The next Sabbath the school was started. In six months a church was organized, and soon after a little church built, and a man of God was preaching to them once each month. That bosom full of books was the means God blessed to this result.
On another occasion I stopped over night with a good man, who related to me the following fact.
“A few years ago a minister came to my house late on Saturday night on his way to preach at L----, about thirty miles distant. Finding he could not reach the place in time to meet his appointment, he told me if I would gather in my neighbors, he would preach for us. There were but a few families in all this valley, and so far as I knew, he was the first preacher that ever had been in it, at least he preached the first sermon. I sent my boys out and gathered in my neighbors. At the close of his sermon he gave every one a tract. Among the rest he gave one to a poor widow with a large family, but neither she nor any one of her children knew a letter. She took it home with her without any knowledge of its contents.
“The next morning she returned and requested my wife to read it to her, which she did. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘it is a nice thing to read; I do wish I could do it.’ She took the tract home, and returned the next day to have it read again; and during the reading, the tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Oh,’ said she to my wife, ‘do you think I could learn to read?’ ‘Yes,’ she said to her, ‘no doubt you can.’ So my wife got a New England primer we had, and went over the letters a few times with her. She took home both the primer and the tract. The next morning she returned again, and while the tract was reading, her face was lit up with joy, and peace came into her soul. In a few hours she was able to repeat the alphabet. ‘And now,’ said she, ‘if you will only learn me how to put two of them together, and give them a _name_, I can learn myself.’ This was soon done; and as soon as she went home, she taught her children all she had learned. In a few months she and her children could read all that was in the primer. We have now a good church here, and she and most of her children are members of it. She seldom sees a tract but with tears of joy she exclaims, ‘If it had not been for one of these little tracts, I and my children might have remained in ignorance and sin.’”