“Some Methodist missionary, doubtless.”
“Henry Stephenson. He had been preaching and distributing Bibles from San Antonia to the Sabine River, and neither soldier nor priest could make him afraid. He was reading the Bible, with his rifle in his hand, when I first saw him—a tall, powerful man, with a head like a dome and an eye like an eagle.”
“Well, well, John; what would you?”
“‘In iron times God sends with mighty power,
Iron apostles to make smooth his way.’
What did he say to you?”
“Nothing specially to me; but as we were lying around resting and watching he spoke to all. ‘Boys!’ he said, ‘I have been reading the word of the living God. We are his free-born sons, and the name of our elder brother, Christ, can’t be mixed up with any kind of tyranny, kingly or priestly; we won’t have it. We are the children of the knife-bearing men who trampled kingly and priestly tyranny beneath their feet on the rocks of New England. We are fighting for our rights and our homes, and for the everlasting freedom of our children. Strike like men! The cause commends the blow!’”
“And I wish I had been there to strike, John; or, at least, to strengthen and succor those who did strike.”
“We had no drums, or fifes, or banners in our little army; none of the pomp of war; nothing that helps and stimulates; but the preacher was worth them all.”
“I can believe that. When we remember how many preachers bore arms in Cromwell’s camps, there isn’t much miracle in Marston Moor and Worcester fight. You were very fortunate to be in time for San Jacinto.”
“I was that. Fortune may do her worst, she cannot rob me of that honor.”