The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-11-24
'PossUAf SKETCHES.
zeb Whites Wife Has a Story
to Tell.

One night when the old 'possum
hunter of Tennessee was out in the
cornfield with his dog looking for
coons his wife told me the following
story:
Il heard my old man sayin' to you
this ma win, that women was Gurus
critters, she began but 1 reckon
there amt a more Gurus crftter on
airth than man. 1t is now nigh upon
ten years ago that a stranger come
slickest strangers L ever did meet up
with.
He. gave out that he was a sort of
missionary loolxin' around for souls
10 snatch from perdition, and that the
La@d mad guided his footsteps this
way. he was a handsome man, and
ne smiled and talked soft and sweet,
ana everybody took to him at once. He
stopped here with us for the first three
Jays, and 1 m tellin' you that when he
kneIt IN prayer he just melted my
neaFI- Old Zeb won't own up to it
now, but that man aroused his con-
science more than all the REVEALS we
mad had for twenty years.
The stranger did his preachin' over
at the Cross Roads. five miles away,
and me and Zeb went over to his first
three sermons. 1t was beautiful
preachin', but there was a puzzle to it.
I listened and listened with all my
= might, but couldn't exactly catch on.
There was a good deal of heaven
about it. but there was also a good
deal about husbands goin' away to
some promised land and servin' the
pinted out to them arter they got
there. On the third Sunday, as me
and Zeb was wallSin' home, I says to
him:
'zeb. that amt the Baptist re-
Nope
1T amt the Methodist
SIT amt the universities nor tba
Advent
Reckon not
Then what is it?'
can't rightly say, but I'm takin
to it like a coon to a tree when the
dawgs are arter him. I feel that I've
peen mean old sinner all my life
and be good
"Zeb was a good huff man, as men
go, but If he wanted to get gooder
and jine the church it was for me to
encourage him, and 1 did so. Heaps
OF other men around here thought lest
as he did, and heaps of other wives
thought jest as did, and so the
stranger had an easy time of it.
I wasn't the only person puzzled to
nnd out what his creed was, but he'd
oeen preachin' a month or more before
we got hold of the end of the string
He was a Mormon missionary. that's
what he was, and arter the first two
weeks he sorter lodged all the women
ana began TO have long talks with the
men, He'd come over here and take
Zeb out in the woods and talk to him
for three hours at a time. and when
he had gone away my old man would
sit and think and think and never say
a word.
1T did no good to ask him questions
All the answer could get out of him |
was that his eyes had been opened and |
ne was goin' to sOt out to serve the |
1awd. He kept me Uneasy for three or |
four weeks, and then 1 made a diskiv- |
cry.
"One night when he had cold and a |
pit Of fever he begun to talk in his
eieep, and what he said made me so |
bilin, mad that 1 come nigh clubbin' |
him then and there. .,
The missionary was arrangin' to /
take twenty married men outer this |
community to Salt Lake Every one of |
'em was to leave his old woman behind
when he got out west. There wasn't
to be no divorcin' or anything of that |
sort, but the husbands was to scrape
up all the property they could and |
walk off and leave their wives to dig |
for roots.
Next day I put on my bonnet and |
took a walk 1 reclSoned I walked a |
good thirty miles. Leastwise. I visited |
about twenty cabins, and when 1 got |
back home 1 had spread the news and |
got the women at work. All their hus-
bands had been just as sly as my Zeb. |
The missionary had cautioned them to |
keep mighty still, and not one of the |
wives to be left behind had a suspicion |
of il. Two days passed, and then Zeb |
come to me in a shame-faced way and |
said:
Sally, I'm reckonin' we'd better sell |
our claim and move down to Bristol, |
where I kin go to work for the railroad |
I've got religion now, and it makes me |
anxious to go to work.
That missionary had been tellin' him |
l