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Updated: May 12, 2025
Who was responsible for starting such sacrilegious, outrageous yarns? Marietta Hoag was a woman called and chosen to receive and give out revelations from on high. The Holiness crowd was a crew of good-for-nothin', hollerin' hard-shells. By the everlastin' He blew out of the office and out of the bank, rumbling and spitting fire like a volcano. The teller and the cashier watched him go.
"She'd better pick 'tater bugs," said Marty, grinning. "They've begun to come, I reckon. Hard-shells, anyway." Janice could not resist shivering at this suggestion. She did not love insects any better than do most girls. But she took Marty's suggestion in good part. "You wait," she said. "Maybe I can do that, too. I'll weed a little, anyway. Have you a large farm, Uncle Jason?"
"It's been so long sence I've been in a Hard-shell lodge, I may be a little rusty on the grip an' pass word, but I'm a member in good standin' if I am rusty." There was some laughing at this, from the other members, and after the Hard-shells had come to the front the Bishop caught the infection and went on with a sly wink at the others.
I've been fooled on them hard-shells too often; but this here one was a hummer. I ain't no tenderfoot when it comes to a book, but this one was sure the corkin'est I ever met up with. I had allus thought 'at "Seventeen Buckets o' Blood; or the Mormon Widder's Revenge" was about the extreme limit in books, but this here one lays over even that.
Kingsley, and other sources had been furnished, and the Bishop came forward to make his first talk: "This is the only church of its kind in the worl', I reckin'," he said. "I've figured it out an' find we're made up of Baptis', Metherdis', Presbyterian, 'Piscopalian, Cam'elites an' Hard-shells.
'He was all right' she 'lowed, 'till a little feller from Virginia came along an' tort 'im ter mix greens in his licker, an' then he jes drunk hisself to death. "There's another thing I like about two of the churches I'm in the Hard-shells an' the Presbyterians an' that is special Providence. If I didn't believe in special Providence I'd lose my faith in God.
The old time religin' is passin' away, an' I'm all that's lef' of Zion." The Bishop smiled. "Yes, you see befo' you all that's lef' of Zion. I'se been longin' to see you an' have a talk with you thinkin' maybe you cud he'p me out. You kno' me and you is Hard-shells." The Bishop nodded. "We 'blieves in repentince an' fallin' from grace, an' backslidin' an' all that," she went on.
An' if there's any other church that'll teach me somethin' new about Jesus Christ, that puffect Man, I'll jine it. I've never seed a church that had Him in it that wa'n't good enough for me." The old man smiled in humorous retrospection as he went on: "The first company of Christians I jined was the Hard-shells. I was young an' a raw recruit an' nachully fell into the awkward squad.
"The fact is, I've sometimes been mighty sorry I jined any other lodge; for makin' honorable exception, the other churches don't know the diff'r'nce betwixt twenty-year-old Lincoln County an' Michigan pine-top. "The Hard-shells was the fust church I jined, as I sed. I hadn't sampled none of the others" he whispered aside "an' I didn't know there was any better licker in the jug.
I liked their solar plexus way of goin' at the Devil, an' I liked the way they'd allers deal out a good ration of whiskey, after the fight, to ev'ry true soldier of the Cross especially if we got our feet too wet, which we mos' always of'ntimes gen'ally did." This brought out visible smiles all down the line, from the others at the Hard-shells and their custom of foot-washing.
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