In the brush

by Hamilton W. Pierson

"We shall all have to go back to get our breakfast. There is not a knife, fork, or dish in the house. They are all at the wedding."

This was the condition of most of the houses in the neighborhood. When we returned, we found a large company and an abundant breakfast. After mingling with the departing guests for a time, I renewed my congratulations and good wishes for the happy pair, and bade good-by to my kind friends, greatly pleased with this entirely new experience at a wedding.

Such is a simple, unadorned narrative of a wedding, with its barbecue feast, at which I was a guest in the Southwest. How unlike those that I have attended in our largest cities! But who shall say at which there was the greatest and most universal happiness, whether where wealth and fashion held high carnival, or at this more simple and primitive gathering and feasting of old neighbors and friends in the Southwest?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE OLD, OLD BOOK AND ITS STORY IN THE WILDS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

I have never known such remarkable and pleasing results follow the reading of the Bible, without any human help, as among the ignorant people I have visited, living in wild and neglected regions in the Brush. I propose in this chapter to give a detailed account of the results that followed its presentation, by Mr. J.G. K——, to families living among the hills upon the head-waters of a stream that I thought was rightly named "Rough Creek." Mr. K—— was a venerable and faithful Bible-distributor, sixty-four years old, and he loved, above everything else, to go from house to house with the Word of God, and strive by simple, earnest exhortation and fervent prayer to lead souls to Christ. While prosecuting his labors in this neglected region, he found in one neighborhood sixteen families out of twenty without a Bible, and supplied the most of them by gift.

This region of country was exceedingly wild, broken, and inaccessible, there being no main public road leading to it. The hills were high and steep, the valleys narrow, and the people were scattered along the creeks and over the hill-sides, with no other roads leading to them than neighborhood paths. Mr. K—— told me that he never could have found all these families had not a young man who was born in the vicinity (who had since become a Methodist preacher) volunteered to accompany him as a guide. He had hunted deer, foxes, wildcats, and other game over these hills until he knew every locality and path. Entering these rude, humble cabins, they explained the nature of their work, supplied the families with the Word of God by sale or gift, and then, after kindly and earnestly urging upon them the worth of the soul and the importance of securing at once an interest in Christ, they bowed with them in prayer, and humbly and earnestly besought God's blessing upon them. There was a strange interest in these visits. The voice of prayer had never before been heard in many of these dwellings. Though their visits were so strange and unusual in their nature, they were everywhere kindly received, the mild, benignant face of the venerable distributor making him everywhere a welcome visitor. Where will not a face full of geniality and sunshine secure a welcome for its possessor?

As he was concluding his prayer at one of these cabins, the old man, who had been absent, returned, and hearing the strange sound in his house, cried out, in astonishment, "Wake, snakes!" But, on going into the house when the prayer was concluded, our visitor received him with a smile, explained to him the nature of his visit, and at once made a personal religious appeal to him. The old man treated his visitor very kindly, though he seemed to be in a very jocular mood, and replied to most of his remarks with some playful speech. But when his visitor left he went out with him, and assisted him in getting on to his horse, and invited him to call again whenever he should pass that way. But generally their exhortations were listened to with deep solemnity and awe, and their visits evidently made a deep religious impression upon the neighborhood.

Not many weeks after these visits of Mr. K——, reports were received that several persons in this neighborhood had been hopefully converted; and for a year or more I was almost constantly hearing from various sources of the wonderful work of grace that was going on there. The statements in regard to the number and character of the conversions were so remarkable that I was unwilling to make them public until I had made a personal visit to the neighborhood, and seen with my own eyes what God had wrought. I subsequently made that visit, and can truly say that the half had not been told me. My powers are not equal to the work of giving an adequate description of the great change that had been wrought through the power of God's Word and Spirit, but I will give some of the main facts.

I arrived at a house to which I had been directed, near this neighborhood, about midday, having traveled for miles in the foot-paths that led from one cabin to that of the next neighbor. Where the path was blind and difficult to follow, the people would often send a little boy or girl along to show me the way. On making myself known as a preacher, and the agent of the American Bible Society, I was at once greeted with the usual question, "Won't you preach for us to-night?"