the church, the madder I

All'? Costs it
more pain that this, ye call A great event, should come to pass, Than
that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which
make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!" And Aunt
Jane went serenely on: "Anyhow, it wasn't long till Amos was goin' to
his church and Marthy to hers, and they kept that up the
rest of their lives. Still, they might 'a' got along well enough this
way, for married folks don't have to think
alike about everything,
but they was eternally arguin' about their church doctrines. If Amos
grumbled about the weather, Marthy'd say, 'Ain't everything
predestined? Warn't this drought app'inted before the foundation of the
world? What's the sense in grumblin' over the decrees of God?' And it
got so that if Amos wanted to grumble over anything, he had
to git away from
home first, and that must 'a' been mighty wearin' on him; for, as a
rule, a man never does any grumblin' except at home;
but pore Amos didn't have that privilege. Sam Amos used to say---Sam
wasn't a church-member himself--that there was some advantages

about bein' a Babtist after all; you did have to go under the water,
but then you had the right to grumble. But if a man believed that
everything was predestined before the foundations of the world, there
wasn't any sense or reason in findin' fault with anything that
happened. And he believed that he'd
ruther jine the Babtist church than the Presbyterian, for he didn't see
how he could carry
on his farm without complainin' about the weather

and the crops and things in general. "If Marthy and Amos'd
been divided on anything but their churches, the children might 'a'
brought 'em together; but every time a child was born matters got
worse. Amos, of course, wanted 'em all babtized
in infancy, and Marthy want