University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
FIGGERS WON'T LIE

FIGGERS won't lie,” said Elder Hankins, the
Millerite preacher. “I say figgers won't lie.
When a Methodis' talks about fallin' from grace
he has to argy the pint. And argyments can't
be depended 'pon. And when a Prisbyterian
talks about parseverance he haint got the absolute sartainty on
his side. But figgers won't lie noways, and it's figgers that
shows this yer to be the last yer of the world, and that the
final eend of all things is approachin'. I don't ask you to
listen to no 'mpressions of me own, to no reasonin' of nobody;
all I ask is that you should listen to the voice of the man in
the linen-coat what spoke to Dan'el, and then listen to the voice
of the 'rithmetic, and to a sum in simple addition, the simplest
sort of addition.”

All the Millerite preachers of that day were not quite so illiterate
as Elder Hankins, and it is but fair to say that the Adventists
of to-day are a very respectable denomination, doing a work
which deserves more recognition from others than it receives.

And for the delusion which expects the world to come to an end
immediately, the Adventist leaders are not responsible in the
first place. From Gnosticism to Mormonism, every religious
delusion has grown from some fundamental error in the previous
religious teaching of the people. By the narrowly verbal
method of reading the Scripture, so much in vogue in the polemical
discussions of the past generation, and still so fervently
adhered to by many people, the ground was prepared for Millerism.
And to-day in many regions the soil is made fallow for
the next fanaticism. It is only a question of who shall first sow
and reap. To people educated as those who gathered in Sugar
Grove school-house had been to destroy the spirit of the Scripture
by distorting the letter in proving their own sect right,
nothing could be so overwhelming as Elder Hankins's “figgers.”

For he had clearly studied figgers to the neglect of the other
branches of a liberal education. His demonstration was printed
on a large chart. He began with the seventy weeks of Daniel,
he added in the “time and times and a half,” and what Daniel
declared that he “understood not when he heard,” was plain sailing
to the enlightened and mathematical mind of Elder Hankins.
When he came to the thousand two hundred and ninety
days, he waxed more exultant than Kepler in his supreme moment,
and on the thousand three hundred and five and thirty
days he did what Jonas Harrison called “the blamedest tallest
cipherin' he'd ever seed in all his born days.”

Jonas was the new hired man, who had stepped into the
shoes of August at Samuel Anderson's. He sat by August and
kept up a running commentary, in a loud whisper, on the sermon,
“My feller-citizen,” said Jonas, squeezing August's arm at a
climax of the elder's discourse, “My feller-citizen, looky thar,

won't you? He'll cipher the world into nothin' in no time.
He's like the feller that tried to find out the valoo of a fat shoat
when wood was two dollars a cord. `Ef I can't do it by substraction
I'll do it by long-division,' says he. And ef this 'rithmetic
preacher can't make a finishment of this sublunary speer by
addition, he'll do it by multiplyin'. They's only one answer in
his book. Gin him any sum you please, and it all comes
out 1843!”

Now in all the region round about Sugar Grove school-house
there was a great dearth of sensation. The people liked the
prospect of the end of the world because it would be a spectacle,
something to relieve the fearful monotony of their lives. Funerals
and weddings were commonplace, and nothing could have
been so interesting to them as the coming of the end of the
world, as described by Elder Hankins, unless it had been a first-class
circus (with two camels and a cage of monkeys attached, so
that scrupulous people might attend from a laudable desire to see
the menagerie!) A murder would have been delightful to the
people of Clark township. It would have given them something
to think and talk about Into this still pool Elder Hankins
threw the vials, the trumpets, the thunders, the beast with
ten horns, the he-goat, and all the other apocalyptic symbols
understood in an absurdly literal way. The world was to come
to an end in the following August. Here was an excitement,
something worth living for.

All the way to their homes the people disputed learnedly
about the “time and times and a half,” about “the seven heads
and ten horns,” and the seventh vial. The fierce polemical discussions
and the bold sectarian dogmatism of the day had taught
them anything but “the modesty of true science,” and now the

unsolvable problems of the centuries were taken out of the
hands of puzzled scholars and settled as summarily and positively
as the relative merits of “gourd-seed” and “flint” corn.
Samuel Anderson had always planted his corn in the “light” of
the moon and his potatoes in the “dark” of that orb, had
always killed his hogs when the moon was on the increase lest
the meat should all go to gravy, and he and his wife had carefully
guarded against the carrying of a hoe through the house,
for fear “somebody might die.” Now, the preaching of the
elder impressed him powerfully. His life had always been not
so much a bad one as a cowardly one, and to get into heaven by
a six months' repentance, seemed to him a good transaction.
Besides he remembered that there men were never married, and
that there, at last, Abigail would no longer have any peculiar
right to torture him. Hankins could not have ciphered him into
Millerism if his wife had not driven him into it as the easiest
means of getting a divorce. No doom in the next world could
have alarmed him much, unless it had been the prospect of continuing
lord and master of Mrs. Abigail. And as for that oppressed
woman, she was simply scared. She was quite unwilling
to admit the coming of the world's end so soon. Having some
ugly accounts to settle, she would fain have postponed the payday.
Mrs. Anderson might truly have been called a woman
who feared God—she had reason to.

And as for August, he would not have cared much if the
world had come to an end, if only he could have secured one
glance of recognition from the eyes of Julia. But Julia dared
not look. The process of cowing her had gone on from childhood,
and now she was under a reign of terror. She did not yet
know that she could resist her mother. And then she lived in

mortal fear of her mother's heart-disease. By irritating her
she might kill her. This dread of matricide her mother held
always over her. In vain she watched for a chance. It did
not come. Once, when her mother's head was turned, she
glanced at August. But he was at that moment listening or
trying to listen to one of Jonas Harrison's remarks. And August,
who did not understand the circumstances, was only able
to account for her apparent coldness on the theory suggested
by Andrew's universal unbelief in women, or by supposing that
when she understood his innocent remark about Andrew's disappointment
to refer to her mother, she had taken offense at
it. And so, while the rest were debating whether the world
would come to an end or not, August had a disconsolate feeling
that the end of the world had already come. And it did not
make him feel better to have Wilhelmina whisper, “Oh! but
she is pretty, that Anderson girl—a'n't she, August?”