An Atheist;

call me an infidel because I hate the God of the Jews,—which I do. I intend so to live that when I die my children can come to my grave and truthfully say, "He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain."

When I was a boy there was one day in each week too good for a child to be happy in. In these good old times Sunday commenced when the sun went down on Saturday night, and closed when the sun went down on Sunday night. We commenced Saturday to get a good ready. And when the sun went down Saturday night there was a gloom deeper than midnight that fell upon the house. You could not crack hickory nuts then. And if you were caught chewing gum, it was only another evidence of the total depravity of the human heart.

Well, after a while we got to bed sadly and sorrowfully, after having heard heaven thanked that we were not all in hell. And I sometimes used to wonder how the mercy of God lasted as long as it did, because 1 recollected that on several occasions I had not been at school when I was supposed to be there. Why I was not burned to a crisp was a mystery to me. The next morning we got up and we got ready for church—all solemn, and when we got there the minister was up in the pulpit, about 20 feet high, and he commenced at Genesis about