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Show in my father's house/ 329 chant. Despite his own troubles - there was rumor of insurrection among certain members of the group, and the financial strain of buying homes for each of the mothers was a continuous worry - he always made time for the people who came with anxious faces and went away smiling. If the problem was a patient who owed money, my father waved the bill away. He had adopted the habit of clearing his books every January first, citing Leviticus when some of his wives criticized his generosity: "Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear th^y God!" my father would recite. "And if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him." If one of the brethren came to him in need of a job, he usually found one within the evening and gave the man advance money from his own wallet. "Thank you, Brother Allred," the people would say. "The Lord has been good, sending you to us." "It's my privilege," my father would reply. I lay on my bed listening, wondering why he hadn't talked to me so kindly. Why hadn't he taken time to explain, time to listen, as he had done with these people? Why did he have money for them and not for us ? I, too, had problems - aches and pains of body and spirit. I, too, had sinned. Occasionally his voice rose into the dogmatic monotone I remembered from early childhood, repeating scripture or rudiments of doctrine which had become the furniture of my mind, but which now left me unmoved. When his voice began to thunder about the Fullness of the Gospel, proclaiming the divinity of plural |