One
day he came to my room with a subscription-list for a minister's salary.
When I said I had nothing to give he looked at me with his one eye.
"'Young man,' he said, 'how is it I never see you in the house of the
Lord?' I thought he was trying to do good, so I felt sorry for him, and I
told him I never went to chapel. 'Young man,' he said, 'it grieves me to
hear such godless words from the lips of one so young--so far gone in the
paths of destruction. Young man, if you forget God, God will forget you.
There is a seat on the right-hand side as you go at the bottom door that
you may get. If you are given over to the enjoyment and frivolities of
this world, what will become of your never dying soul?'
"He would not go till I gave him half a crown for the minister's salary.
Afterward I heard he was the man who collected the pew rents and got a
percentage. I didn't get to know any one else.
"When my time in that shop was done I hired myself to drive one of a
transport-rider's wagons.
"That first morning, when I sat in the front and called to my oxen, and saw
nothing about me but the hills, with the blue coming down to them, and the
karoo bushes, I was drunk; I laughed; my heart was beating till it hurt me.
I shut my eyes tight, that when I opened them I might see there were no
shelves about me.
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