<TITLE>05. Par 16-16</TITLE>L-16 And I got out of the car. And I dropped around, and I said, "How do you do, sir?"
He said, "How do you do? Well," he said, "and you're the preacher."
Squirrel, blood and dirty, oh, my, whiskers about that long, and I said, "Yes, sir. I suppose I am."
And he said, "Well, I guess Wood has told you that I'm an infidel?"
I said, "Well, he said something about it, but I hardly think a man that show the kindness that you have, would really be an infidel." I said...
He said, "Well, I'm supposed to be."
I said, "I'm glad you said, you was 'supposed' to be."
And he said, "Well," he said, "I tell you what," said, "I never did see anything that ever--could any more than just psychology, could ever prove to me there's anything of a God." He said, "I hear these preachers bawl out and talk about there was a God," and said, "He died back yonder a long time ago, two thousand years ago." And said, "What good could a God like that do me that's dead two thousand years ago, after I'm dead?" See?
I said, "Yeah, that ended it. And you're sure right." I said, "That didn't end it."
And he said, "Well, there's... I haven't been to church," he said, "for about fifty years." He was about seventy-five years old.
I said, "That isn't very much to brag about, is it, sir?"
He said, "No, I reckon not." He said, "But there's a preacher that had meeting over here at the--" he said, at Acton not long ago, on that Methodist campgrounds." He said, "If that guy ever comes in the country again, I'm going to hear him."
I said, "Yes, sir." Brother Wood looked at me and winked, you know. And I said, "Yes, sir." I said, "What was his name?"
Said, "I don't know his name." He said, "But old Aunt Melissie So-and-so lived up here on the hill." Said, "I... Me and my wife, had been going over for two weeks, raising her up, and pulling a draw sheet out; she couldn't even move for cancer of the stomach." And said, "Doctors had give her up months before that." And said, "That she--they couldn't even put her on a bed pan." And said, "Her sister went to that meeting that night." Said, "There's some, maybe, three thousand people out there on the campgrounds." And said, "This preacher, his first night there, looked back in that audience and called this woman by name, and told her who this woman was that she was praying for. And the woman started crying." Said, 'Now, take that handkerchief that you bathed them tears with, and go lay it on the woman, for THUS SAITH THE LORD, she will live.'" And said, "I thought they had the Salvation Army up there on the hill, that night, when they got back over there, the screaming and hollering," said, "we thought that the woman died." And said, "Wife and I got our clothes on, about ten o'clock at night, and went up there, and she was frying fried apple pies, and eating them." And said, "She couldn't even drink barley water that morning." He said, "And now, she don't only do her own work, she does all the neighbors work."
And I said, "That was wonderful."
And he said, "Now, when I--that guy ever comes back down here, again, I'm going over to hear him."
I said, "Well, and you--would that make you believe in God, if you seen something like that?"
Said, "Well," said, "now, I--I guess that's something that you can see."


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