NEW YORK:
J. B. FORD & COMPANY
1874.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
J. B. FORD & COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.
TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS,
THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE
HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY,
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I.—[The Corn Shucking]
II.—[The Frolic]
III.—[Going to Meeting]
IV.—[A Battle]
V.—[A Crisis]
VI.—[The Fall Hunt]
VII.—[Treeing a Preacher]
VIII.—[A Lesson in Syntax]
IX.—[The Coming of the Circuit Rider]
X.—[Patty in the Spring-House]
XI.—[The Voice in the Wilderness]
XII.—[Mr. Brady Prophesies]
XIII.—[Two to One]
XIV.—[Kike's Sermon]
XV.—[Morton's Retreat]
XVI.—[Short Shrift]
XVII.—[Deliverance]
XVIII.—[The Prodigal Returns]
XIX.—[Patty]
XX.—[The Conference at Hickory Ridge]
XXI.—[Convalescence]
XXII.—[The Decision]
XXIII.—[Russell Bigelow's Sermon]
XXIV.—[Drawing the Latch-String in]
XXV.—[Ann Eliza]
XXVI.—[Engagement]
XXVII.—[The Camp-Meeting]
XXVIII.—[Patty and her Patient]
XXIX.—[Patty's Journey]
XXX.—[The Schoolmaster and the Widow]
XXXI.—[Kike]
XXXII.—[Pinkey's Discovery]
XXXIII.—[The Alabaster Box Broken]
XXXIV.—[The Brother]
XXXV.—[Plnkey and Ann Eliza]
XXXVI.—[Getting the Answer]
ILLUSTRATIONS.
1. [Spinning-wheel and Rifle] ... Frontispiece
2. [Captain Lumsden]
3. [Mort Goodwin]
4. [Homely S'manthy]
5. [Patty and Jemima]
6. [Little Gabe's Discomfiture]
7. [In the Stable]
8. [Mort, Dolly and Kike]
9. [Good Bye!]
10. [The Altercation]
11. [The Irish Schoolmaster]
12. [Electioneering]
13. [Patty in her Chamber]
14. [Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard]
15. [Patty in the Spring-House]
16. [Job Goodwin]
17. [Two to One]
18. [Gambling]
19. [A Last Hope]
20. [The Choice]
21. [Going to Conference]
22. [Convalescence]
23. [The Connecticut Peddler]
24. [Ann Eliza]
25. [Facing a Mob]
26. ["Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken"]
27. [The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge]
28. [The Reunion]
29. [The Brothers]
30. [An Accusing Memory]
31. [At the Spring-House Again]
PREFACE.
Whatever is incredible in this story is true. The tale I have to tell will seem strange to those who know little of the social life of the West at the beginning of this century. These sharp contrasts of corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild revivals; these contacts of highwayman and preacher; this mélange of picturesque simplicity, grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of abandoned wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those who know the country now. But the books of biography and reminiscence which preserve the memory of that time more than justify what is marvelous in these pages.