"If you would, miss, perhaps then I might be able to learn. You
see, I never was like other people. Mother was the only one that
didn't take me for an innocent. She used to talk big things about
me, and the rest used to laugh at her. She gave me her large
Testament when she was dying, but, if it hadn't been for Ann, I
should never have been able to read it well enough to understand
it. And now Ann tells me I'm a heathen and worship my fiddle,
because I don't go to chapel with her; but it do seem such a
waste of good time. I'll go to church, though, miss, if you tell
me it's the right thing to do; only it's hard to work all the
week, and be weary all the Sunday. I should only be longing for
my fiddle all the time. You don't think, miss, that a great
person like God cares whether we pray to him in a room or in a
church?"
"No, I don't," answered Mary. "For my own part, I find I can pray
best at home."
"So can I," said Joseph, with solemn fervor. "Indeed, miss, I
can't pray at all sometimes till I get my fiddle under my chin,
and then it says the prayers for me till I grow able to pray
myself. And sometimes, when I seem to have got to the outside of
prayer, and my soul is hungrier than ever, only I can't tell what
I want, all at once I'm at my fiddle again, and it's praying for
me. And then sometimes it seems as if I lost myself altogether,
and God took me, for I'm nowhere and everywhere all at once.
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