I stepped to the door, and asked a little boy who was passing if there was a Mr. G---- living in the town. “Yes,” said he, “he lives in the adjoining house.” I stepped to the door, and was cordially greeted by an old acquaintance. In a few minutes I was seated at a sumptuously supplied table, which I very much needed; and an hour after was in a school-house, holding forth to the people, with my belligerent friend for one of my hearers. I visited all the town; but Mr. S---- carefully avoided meeting me, always turning away to shun me; but I supplied his family with a good stock of books.
At the close of my labors in that town, I entered a very hilly region of country, and stopped over night with a Mr. W----, an aged, infirm man, who sent his son with me the next day to hunt up the cabins of the poor. The son had spent some years in a roving life, and seemed totally indifferent about religion.
In the first cabin we called at, we found a young woman in the last stages of a decline. I have seldom seen any soul so full of joy and peace. She talked more like an inhabitant of heaven than of earth. While we spoke of Christ’s love, and what he had done for her, I saw the tears course down my companion’s cheeks. When we left her he said, “Religion is a reality.”
After visiting a few more families, we came in sight of a beautiful farm, which lay in a valley. Mr. W---- said to me, “I will not go with you to that man’s house. He is an unbeliever, and a shrewd fellow, and if you talk to him on religion as you have done to others, he will get mad, and insult you. His wife is pious; but I have heard him say that when the preacher came to visit his family he kept out of the way, because he did not wish to insult him; and he will certainly insult you, if you speak to him on that subject.” Said I, “He has the more need to be visited. Such persons are the very ones I am sent to hunt up; but as he may take offence at you for leading me to his house, you may fall behind, and come up after me,” which he concluded to do.
As I approached the house, I got off my horse, and took my big saddle-bags, filled with books, on my arm, and stepped into the house. In a few minutes all the children were in. They were fine, intelligent children; and to my surprise, I recognized their mother as a once dashing young lady I had known well fifteen years before; but she had entirely forgotten me.