"I tell you what, the fact of the matter is, Mr. Knicks," said he, "there is nothin' like religion. Before I got religion, and jined the church, I didn't have any knowledge of God. I used to pity these emigrants, seeing them poor and pale looking as death; but now, sir, I reads my Bible, and finds that the Lord must not regard nor love these Papists, wher'n he lets them run down so. The word of life is great." "Wal, I do not know. I care not a straw about any church; but my old mother used to teach us, when children, that poverty and crosses were no sign of the Lord's displeasure; as witness holy Job and Christ himself, who were poor. In fact, she never stopped telling us, when boys, that riches were dangerous, the love of money the root of all evil, and that 'whom he chastiseth the Lord loveth.'" "O, but your mother was a stiff Papist, you know, and did not understand the word of God." "Yes, sir-ee, she did that; for I well recollect that, in the many arguments she had with father, she always had the best of it. That she had." "She may argue from Jesuit books and the like; but the Bible she durst not look at, you know, Knicks." "I know better, Van. Don't you talk so. I have got the very Bible she used and read every day--a great large one, printed in London. Mother was English, and herself a convert to the church of Rome, though father was Dutch." "Why, I never knowed that, Knicks. That was a great misfortune. These priests, by the arts of Antichrist, will come round simple folks so, that they often succeed in leading them down to destruction." "Well, sir," said Knicks, "I can tell you I never met a Christian but my mother; and I cannot believe or listen to you say she went to destruction, but to heaven, if there is such a place. And again: if I were to embrace any religion, it would be the Roman Catholic religion; for it is the only _honest religion_ there is. Father often brought Methodist and Presbyterian ministers to make mother give up her'n; but it was no go. She always treated them civil; but they had the worst of the argument, I can tell you. They brought their Bibles, and she her'n; and then they would set to, and be at it, till at last they were obliged to give up. The only difference between her Bible and theirs is, that her'n contained some fourteen or fifteen books more than the Protestant Bible. The end of it was, that father turned with mother, and had the Irish priest O'Shane to attent him afore he died. Mother got us all baptized too." "Indeed!" carelessly ejaculated our official. "I must call and see that Bible of yours some day."