trembled for its safety)--and to smite with his hand, I will _smite_ with my hand--(slapping alternate hands on alternate thighs.)--Yes! and I will shout, too!--and cry aloud, and spare not--glory! for--ever!--(and here his voice rang out like the sweet, clear tones of a bugle). "And, therefore, my dear sisters and brethren, let us walk worthy of our vocation; not with the natural legs of the physical corporation, but in the apostolical way, with the metaphysical and figurative legs of the mind--(here Mr. N. caught some one smiling).--Take care, sinner, take care! curl not the scornful nose--I'm willing to be a fool for religion's sake--but turn not up the scornful nose--do its ministers no harm! Sinner, mark me!--in yon deep and tangled grove, where tall, aspiring trees wave green and lofty heads in the free air of balmy skies--there sinner, an hour ago, when the sonorous horn called on our embattled hosts to go to private prayer! an hour ago, in yonder grove I knelt and prayed for you!--(hooh!)--yes! I prayed some poor soul might be given for my hire!--and he promised me one!--(Glory! glory!--ah! give him one!)--laughing sinner!--take care!--I'll have you!--(Grant it--amen!--ooohoo!) Look out, I'm going to fire--(assuming the attitude of rifle-shooting)--bang!--may He send that through your heart!--may it pierce clean home through joints and marrow!--and let all people say amen!--(and here amen _was_ said, and not in the tame style of the American Archbishop of Canterbury's cathedral, be assured; but whether the spiritual bullet hit the chap aimed at, I never learned; if it did, his groans were inaudible in the alarming thunder of that amen). "Ay! ay! that's the way! that's the way! don't be ashamed of your vocation--that's the way to walk and let your light shine! Now, some wise folks despise light, and call for miracles: but when we can't have one kind of light, let us be philosophical, and take another. For my part, when I'm bogging about these dark woods, far away in the silent, somber shadows, I rejoice in sunshine; and would prefer it of choice, rather than all other celestial and translucent luminaries: but when the gentle fanning zephyrs of the shadowy night breathe soft among the trembling leaves and sprays of the darkening forests, then I rejoice in moonshine: and when the moonshine dims and pales away, with the waning silvery queen of heaven in her azure zone, I look up to the blue concave of the circular vault, and rejoice in starlight. No! _no!_ NO! any light!--give us any light rather than _none_!--(Ah, do, good--!) Yes! yes! we are the light of the world, and so let us let our light shine, whether sunshine, or moonshine, or starlight!--(oohoo!)--and then the poor benighted sinner, bogging about this terraqueous, but dark and mundane sphere, will have a light like a pole star of the distant north, to point and guide him to the sunlit climes of yonder world of bright and blazing bliss!"--(A-a-amen!)