After the Preaching
- The preaching has ended, and Seth and Dinah are walking home in "the cool evening twilight" (3.1). Dinah seems calm and content. But Seth is full of doubt and anxiety because he's got a crush on Dinah.
- Soon Dinah will be leaving town. There are people elsewhere (sick, elderly people, too) who need her help. Seth, however, wants her to stay. And to marry him. He uses passages from the Bible to make his case, and wraps up the argument by telling Dinah "We both serve the same Master, and strive after the same gifts" (3.4). After all, they are both Methodists.
- Is Dinah convinced? Well, to make a long story short, no. She doesn't exactly dislike Seth but she has decided to "live and die without husband or children" and devote herself to God and his poor (3.5).
- Folks, give her a hand. "Let's just be friends" speeches don't get more eloquent than this.
- Ah, but is Seth convinced by this? Yes, yes he is. Still, he asks Dinah if he can follow her on her journey. And when Dinah shoots this idea down, he asks if he can send her letters and whatnot. She's fine with this, but doesn't want him to get his hopes up for much more (3.10-11).
- That's it for the action, yet the narrator has a few closing remarks. Seth and Dinah aren't worldly or sophisticated people.
- The narrator tells us that, "they believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions" (3.14). But they're honest and good-hearted people. They are people whose troubles deserve the same attention and sympathy as the "fiery passions" of heroines and heroes (3.15).