“Well, I am mixed on the fate that awaits me when I die. If I should go off sudden, with all my sins on my head, and this burnt cork on my face, I should probably be a neighbor to you, way down below, and they would give me a job as fireman, and I should feel bad for you every time I chucked in a nuther chunk of brimstone, and thought of you trying to swim dog fashion in the lake of fire, and straining your eyes to find an iceberg that you could crawl up on to cool your parched hind legs. If I don't die slow so I will have time to repent, and be saved, I shall be toasted brown. That's what the minister says, and they wouldn't pay him two thousand dollars a year and give him a vacation to tell anything that was not so. I tell you it is painful to think of that place that so many pretty fair average people here are going to when they die. Just think of it, a man that swears just once, if he don't hedge, and take it back will go to the bad place. If a person steals a pin, just a small, no account pin, he is as bad as if he stole all there was in a bank, and he stands the best chance of going to the bad place. You see, if a fellow steals a little thing like a pin, he forgets to repent, cause it don't seem to be worth while to make so much fuss about. But if a fellow robs a bank, or steals a whole lot of money from orphans, he knows it is a mighty serious matter, and he gets in his work repenting, too quick, and he is liable to get to the good place, while you, who have only stole a few potatoes out of a bushel that you sold to the orphan asylum, will forget to repent, and you will sizzle. I tell you, the more I read about being good, and going to Heaven, the more I think a feller can't be too careful, and from this out you won't find a better boy than I am. When I come in here after this and take a few dried peaches or crackers and cheese, you charge it right up to Pa, and then I won't have it on my mind and have to answer for it at the great judgment day. I am going to shake my chum, cause he chews tobacco, which is wicked, though I don't see how that can be, when the minister smokes, but I want to be on the safe side. I am going to be good or bust a suspender, and hereafter you can point to me as a boy who has seen the folly of an ill-spent life, and if there is such a thing as a fifteen year old boy, who has been a terror, getting to heaven, I am the hairpin. I tell you, when I listen to the minister tell about the angels flying around there, and I see pictures of them purtier than any girl in this town, with chubby arms with dimples in the elbows and shoulders, and long golden hair, and think of myself here cleaning off horses in a livery stable and smelling like an old harness, it makes me tired, and I wouldn't miss going there for ten dollars. Say, you would make a healthy angel, for a back street of the new Jerusalem, but you would give the whole crowd away unless you washed up, and sent that shirt to the Chinese laundry. Yes, sir,