" said Martha cheerfully. "I lived in the same house over five years, before I come up here, an’, with the exception of a Dutchman gen’lman an’ his wife, acrost the hall, I wasn’t on visitin’ terms with any of the tenants. I was too busy tendin’ to my own affairs. The way I come to know the Dutchman gen’lman was kinda accidental,—on account o’ circumstances over which he had no control at the time, but did later on. Him an’ me grew to be real chummy, after he oncet got on to it I meant business. He gave me our cat Nixcomeraus, that’s a boss mouser now, which it was only a kitten then. But, as a gener’l rule, we kep’ ourselves _to_ ourselves." "Well, I don’t call that Christian conduct," pronounced Mrs. Peckett. "It looks heathen to me, and it certainly ain’t according to Scripture. We are all brethern and——" "Cistern," Martha suggested benevolently.