"I know it, and feel it in every bone of my body. But I remember the
reason, why I have set myself on this accursed journey too well to
forget the distance between me and the end. Neither you nor I will
ever be the better for what we have done, unless we thoroughly finish
what is so well begun. Ay, that is the doctrine of the whole world, I
judge: I heard a travelling preacher, who was skirting it down the
Ohio, a time since, say, if a man should live up to the faith for a
hundred years, and then fall from his work a single day, he would find
the settlement was to be made for the finishing blow that he had put
to his job, and that all the bad, and none of the good, would come
into the final account."
"And you believed the hungry hypocrite!"
"Who said that I believed it?" retorted Abiram with a bullying look,
that betrayed how much his fears had dwelt on the subject he affected
to despise. "Is it believing to tell what a roguish--And yet, Ishmael,
the man might have been honest after all! He told us that the world
was, in truth, no better than a desert, and that there was but one
hand that could lead the most learned man through all its crooked
windings.
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