I Happy Nonagenarian EXORDIUM CAN never praise the Lord enough for the sainted mother, an old-style, shouting Methodist, whom He used to convert my soul, how young I know not; but I remember as well as yesterday my grandfather had come to see me and brought the goods to make me a dress, as I was his namesake, which my mother had made girl-fashion, and I had it on. We children called the goods bombazet. The spots were brilliant and I thought it beautiful, and was delighted with my namesake present. Meanwhile Mother preached to me the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; at the same time telling me that she had given me to the Lord for a preacher and had heard from heaven, that I was to live long on the earth and preach the Gospel, and while the final purgatorial fires will wrap the world in devouring flames, and I said, as to me it was new and startling, "Mother where will I be when the world is on fire," and she said, "My boy, you will be shouting with the angels in the air." I asked her how she knew it, and she said. the Lord had told her so. I could stand it no longer, so hustled down out of her lap and ran out to hunt up the other children (as I had three sisters older than my self) to tell them the news, that I was a preacher, as I had never heard it before. They were all playing in a fence corner and I broke the glad news to them and they gave way to uproarious laughter wonderfully tickled to think that the baby was claiming to be a preacher. Eventually, hilarity is superseded by lovingkindness for the ignorant baby who thought he was a preacher when he was at the other pole of the battery, as they thought, when they proceeded candidly to relieve me of my mistake, (a) stating to me, “Willie, you are mistaken, you are no preacher, you can't preach." I did not believe my mother could tell a lie or make a mistake. I do not believe that God ever gave a child to a mother whom He would not have used her to happily convert and gloriously save, if she had only begun in time and been right herself. I stood up before the other children on my clerical dignity and said, "I am a preacher for Mother says it," and I thought that settled the problem world without end. I mustered all my energy and said to them, "This fence corner will do for the meeting house and you the people and I the preacher, and we will have the meeting now," and consequently proceeded with all my might, preaching to them in solid candor, thinking I was the preacher and I must not let them laugh me out of my calling. (b) They became serious, attentive, and got convicted, while I got happy and heard the call from heaven, which never did leave me, but actually proved a guardian angel, heading off the follies and vices, by demonical intervention so fatal to childhood. |