Near by is an interesting ruin—the meagre remains of an ancient heathen temple—a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old bygone days when the simple child of nature, yielding momentarily to sin when sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection had shown it to him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up his grandmother as an atoning sacrifice—in those old days when the luckless sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving periodical happiness as long as his relations held out.
ATTRIBUTION:
Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. Roughing It, ch. 64, American Publishing Company (1871).
