The widow was deep in suds over the family wash, when she saw her pastor coming up the path to the door.  She gave directions to her young son to answer the bell, and to tell the clergyman that his mother had just gone down the street on an errand.  Since the single ground floor room of the cottage offered no better hiding place against observation from the door, she crouched behind a clothes-horse hung with drying garments.  When the boy had opened the door to the minister, and had duly delivered the message concerning his mother's absence the reverend gentleman cast a sharp look toward the screen of drying clothes, and addressed the boy thus:

     "Well, my lad, just tell your mother I called.  And you might say to her that the next time she goes down the street, she sould take her feet along."

CONCEIT

     "I suppose I must admit that I do  have my faults," the husband remarked in a tone that was far from humble.

     "Yes," the wife snapped, "and in your opinion your faults are better than other folks' virtues.

CONSCIENCE

The child had been greatly impressed by her first experience in Sunday School.  She pressed her hands to her breast, and said solemnly to her sister, two years older:

     "When you hear something wite here, it is conscience whispering to you."

     "It's no such thing," the sister jeered.  "That's just wind on your tummie."

CONSTANCY

His companion bent over the dying man, to catch the  last faintly whispered words.  The utterance came with pitiful feebleness, yet with sufficient clearness:

     "I am dying -- yes.  Go to Fannie.  Tell her -- I died -- with her name -- on my lips, that I -- loved her -- her alone -- always .  .  .  And tell Jennie -- tell Jennie -- the same thing."

CONVERSION

     A zealous church member in a Kentucky village made an earnest effort to convert a particularly vicious old mountaineer named Jim, who was locally notorious for his godlessness.  But the old man was hard-headed and stubborn, firmly rooted in his evil courses, so that he resisted the pious efforts on his behalf.

     "Jim," the exhorter questioned sadly at last, "ain't you teched by the story of the Lord what died to save yer soul?"

     "Humph!" Jim retorted contemptuously.  "Air ye aimin' to tell me the Lord died to save me, when He ain't never seed me, ner knowed me?"

     "Jim," the missionary explained with fervor, "it was a darn sight easier for the Lord to die fer ye just because He never seed ye than if He knowed ye as well as we-alls do!"