Chapter VI: Part 6

And when they reached the last stanzas there was the ring of soldiers ready for battle in their martial voices. That some of them would die from exposure, malaria, or accident during the next year was probable. Tears came to their eyes, and they involuntarily began to grasp the hands of those who stood next them as they approached the climax of the hymn, which the bishop read impressively, two lines at a time, for them to sing:

"His only righteousness I show,
His saving truth proclaim,
'Tis all my business here below
To cry, 'Behold the Lamb!'

"Happy if with my latest breath
I may but gasp his name,
Preach him to all and cry in death,
'Behold, behold the Lamb!'"

Then, with suffused eyes, they resumed their seats, and the venerable Asbury, with calmness and with a voice faltering with age, made them a brief address; tender and sympathetic at first, earnest as he proceeded, and full of ardor and courage at the close.

"When the British Admiralty," he said, "wanted some man to take Quebec, they began with the oldest General first, asking him: 'General, will you go and take Quebec?' To which he made reply, 'It is a very difficult enterprise.' 'You may stand aside,' they said. One after another the Generals answered that they would, in some more or less indefinite manner, until the youngest man on the list was reached. 'General Wolfe,' they said, 'will you go and take Quebec?' 'I'll do it or die,' he replied." Here the bishop paused, looked round about upon them, and added, with a voice full of emotion, "He went, and did both. We send you first to take the country allotted to you. We want only men who are determined to do it or die! Some of you, dear brethren, will do both. If you fall, let us hear that you fell like Methodist preachers at your post, face to the foe, and the shout of victory on your lips."

The effect of this speech was beyond description. There were sobs, and cries of "Amen," "God grant it," "Halleluiah!" from every part of the old log church. Every man was ready for the hardest place, if he must. Gravely, as one who trembles at his responsibility, the bishop brought out his list. No man looked any more upon his fellow. Every one kept his eyes fixed upon the paper from which the bishop read the appointments, until his own name was reached. Some showed pleasure when their names were called, some could not conceal a look of pain. When the reading had proceeded half way down the list, Morton heard, with a little start, the words slowly enounced as the bishop's eyes fell on him:

"Jenkinsville Circuit--Morton Goodwin."

Well, at least Jenkinsville was in Ohio. But it was in the wickedest part of Ohio. Morton half suspected that he was indebted to his muscle, his courage, and his quick wit for the appointment. The rowdies of Jenkinsville Circuit were worse than the alligators of Mississippi. But he was young, hopeful and brave, and rather relished a difficult field than otherwise. He listened now for Kike's name. It came at the bottom of the list:

"Pottawottomie Creek--W. T. Smith, Hezekiah Lumsden."

The bishop had not dared to entrust a circuit to a man so sick as Kike was. He had, therefore, sent him as "second man" or "junior preacher" on a circuit in the wilderness of Michigan.

The last appointment having been announced, a simple benediction closed the services, and the brethren who had foregone houses and homes and fathers and mothers and wives and children for the kingdom of heaven's sake saddled their horses, called, one by one, at Dr. Morgan's to say a brotherly "God bless you!" to the sick Kike, and rode away, each in his own direction, and all with a self-immolation to the cause rarely seen since the Middle-Age.

They rode away, all but Kike, languishing yet with fever, and Morton, watching by his side.

_CHAPTER XXI._

CONVALESCENCE.

At last Kike is getting better, and Morton can be spared. There is no longer any reason why the rowdies on Jenkinsville Circuit should pine for the muscular young preacher whom they have vowed to "lick as soon as they lay eyes on to him." Dolly's legs are aching for a gallop. Morton and Dr. Morgan have exhausted their several systems of theology in discussion. So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the impatient brethren and face the impatient ruffians of Jenkinsville Circuit. Kike is left yet in his quiet harbor to recover. The doctor has taken a strange fancy to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward with sadness to the time when he will leave.

Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide sets back through the veins! You have no longer any pain; you are not well enough to feel any responsibility; you cannot work; there is no obligation resting on you but one--that is rest. Such perfect passivity Kike had never known before. He could walk but little. He sat the livelong day by the open window, as listless as the grass that waved before the wind. All the sense of dire responsibility, all those feelings of the awfulness of life, and the fearfulness of his work, and the dreadfulness of his accountability, were in abeyance. To eat, to drink, to sleep, to wake and breathe, to suffer as a passive instrument the play of whatever feeling might chance to come, was Kike's life.

In this state the severity of his character was laid aside. He listened to the quick and eager conversation of Dr. Morgan with a gentle pleasure; he answered the motherly questions of Mrs. Morgan with quiet gratitude; he admired the goodness of Miss Jane Morgan, their eldest and most exemplary daughter, as a far off spectator. There were but two things that had a real interest for him. He felt a keen delight in watching the wayward flight of the barn swallows as they went chattering out from under the eaves--their airy vagabondage was so restful. And he liked to watch the quick, careless tread of Henrietta Morgan, the youngest of the doctor's daughters, who went on forever talking and laughing with as little reck as the swallows themselves. Though she was eighteen, there was in her full child-like cheeks, in her contagious laugh--a laugh most unprovoked, coming of itself--in her playful way of performing even her duties, a something that so contrasted with and relieved the habitual austerity of Kike's temper, and that so fell in with his present lassitude and happy carelessness, that he allowed his head, resting weakly upon a pillow, to turn from side to side, that his eyes might follow her. So diverting were her merry replies, that he soon came to talk with her for the sake of hearing them. He was not forgetful of the solemn injunctions Mr. Wesley had left for the prudent behavior of young ministers in the presence of women. With Miss Jane he was very careful lest he should in any way compromise himself, or awaken her affections. Jane was the kind of a girl he would want to marry, if he were to marry. But Nettie was a child--a cheerful butterfly--as refreshing to his weary mind as a drink of cold water to a fever-patient. When she was out of the room, Kike was impatient; when she returned, he was glad. When she sewed, he drew the large chair in which he rested in front of her, and talked in his grave fashion, while she, in turn, amused him with a hundred fancies. She seemed to shine all about him like sunlight. Poor Kike could not refuse to enjoy a fellowship so delightful, and Nettie Morgan's reverence for young Lumsden's saintliness, and pity for his sickness, grew apace into a love for him.

Long before Kike discovered or Nettie suspected this, the doctor had penetrated it. Kike's whole-hearted devotion to his work had charmed the ex-minister, who moved about in his alert fashion, talking with eager rapidity, anticipating Kike's grave sentences before he was half through--seeing and hearing everything while he seemed to note nothing. He was not averse to this attachment between the two. Provided always, that Kike should give up traveling. It was all but impossible, indeed, for a man to be a Methodist preacher in that day and "lead about a wife." A very few managed to combine the ministry with marriage, but in most cases marriage rendered "location" or secularization imperative.

Kike sat one day talking in the half-listless way that is characteristic of convalescence, watching Nettie Morgan as she sewed and laughed, when Dr. Morgan came in, put his pill-bags upon the high bureau, glanced quickly at the two, and said:

"Nettie, I think you'd better help your mother. The double-and-twisting is hard work."

Nettie laid her sewing down. Kike watched her until she had disappeared through the door; then he listened until the more vigorous spinning indicated to him that younger hands had taken the wheel. His heart sank a little--it might be hours before Nettie could return.

Dr. Morgan busied himself, or pretended to busy himself, with his medicines, but he was observing how the young preacher's eyes followed his daughter, how his countenance relapsed into its habitual melancholy when she was gone. He thought he could not be mistaken in his diagnosis.

"Mr. Lumsden," he said, kindly, "I don't know what we shall do when you get well. I can't bear to have you go away."

"You have been too good, doctor. I am afraid you have spoiled me." The thought of going to Pottawottomie Creek was growing more and more painful to Kike. He had put all thoughts of the sort out of his mind, because the doctor wished him to keep his mind quiet. Now, for some reason, Doctor Morgan seemed to force the disagreeable future upon him. Why was it unpleasant? Why had he lost his relish for his work? Had he indeed backslidden?

While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for the fourth time held a large phial, marked _Sulph. de Quin._, up to the light, as though he were counting the grains, the young preacher was instituting an inquiry into his own religious state. Why did he shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit? He had braved much harder toil and greater danger. On Pottawottomie Creek he would have a senior colleague upon whom all administrative responsibilities would devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in comparison with the preceding. On inquiring of himself he found that there was no circuit that would be attractive to him in his present state of mind, except the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house. At first Kike Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his own motives, as other men do under like circumstances, gave himself much credit for his grateful attachment to the family. Surely gratitude is a generous quality, and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another denomination, taken him under his roof and given him professional attention free of charge? And Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for him as though he were a brother? What could be more commendable than that he should find himself loth to leave people who were so good?

But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating himself. He had always dealt hardly with Kike Lumsden. He could not rest now in this subterfuge; he would not give himself credit that he did not deserve. So while the doctor walked to the window and senselessly examined the contents of one of his bottles marked "_Hydrarg._," Kike took another and closer look at his own mind and saw that the one person whose loss would be painful to him was not Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent wife, nor the admirable Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of whose spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to. The consciousness that he was in love came to him suddenly--a consciousness not without pleasure, but with a plentiful admixture of pain.

Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic alertness, caught the expression of a new self-knowledge and of an anxious pain upon the forehead of Lumsden. Then the physician seemed all at once satisfied with his medicines. The bottle labelled "_Hydrarg._" and the "_Sulph. de Quin._" were now replaced in the saddle bags.

At this moment Nettie herself came into the room on some errand. Kike had heard her wheel stop--had looked toward the door--had caught her glance as she came in, and had, in that moment, become aware that he was not the only person in love. Was it, then, that the doctor wished to prevent the attachment going further that he had delicately reminded his guest of the approach of the time when he must leave? These thoughts aroused Kike from the lassitude of his slow convalescence. Nettie went back to her wheel, and set it humming louder than ever, but Kike heard now in its tones some note of anxiety that disturbed him. The doctor came and sat down by him and felt his pulse, ostensibly to see if he had fever, really to add yet another link to the chain of evidence that his surmise was correct.

"Mr. Lumsden," said he, "a constitution so much impaired as yours cannot recuperate in a few days."

"I know that, sir," said Kike, "and I am anxious to get to my mother's for a rest there, that I may not burden you any longer, and----"

"You misunderstand me, my dear fellow, if you think I want to be rid of you. I wish you would stay with me always; I do indeed."

For a moment Kike looked out of the window. To stay with the doctor always would, it seemed to him, be a heaven upon earth. But had he not renounced all thought of a heaven on earth? Had he not said plainly that here he had no abiding place? Having put his hand to the plow, should he look back?

"But I ought not to give up my work."

It was not in this tone that Kike would have spurned such a temptation awhile before.

"Mr. Lumsden," said the doctor, "you see that I am useful here. I cannot preach a great deal, but I think that I have never done so much good as since I began to practice medicine. I need somebody to help me. I cannot take care of the farm and my practice too. You could look after the farm, and preach every Sunday in the country twenty miles round. You might even study medicine after awhile, and take the practice as I grow older. You will die, if you go on with your circuit-riding. Come and live with me, and be my----assistant." The doctor had almost said "my son." It was in his mind, and Kike divined it.

"Think about it," said Dr. Morgan, as he rose to go, "and remember that nobody is obliged to kill himself."

And all day long Kike thought and prayed, and tried to see the right; and all day long Nettie found occasion to come in on little errands, and as often as she came in did it seem clear to Kike that he would be justified in accepting Dr. Morgan's offer; and as often as she went out did he tremble lest he were about to betray the trust committed to him.

_CHAPTER XXII._

THE DECISION.

The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered during his convalescence. It was wide awake now. He sat that evening in his room trying to see the right way. According to old Methodist custom he looked for some inward movement of the spirit--some "impression"--that should guide him.

During the great religious excitement of the early part of this century, Western pietists referred everything to God in prayer, and the belief in immmediate divine direction was often carried to a ludicrous extent. It is related that one man retired to the hills and prayed a week that he might know how he should be baptized, and that at last he came rushing out of the woods, shouting "Hallelujah! Immersion!" Various devices were invented for obtaining divine direction--devices not unworthy the ancient augurs. Lorenzo Dow used to suffer his horse to take his own course at each divergence of the road. It seems to have been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all ages, that God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb brute, or impress a blind impulse upon the human mind, but could not enlighten or guide the judgment itself. The opening of a Bible at random for a directing text became so common during the Wesleyan movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought it necessary to utter a stout Irish philippic against what he called "Bible sortilege."

These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch the direction of heavenly breezes, could not but impress so earnest a nature as Kike's. Now in his distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any intelligible or remotely applicable passage, but upon a bead-roll of unpronounceable names in one of the early chapters of the Book of Chronicles. This disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith. Faith like Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment. He prayed again for direction, and opened at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" The marked trait in Kike's piety was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. This question seemed directed to him, as it had been to Peter, in reproach. He would hesitate no longer. Love, and life itself, should be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him. Then he prayed once more, and there came to his mind the memory of that saying about leaving houses and homes and lands and wives, for Christ's sake. It came to him, doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental association. But what did Kike know of the association of ideas, or of any other law of mental action? Wesley's sermons and Benson's Life of Fletcher constituted his library. To him it seemed certain that this text of scripture was "suggested." It was a call from Christ to give up all for him. And in the spirit of the sublimest self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep back nothing!"

But emotions and resolutions that are at high tide in the evening often ebb before morning. Kike thought himself strong enough to begin again to rise at four o'clock, as Wesley had ordained in those "rules for a preacher's conduct" which every Methodist preacher even yet _promises_ to keep. Following the same rules, he proceeded to set apart the first hour for prayer and meditation. The night before all had seemed clear; but now that morning had come and he must soon proceed to execute his stern resolve, he found himself full of doubt and irresolution. Such vacillation was not characteristic of Kike, but it marked the depth of his feeling for Nettie. Doubtless, too, the enervation of convalescence had to do with it. Certainly in that raw and foggy dawn the forsaking of the paradise of rest and love in which he had lingered seemed to require more courage than he could muster. After all, why should he leave? Might he not be mistaken in regard to his duty? Was he obliged to sacrifice his life?

He conducted his devotions in a state of great mental distraction. Seeing a copy of Baxter's Reformed Pastor which belonged to Dr. Morgan lying on the window-seat, he took it up, hoping to get some light from its stimulating pages. He remembered that Wesley spoke well of Baxter; but he could not fix his mind upon the book. He kept listlessly turning the leaves until his eye lighted upon a sentence in Latin. Kike knew not a single word of Latin, and for that very reason his attention was the more readily attracted by the sentence in an unknown tongue. He read it, "_Nec propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas_." He found written in the margin a free rendering: "Let us not, for the sake of life, sacrifice the only things worth living for." He knelt down now and gave thanks for what seemed to him Divine direction. He had been delivered from a temptation to sacrifice the great end of living for the sake of saving his life.

It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan and his motherly wife and the excellent Jane. It cost him a great pang to say good-bye to Nettie Morgan. Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling. She did not venture to come to the door. Kike found her alone in the little porch at the back of the house, trying to look unconcerned. Afraid to trust himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand coldly for a moment. But the sight of her pain-stricken face touched him to the quick: he seized her hand again, and, with eyes full of tears, said huskily: "Good-bye, Nettie! God bless you, and keep you forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the rest a hasty adieu and riding off eagerly, almost afraid to look back. He was more severe than ever in the watch he kept over himself after this. He could never again trust his treacherous heart.

Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee Settlement, "The Forks" had now come to be quite a village; the valley was filling with people borne on that great wave of migration that swept over the Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century. The cabin in which his mother lived was very little different from what it was when he left it. The old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude; the barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a little on one side, giving to the cabin, as Kike thought, an unpleasant air, as of a man a little exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon the side of his head to leer at you saucily. The mother received him joyously, and wiped her eyes with her apron when she saw how sick he had been. Brady was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed chairs sat suspiciously close together. Brady had long thought of changing his state, but both Brady and the widow were in mortal fear of Kike, whose severity of judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them. "If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd propose to the widdy. But what would the lad say to sich follies at my toime of loife? And the widdy's more afeard of him than I am. Did iver anybody say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther out of courtin' his mother, and his mother out of resavin' the attintions of a larnt grammairian loike mesilf? The misfortin' is that Koike don't have no wakenisses himsilf. I wish he had jist one, and thin I wouldn't keer. If I could only foind that he'd iver looked jist a little swate loike at iny young girl, I wouldn't moind his cinsure. But, somehow, I kape a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould coward that I am."

Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe improved, and the thoughtful mother had already made him a warm, though not very shapely, suit of jeans. It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again. She did not think him fit to go. But she did not dare to say so. How should she venture to advise one who seemed to her wondering heart to live in the very secrets of the Almighty? God had laid hands on him--the child was hers no longer. But still she looked her heart-breaking apprehensions as he set out from home, leaving her standing disconsolate in the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.

And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house, ventured to give him advice--partly by way of finding out whether Kike had any "wakeniss" or not.

"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I thrust you'll bear with me if I give you some advoice, though ye have got to be sich a praycher. Ye'll not take offinse, me lad?"

"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike, smiling sadly.

"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as shure as ye're born, and it's me own opinion as ye ought to git a good wife to nurse ye, and thin you could git a home and maybe do more good than ye do now."

Kike's face settled into more than its wonted severity. The remembrance of his recent vacillation and the sense of his present weakness were fresh in his mind. He would not again give place to the devil.

"Mr. Brady, there's something more important than our own ease or happiness. We were not made to seek comfort, but to give ourselves to the work of Christ. And see! your head is already blossoming for eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were all."

Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master solemnly and rode away, and Mr. Brady was more appalled than ever.

"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately. "Not a wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked gloomily into the school-house, took down a switch and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius, often suffered on general principles when the master was out of humor.

Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the distant Pottawottomie Creek circuit?

Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the wilds of America at the call of duty as they heard it, were unhappy men? The highest happiness comes not from the satisfaction of our desires, but from the denial of them for the sake of a high purpose. I doubt not the happiest man that ever sailed through Levantine seas, or climbed Cappadocian mountains, was Paul of Tarsus. Do you think that he envied the voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of Corinth? Can you believe that one of the idlers in the Epicurean gardens, or one of the Stoic loafers in the covered sidewalks of Athens, could imagine the joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations? For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice, and Kike defied the storms of a northern winter, and all the difficulties and dangers of the wilderness, and all the hardships of his lonely lot, with one saying often on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"

I have heard that about this time young Lumsden was accustomed to electrify his audiences by his fervent preaching upon the Christian duty of Glorying in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women would nod their heads one to another as they went home afterward, and say: "He's seed a mighty sight o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a young man." "Yes; but he's got the victory; and how powerful sweet he talks about it! I never heerd the beat in all my born days."

_CHAPTER XXIII._

RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.

Two years have ripened Patty from the girl to the woman. If Kike is happy in his self-abnegation, Patty is not happy in hers. Pride has no balm in it. However powerful it may be as a stimulant, it is poor food. And Patty has little but pride to feed upon. The invalid mother has now been dead a year, and Patty is almost without companionship, though not without suitors. Land brings lovers--land-lovers, if nothing more--and the estate of Patty's father is not her only attraction. She is a young woman of a certain nobility of figure and carriage; she is not large, but her bearing makes her seem quite commanding. Even her father respects her, and all the more does he wish to torment her whenever he finds opportunity. Patty is thrifty, and in the early West no attraction outweighed this wifely ordering of a household. But Patty will not marry any of the suitors who calculate the infirm health of her father and the probable division of his estate, and who mentally transfer to their future homes the thrift and orderliness they see in Captain Lumsden's. By refusing them all she has won the name of a proud girl. There are times when out of sight of everybody she weeps, hardly knowing why. And since her mother's death she reads the prayer-book more than ever, finding in the severe confessions therein framed for us miserable sinners, and the plaintive cries of the litany, a voice for her innermost soul.

Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave him, and yet it angers him that she refuses to marry. His hatred of Methodists has assumed the intensity of a monomania since he was defeated for the legislature partly by Methodist opposition. All his love of power has turned to bitterest resentment, and every thought that there may be yet the remotest possibility of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts him beyond measure. He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing seriousness and her fondness for the prayer-book. Even the prayer-book's earnestness has something Methodistic about it. But Patty has never yet been in a Methodist meeting, and with this fact he comforts himself. He has taken pains to buy her jewelry and "artificials" in abundance, that he may, by dressing her finely, remove her as far as possible from temptations to become a Methodist. For in that time, when fine dressing was not common and country neighborhoods were polarized by the advent of Methodism in its most aggressive form, every artificial flower and every earring was a banner of antagonism to the new sect; a well-dressed woman in a congregation was almost a defiance to the preacher. It seemed to Lumsden, therefore, that Patty had prophylactic ornaments enough to save her from Methodism. And to all of these he added covert threats that if any child of his should ever join these crazy Methodist loons, he would turn him out of doors and never see him again. This threat was always indirect--a remark dropped incidentally; the pronoun which represented the unknown quantity of a Methodist Lumsden was always masculine, but Patty did not fail to comprehend.

One day there came to Captain Lumsden's door that out-cast of New England--a tin-peddler. Western people had never heard of Yale College or any other glory of Connecticut or New England. To them it was but a land that bred pestilent peripatetic peddlers of tin-ware and wooden clocks. Western rogues would cheat you out of your horse or your farm if a good chance offered, but this vile vender of Yankee tins, who called a bucket a "pail," and said "noo" for new, and talked nasally, would work an hour to cheat you out of a "fipenny bit." The tin-peddler, one Munson, thrust his sharpened visage in at Lumsden's door and "made bold" to _in_quire if he could git a night's lodging, which the Captain, like other settlers, granted without charge. Having unloaded his stock of "tins" and "put up" his horse, the Connecticut peddler "made bold" to ask many leading questions about the family and personal history of the Lumsdens, collectively and individually. Having thus taken the first steps toward acquaintance by this display of an aggravating interest in the welfare of his new friends, he proceeded to give elaborate and truthful accounts--with variations--of his own recent adventures, to the boundless amusement of the younger Lumsdens, who laughed more heartily at the Connecticut man's words and pronunciation than at his stories. He said, among other things, that he had ben to Jinkinsville t'other day to what the Methodis' called a "basket meetin'." But when he had proceeded so far with his narrative, he prudently stopped and made bold to _in_quire what the Captain thought of these Methodists. The Captain was not slow to express his opinion, and the man of tins, having thus reassured himself by taking soundings, proceeded to tell that they was a dreffle craoud of folks to that meetin'. And he, hevin' a sharp eye to business, hed went forrard to the mourner's bench to be prayed fer. Didn't do no pertik'ler harm to hev folks pray fer ye, ye know. Well, ye see, the Methodis' they wanted to _in_courage a seeker, and so they all bought some tins. Purty nigh tuck the hull load offen his hands! (And here the peddler winked one eye at the Captain and then the other at Patty.) Fer they was seen a dreffle lot of folks there. Come to hear a young preacher as is 'mazin' elo'kent--Parson Goodwin by name, and he was a _good one_ to preach, sartain.

This startled Patty and the Captain.

"Goodwin?" said the Captain; "Morton Goodwin?"

"The identikle," said the peddler.

"Raised only half a mile from here," said Lumsden, "and we don't think much of him."

"Neither did I," said the peddler, trimming his sails to Lumsden's breezes. "I calkilate I could preach e'en a'most as well as he does, myself, and I wa'n't brought up to preachin', nother. But he's got a good v'ice fer singin'--sich a ring to't, ye see, and he's got a smart way thet comes the sympathies over the women folks and weak-eyed men, and sets 'em cryin' at a desp'ate rate. Was brought up here, was he? Du tell! He's powerful pop'lar." Then, catching the Captain's eye, he added: "Among the women, I mean."

"He'll marry some shouting girl, I suppose," said the Captain, with a chuckle.

"That's jist what he's going to do," said the peddler, pleased to have some information to give. Seeing that the Captain and his daughter were interested in his communication, the peddler paused a moment. A bit of gossip is too good a possession for one to part with too quickly.

"You guessed good, that time," said the tinware man. "I heerd say as he was a goin' to splice with a gal that could pray like a angel afire. An' I heerd her pray. She nearly peeled the shingles off the skewl-haouse. Sich another _ex_citement as she perjuced, I never did see. An' I went up to her after meetin' and axed a interest in her prayers. Don't do no harm, ye know, to git sich lightnin' on yer own side! An' I took keer to git a good look at her face, for preachers ginerally marry purty faces. Preachers is a good deal like other folks, ef they do purtend to be better, hey? Well, naow, that Ann Elizer Meacham _is_ purty, sartain. An' everybody says he's goin' to marry her; an' somebody said the presidin' elder mout tie 'em up next Sunday at Quartily Meetin', maybe. Then they'll divide the work in the middle and go halves. She'll pray and he'll preach." At this the peddler broke into a sinister laugh, sure that he had conciliated both the Captain and Patty by his news. He now proposed to sell some tinware, thinking he had worked his audience up to the right state of mind.

Patty did not know why she should feel vexed at hearing this bit of intelligence from Jenkinsville. What was Morton Goodwin to her? She went around the house as usual this evening, trying to hide all appearance of feeling. She even persuaded her father to buy half-a-dozen tin cups and some milk-buckets--she smiled at the peddler for calling them _pails_. She was not willing to gratify the Captain by showing him how much she disliked the scoffing "Yankee." But when she was alone that evening, even the prayer-book had lost its power to soothe. She was mortified, vexed, humiliated on every hand. She felt hard and bitter, above all, toward the sect that had first made a division between Morton and herself, and cordially blamed the Methodists for all her misfortunes.

It happened that upon the very next Sunday Russell Bigelow was to preach. Far and wide over the West had traveled the fame of this great preacher, who, though born in Vermont, was wholly Western in his impassioned manner. "An orator is to be judged not by his printed discourses, but by the memory of the effect he has produced," says a French writer; and if we may judge of Russell Bigelow by the fame that fills Ohio and Indiana even to this day, he was surely an orator of the highest order. He is known as the "indescribable." The news that he was to preach had set the Hissawachee Settlement afire with eager curiosity to hear him. Even Patty declared her intention of going, much to the Captain's regret. The meeting was not to be held at Wheeler's, but in the woods, and she could go for this time without entering the house of her father's foe. She had no other motive than a vague hope of hearing something that would divert her; life had grown so heavy that she craved excitement of any kind. She would take a back seat and hear the famous Methodist for herself. But Patty put on all of her gold and costly apparel. She was determined that nobody should suspect her of any intention of "joining the church." Her mood was one of curiosity on the surface, and of proud hatred and quiet defiance below.

No religious meeting is ever so delightful as a meeting held in the forest; no forest is so satisfying as a forest of beech; the wide-spreading boughs--drooping when they start from the trunk, but well sustained at the last--stretch out regularly and with a steady horizontalness, the last year's leaves form a carpet like a cushion, while the dense foliage shuts out the sun. To this meeting in the beech, woods Patty chose to walk, since it was less than a mile away.* As she passed through a little cove, she saw a man lying flat on his face in prayer. It was the preacher. Awe-stricken, Patty hurried on to the meeting. She had fully intended to take a seat in the rear of the congregation, but being a little confused and absent-minded she did not observe at first where the stand had been erected, and that she was entering the congregation at the side nearest to the pulpit. When she discovered her mistake it was too late to withdraw, the aisle beyond her was already full of standing people; there was nothing for her but to take the only vacant seat in sight. This put her in the very midst of the members, and in this position she was quite conspicuous; even strangers from other settlements saw with astonishment a woman elegantly dressed, for that time, sitting in the very midst of the devout sisters--for the men and women sat apart. All around Patty there was not a single "artificial," or piece of jewelry. Indeed, most of the women wore calico sunbonnets. The Hissawachee people who knew her were astounded to see Patty at meeting at all. They remembered her treatment of Morton, and they looked upon Captain Lumsden as Gog and Magog incarnated in one. This sense of the conspicuousness of her position was painful to Patty, but she presently forgot herself in listening to the singing. There never was such a chorus as a backwoods Methodist congregation, and here among the trees they sang hymn after hymn, now with the tenderest pathos, now with triumphant joy, now with solemn earnestness. They sang "Children of the Heavenly King," and "Come let us anew," and "Blow ye the trumpet, blow," and "Arise my soul, arise," and "How happy every child of grace!" While they were singing this last, the celebrated preacher entered the pulpit, and there ran through the audience a movement of wonder, almost of disappointment. His clothes were of that sort of cheap cotton cloth known as "blue drilling," and did not fit him. He was rather short, and inexpressibly awkward. His hair hung unkempt over the best portion of his face--the broad projecting forehead. His eyebrows were overhanging; his nose, cheek-bones and chin large. His mouth was wide and with a sorrowful depression at the corners, his nostrils thin, his eyes keen, and his face perfectly mobile. He took for his text the words of Eleazar to Laban,--"Seeking a bride for his master," and, according to the custom of the time, he first expounded the incident, and then proceeded to "spiritualize" it, by applying it to the soul's marriage to Christ. Notwithstanding the ungainliness of his frame and the awkwardness of his postures, there was a gentlemanliness about his address that indicated a man not unaccustomed to good society. His words were well-chosen; his pronunciation always correct; his speech grammatical. In all of these regards Patty was disappointed.

* I give the local tradition of Bigelow's text, sermon, and the accompanying incident.

But the sermon. Who shall describe "the indescribable"? As the servant, he proceeded to set forth the character of the Master. What struck Patty was not the nobleness of his speech, nor the force of his argument; she seemed to see in the countenance that every divine trait which he described had reflected itself in the life of the preacher himself. For none but the manliest of men can ever speak worthily of Jesus Christ. As Bigelow proceeded he won her famished heart to Christ. For such a Master she could live or die; in such a life there was what Patty needed most--a purpose; in such a life there was a friend; in such a life she would escape that sense of the ignobleness of her own pursuits, and the unworthiness of her own pride. All that he said of Christ's love and condescension filled her with a sense of sinfulness and meanness, and she wept bitterly. There were a hundred others as much affected, but the eyes of all her neighbors were upon her. If Patty should be converted, what a victory!

And as the preacher proceeded to describe the joy of a soul wedded forever to Christ--living nobly after the pattern of His life--Patty resolved that she would devote herself to this life and this Saviour, and rejoiced in sympathy with the rising note of triumph in the sermon. Then Bigelow, last of all, appealed to courage and to pride--to pride in its best sense. Who would be ashamed of such a Bridegroom? And as he depicted the trials that some must pass through in accepting Him, Patty saw her own situation, and mentally made the sacrifice. As he described the glory of renouncing the world, she thought of her jewelry and the spirit of defiance in which she had put it on. There, in the midst of that congregation, she took out her earrings, and stripped the flowers from the bonnet. We may smile at the unnecessary sacrifice to an over-strained literalism, but to Patty it was the solemn renunciation of the world--the whole-hearted espousal of herself, for all eternity, to Him who stands for all that is noblest in life. Of course this action was visible to most of the congregation--most of all to the preacher himself. To the Methodists it was the greatest of triumphs, this public conversion of Captain Lumsden's daughter, and they showed their joy in many pious ejaculations. Patty did not seek concealment. She scorned to creep into the kingdom of heaven. It seemed to her that she owed this publicity. For a moment all eyes were turned away from the orator. He paused in his discourse until Patty had removed the emblems of her pride and antagonism. Then, turning with tearful eyes to the audience, the preacher, with simple-hearted sincerity and inconceivable effect, burst out with, "Hallelujah! I have found a bride for my Master!"

_CHAPTER XXIV_

DRAWING THE LATCH-STRING IN.

Up to this point Captain Lumsden had been a spectator--having decided to risk a new attack of the jerks that he might stand guard over Patty. But Patty was so far forward that he could not see her, except now and then as he stretched his small frame to peep over the shoulders of some taller man standing in front. It was only when Bigelow uttered these exulting words that he gathered from the whispers about him that Patty was the center of excitement. He instantly began to swear and to push through the crowd, declaring that he would take Patty home and teach her to behave herself. The excitement which he produced presently attracted the attention of the preacher and of the audience. But Patty was too much occupied with the solemn emotions that engaged her heart, to give any attention to it.

"She is my daughter, and she's _got_ to learn to obey," said Lumsden in his quick, rasping voice, pushing energetically toward the heart of the dense assemblage with the purpose of carrying Patty off by force. Patty heard this last threat, and turned round just at the moment when her father had forced his way through the fringe of standing people that bordered the densely packed congregation, and was essaying, in his headlong anger, to reach her and drag her forth.

The Methodists of that day generally took pains to put themselves under the protection of the law in order to avoid disturbance from the chronic rowdyism of a portion of the people. There was a magistrate and a constable on the ground, and Lumsden, in penetrating the cordon of standing men, had come directly upon the country justice, who, though not a Methodist, had been greatly moved by Bigelow's oratory, and who, furthermore, was prone, as country justices sometimes are, to exaggerate the dignity of his office. At any rate, he was not a little proud of the fact that this great orator and this assemblage of people had in some sense put themselves under the protection of the Majesty of the Law as represented in his own important self. And for Captain Lumsden to come swearing and fuming right against his sacred person was not only a breach of the law, it was--what the justice considered much worse--a contempt of court. Hence ensued a dialogue:

_The Court_--Captain Lumsden, I am a magistrate. In interrupting the worship of Almighty God by this peaceful assemblage you are violating the law. I do not want to arrest a citizen of your standing; but if you do not cease your disturbance I shall be obliged to vindicate the majesty of the law by ordering the constable to arrest you for a breach of the peace, as against this assembly. (J. P. here draws himself up to his full stature, in the endeavor to represent the dignity of the law.)

_Outraged Father_--Squire, I'll have you know that Patty Lumsden's my daughter, and I have a right to control her; and you'd better mind your own business.

_Justice of the Peace_ (lowering his voice to a solemn and very judicial bass)--Is she under eighteen years of age?

_By-stander_ (who doesn't like Lumsden)--She's twenty.

_Justice_--If your daughter is past eighteen, she is of age. If you lay hands on her I'll have to take you up for a salt and battery. If you carry her off I'll take her back on a writ of replevin. Now, Captain, I could arrest you here and fine you for this disturbance; and if you don't leave the meeting at once I'll do it.

Here Captain Lumsden grew angrier than ever, but a stalwart class-leader from another settlement, provoked by the interruption of the eloquent sermon and out of patience with "the law's delay," laid off his coat and spat on his hands preparatory to ejecting Lumsden, neck and heels, on his own account. At the same moment an old sister near at hand began to pray aloud, vehemently: "O Lord, convert him! Strike him down, Lord, right where he stands, like Saul of Tarsus. O Lord, smite the stiff-necked persecutor by almighty power!"

This last was too much for the Captain. He might have risked arrest, he might have faced the herculean class-leader, but he had already felt the jerks and was quite superstitious about them. This prayer agitated him. He was not ambitious to emulate Paul, and he began to believe that if he stood still a minute longer he would surely be smitten to the ground at the request of the sister with a relish for dramatic conversions. Casting one terrified glance at the old sister, whose confident eyes were turned toward heaven, Lumsden broke through the surrounding crowd and started toward home at a most undignified pace.

Patty's devout feelings were sadly interrupted during the remainder of the sermon by forebodings. But she had a will as inflexible as her father's, and now that her will was backed by convictions of duty it was more firmly set than ever. Bigelow announced that he would "open the door of the church," and the excited congregation made the forest ring with that hymn of Watts' which has always been the recruiting song of Methodism. The application to Patty's case produced great emotion when the singing reached the stanzas:

"Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize
And sailed through bloody seas?

"Are there no foes for me to face?
Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace
To help me on to God?"

At this point Patty slowly rose from the place where she had been sitting weeping, and marched resolutely through the excited crowd until she reached the preacher, to whom she extended her hand in token of her desire to become a church-member. While she came forward, the congregation sang with great fervor, and not a little sensation:

"Since I must fight if I would reign,
Increase my courage, Lord;
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
Supported by thy word."

After many had followed Patty's example the meeting closed. Every Methodist shook hands with the new converts, particularly with Patty, uttering words of sympathy and encouragement. Some offered to go home with her to keep her in countenance in the inevitable conflict with her father, but, with a true delicacy and filial dutifulness, Patty insisted on going alone. There are battles which are fought better without allies.

That ten minutes' walk was a time of agony and suspense. As she came up to the house she saw her father sitting on the door-step, riding-whip in hand. Though she knew his nervous habit of carrying his raw-hide whip long after he had dismounted--a habit having its root in a domineering disposition--she was not without apprehension that he would use personal violence. But he was quiet now, from extreme anger.

"Patty," he said, "either you will promise me on the spot to give up this infernal Methodism, or you can't come in here to bring your praying and groaning into my ears. Are you going to give it up?"

"Don't turn me off, father," pleaded Patty. "You need me. I can stand it, but what will you do when your rheumatism comes on next winter? Do let me stay and take care of you. I won't bother you about my religion."

"I won't have this blubbering, shouting nonsense in my house," screamed the father, frantically. He would have said more, but he choked. "You've disgraced the family," he gasped, after a minute.

Patty stood still, and said no more.

"Will you give up your nonsense about being religious?"

Patty shook her head.

"Then, clear out!" cried the Captain, and with an oath he went into the house and pulled the latch-string in. The latch-string was the symbol of hospitality. To say that "the latch-string was out" was to open your door to a friend; to pull it in was the most significant and inhospitable act Lumsden could perform. For when the latch-string is in, the door is locked. The daughter was not only to be a daughter no longer, she was now an enemy at whose approach the latch-string was withdrawn.

Patty was full of natural affection. She turned away to seek a home. Where? She walked aimlessly down the road at first. She had but one thought as she receded from the old house that had been her home from infancy----

The latch-string was drawn in.

_CHAPTER XXV._

ANN ELIZA.

How shall I make you understand this book, reader of mine, who never knew the influences that surrounded a Methodist of the old sort. Up to this point I have walked by faith; I could not see how the present generation could be made to comprehend the earnestness of their grandfathers. But I have hoped that, none the less, they might dimly perceive the possibility of a religious fervor that was as a fire in the bones.

But now?