"
"Well, I don't see how you was old enough to be convicted and learn it
all, unless you was a speretual merikle. Misc Somers see one of 'em at
Jinkotig. They called him the enfant phrenomeny. He exhorted at five
year old, and at seven give his experyins."
"Rare, Miss Rhoda," the rector said, hardly able to keep his reverence
in amusement at her impetuosity.
"Oh, he made a wild excitemins, Aunt Vesty. The women give each other
their babies to hold while they tuk turns a-shouting. 'Yer, Becky, hold
my baby while I shout!' says one. 'Now, Nancy, hold mine while I shout!'
To see that little boy up thar tellin' of his experyins was meriklus,
an' made an excitemins like the high tides on Jinkotig that drowns' em
out. But, Aunt Vesty, that little phrenomeny was a dwarf, twenty year
old, an' Misc Somers found it out and told about it."
"I'll be bound Mrs. Somers knows!" exclaimed the Judge.
"That she do," continued Rhoda, earnestly, with a slight sniffle of a
well-modelled nose and a dimpling that argued to Vesta something to
come. "Misc Somers says you held one of them babies, Jedge, to let its
mother shout, and pretended to be under a conviction; an' that you
backslid right thar and was a-whisperin' to the other mother. Lord
sakes! Misc Somers finds it all out."
"Well," said the Judge, finding the laugh against him, "I never did
better electioneering than that day. By holding that baby five minutes I
made a vote, and the mother will hold it twenty years before she will
make a vote.
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