His mother caught and shook him violently. He crammed his little fist
again into his mouth, but the stopper wouldn't hold.
He dropped to his seat to keep the people from seeing him, buried his
face in his hands and laughed in smothered giggles in spite of all his
mother could do.
At last he whispered:
"Take me out quick! I'm goin' to bust--I'll bust wide open I tell ye!"
She rose sternly, seized his arm and led him a half mile into the woods.
He kept looking back and laughing softly.
She gazed at him sorrowfully:
"I'm ashamed of you, Boy! How could you do such a thing!"
"I just couldn't help it!"
He sat down on a stone and laughed again.
"What makes the fools holler so?" he asked through his tears.
"They are praying God to forgive their sins."
"But why holler so loud? He ain't deaf--is He? You said that God's in
the sun and wind and dew and rain--in the breath we breathe. Ain't He
everywhere then? Why do they holler at Him?"
The mother turned away to hide a smile she couldn't keep back, and a
cloud overspread her dark face. Surely this was an evil sign--this
spirit of irreverent levity in the mind of a child so young. What could
it mean? She had forgotten that she had been teaching him to think, and
didn't know, perhaps, that he who thinks must laugh or die.
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