"Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry.
"Every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love, and every moment jewelled with a joy, will at its close become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death."
And yet in those other words, "But in the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing," and, "while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of a grander day," there is a yearning for "the touch of a vanished hand," and a hope that no philosophy could dispel of a reunion sometime and somewhere with the loved and lost.
Two decades later, again "the veiled shadow stole upon the scene," and the sublime mystery of life and death was revealed. The awful question, "If a man die shall he live again?" was answered, and to the great agnostic all was known.
XVII A CAMP-MEETING ORATOR
PETER CARTWRIGHT, METHODIST PREACHER—HIS FEARLESSNESS AND ENERGY— HIS OLD-FASHIONED ORTHODOXY—HOW HE CONVERTED A PROFANE SWEARER —HIS ATTENDANCE AT A BALL—OLD-TIME CAMP-MEETINGS—CARTWRIGHT'S AVERSION TO OTHER SECTS—CONVERSION OF A DESPERADO INTO A PENITENT —CARTWRIGHT MR. LINCOLN'S COMPETITOR FOR REPRESENTATIVE—HIS SPEECH AT A DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION.
The Rev. Peter Cartwright was a noted Methodist preacher of pioneer days in Central Illinois. Once seen, he was a man never to be forgotten. He was, in the most expressive sense of the words, sui generis; a veritable product of the times in which he lived, and the conditions under which he moved and had his being. All in all, his like will not appear again. He was converted when a mere youth at a camp-meeting in southern Kentucky; soon after, he was licensed to preach, and became a circuit rider in that State, and later was of the Methodist vanguard to Illinois. It was said of him that he was of the church military as well as "the church militant." He was of massive build, an utter stranger to fear, and of unquestioned honesty and sincerity. He was gifted with an eloquence adapted to the times in which he lived, and the congregations to which he preached. There would be no place for him now, for the untutored assemblages who listened with bated breath to his fiery appeals are of the past.
"For, welladay! Their day is fled,
Old times are changed, old manners gone."
The narrative of his tough conflicts with the emissaries of Satan is even now of the rarest reading for a summer's day or a winter's night. How he fought the Indians, fought the robbers, swam rivers, and threaded the prairies, in order that he might carry the Gospel to the remotest frontiersmen, was of thrilling interest to many of the new generation as his own sands were running low. He literally took no thought of the morrow, but without staff and little even in the way of scrip unselfishly gave the best years of a life extending two decades beyond the time allotted, to the service of his Master.
Until the Judgment leaves are unfolded the good which this man and many of his co-laborers did in the new country will never be known. A journey of days on horseback to fill an appointment, to perform a marriage ceremony, preach a funeral sermon, or speak words of hope and comfort to the sick or the bereaved, was part of the sum of a life of service that knew little of rest.