“’Twas zeal, Grover Cleveland. And there’s another point where gran’daddy ain’t exactly clear in his mind. Zeal must be a good thing; St. Paul he owned up that he had it, and yet—I reckon zeal’s like ’lectric’ty, it’s a powerful power for good so long as it’s kept in leaders; but you let ’lectric’ty go rarin’ round promiscuous and it’ll rip things all to flinderations. Eight years ago we had jes’ one church in Junaluska and we had a preacher all to ourselves; we didn’t let him starve to death or freeze to death, ary one. He lived down thar in my log cabin and he had his own roastin’-ear patch and a garden and a orchard. He had a horse of his own and there wasn’t a cabin in any of these mountain gullies that he didn’t know his way to, and there wasn’t a cabin where he wasn’t looked up to and respected. But by and by folks of diff’rent b’liefs came settlin’ round here. They was all powerful pious and they was all bustin’ with zeal, each one for his own ’religious denomination’ as they called it. And—well—I never could contrive just how they done it—but tollable soon there was five diff’rent churches in Junaluska and no more religion than there was before; unless pullin’ and haulin’ and each one tryin’ to git ahead of the other constitutes religion, which I’m doubtful if it do. And more’n that there ain’t work enough nor ham and hominy enough in Junaluska for more than one preacher. Them questions of yours has set me to studyin’, Grover Cleveland.” So gran’daddy folded himself together and “studied” the rest of the way, while his grandson, making the most of his little brief authority, yelled so conflicting commands at the puzzled oxen that they took their head and in due time drew the rattling old wagon safe into the home barn yard. A scarlet-beaded holly, fresh from the forests of the North Carolina mountains, is a Christmas Tree the wealthiest church in Christendom might covet. Such a one our heroes fixed upright and firm in the shackly old farm wagon. It seemed to grow from a soil deeply top dressed with corn fodder. The resources of the one little store at the village were meagre but the genius of the decorators was not versatile. Gran’daddy chivalrously intended for the old women to have the best and in his eyes a new frock was a princely gift. As for the old men, what so appropriate and acceptable as a paper of plug tobacco. At this stage his ingenuity was exhausted and his grandson did the rest.