Go Tell It on the Mountain: Part Three

In his heart there was a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp and awful as a reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Elisha...to speak in tongues, as Elisha spoke, and, with that authority, to confound his father.

Yet this had not been the moment; it was as far back as he could go, but the secret, the turning, the abysmal drop was farther back, in darkness.

But love, which had, perhaps, like a benevolent monarch, swelled the population of his neighboring kingdom, Death, had not himself descended: they owed him no allegiance here.

It was in his father’s anger, and in his mother’s calm insistence, and in the vehement mockery of his aunt...

...it was in the beat and jangle of Sister McCandless’s tambourine, it was in the very cadence of her testimony, and invested that testimony with a matchless, unimpeachable authority.

...it was in the beat and jangle of Sister McCandless’s tambourine, it was in the very cadence of her testimony, and invested that testimony with a matchless, unimpeachable authority.

And their desolation, his:
In weariness and painfulness in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.

“He said in the last days evil would abound,” said Sister Price.

She took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and dried her eyes; and dried her eyes again, looking down the avenue.

She stopped, and he stopped with her, and she stared into his haggard, burning face.