"People under the shadow of my voice,--all you that the mountains has give birth and suck to,--you know what I mean. Though we air ignorant folk, not able to get much acquainted with God through his written Word, yet He hain't never left us without a witness; He hain't never failed to speak to our minds and our hearts. In the high, lifted-up places, gazing out over the green mountain-tops, with maybe the sun-ball drapping low in the west, and the clouds and the elements all a-praising Him in their beauty; or maybe of a cold winter's day, with the whole world white and the snow a-sparkling and the shadows deep-blue in the hollows; He talks to us, He shows us things that no level-lander don't know nothing about, or get no inkling of--visions, and dreams, and things to come. You have all, even the meanest, kotched a glimp of 'em. For we air a seeing people. "And several times in sech visions, friends, I have beheld down there below, in the valley of Troublesome, all manner of peaceful and happy homes, where every man had his mind made up to let liquor and guns alone, and the women-folks tended their offsprings in the fear of the Lord, and even the young was too busy getting larning to be briggaty and feisty. "I allow, moreover, that there is but few here that, in their better hours, hain't beheld and wished for the same. But how hit was to come about didn't appear. We wa'n't able to help ourselves, or bring about a change; hit was like a land-slip: things had got too much headway to be turnt back. We needed outside help, but where hit was to come from, nobody knowed. But from the time I were a leetle shirt-tail boy, hoeing corn on yon hillsides, I have had faith to believe the Lord would send hit in some time, from somewheres, and have never ceased a-praying for hit. "And in the weeks past, friends, sence these here women tuck up their abode with us, hit has appeared like my prayers was answered, my visions a-coming true. I hain't heared a gun fired off sence that first night they come in; I have seed the boys that ginerally drinks and fights and shoots (because they hain't got nothing better to do) all a-gethered in, happy and peaceable, singing and playing, and even sewing; and the gals, that is apt to idle and squander their time, taking joy in larning how to cook right vittles and dig out dirt; and the older folks likewise waking up to things they never heared of before; and me myself,--which hit don't seem noways possible, but yet hit is true,--me, that nigh a lifetime ago had give up all hope of ever being knowledgeable; me, with you might say both feet in the grave, becoming a man of larning. For the women here has already teached me my letters, and I'm a-studying on page three of my primer; and before the summer passes I'll be a-reading in my grandsir's old yaller Bible I have churrished so long, praise the Lord!