Heart a-bus'in' fer de right, Debil hol'in' to him tight, Year him swish dat forked tail, See de sinner-man turn pale, Come on an' he'p him thu. Sinner hangin' 'bove de pit, By a hya'r strotch over hit, Debil hol' one eend an' shake, Y'all kin see de sinner quake, Quick, he'p dis man come thu. Seize de ropes, now, ev'y man, He'p de gospel ship ter lan', One long pull an' one gre't shout, Hallelu! We got him out, De sinner done come thu! AUNT DINAH'S KITCHEN BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount of talent, or authority, or explanation could ever make her believe that any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This had been a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie's mother; and "Miss Marie," as Dinah always called her young mistress, even after her marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost inflexibility as to measure. Dinah was the mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-making, in all its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do no wrong, and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and shoulders on which to lay off every sin and frailty, so as to maintain her own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a failure, there were fifty indisputably good reasons for it, and it was the fault, undeniably, of fifty other people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing zeal. But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last results. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and place,--though her kitchen generally looked as if it had been arranged by a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about as many places for each cooking utensil as there were days in the year,--yet, if one could have patience to wait her own good time, up would come her dinner in perfect order, and in a style of preparation with which an epicure could find no fault. It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of an inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode of invoking the domestic Muses.