"'Where can I get copies of that little volume, "Come to Jesus"? I am delighted with it, and must have a quantity for distribution.'
"'I order them by the hundred copies from the Tract Society in New York,' was the response, 'and always keep a supply on hand to give away as I have opportunity.'
"The General soon procured a supply, and he had so many proofs of their great usefulness—so many of those to whom he gave them expressed their gratitude, and testified to the great benefit they had received from their perusal—that he ordered them again and again, and scattered hundreds of them over the country."
"How can I get a lot of them?" said my host, quite fired with the missionary spirit by this recital. I told him that I knew of no nearer place than the depository of the American Tract Society at Cincinnati, Ohio, which was several hundred miles distant. He would not rest until I had written out for him the address of Seely Wood, the depositary, and given him full instructions how to order them. On my next annual visit to the county I found several copies of "Come to Jesus" in the family of a Presbyterian elder, living near the county-seat, and, inquiring of him how he obtained them, he said:
"I found a package of them addressed to me at the post-office, and the postmaster said they had been left there by Mr. ——" (my host), "and that he left several other packages there addressed to Rev. Mr. ——, principal of the seminary, and the officers of the different churches."
The matter was an inexplicable mystery to him, and to all that received those packages. They knew him well, and afterward described his character to me as far different from that which usually pertains to a tract-distributor. They told me that he was a very cruel master, and that it was the general belief that he had shot and secretly paid the owner his price for a negro because he thought him too intimate with his housekeeper.
At night I preached in a small school-house, near his residence, to about a dozen persons who had assembled in response to the ringing of a small bell late in the afternoon and at the hour of assembling, the signal in all that region for preaching by a stranger, as I have elsewhere described.
Perhaps I should say that as a matter of form I asked my host, soon after my arrival, if he had received the letters I had forwarded to him, and sent his overseer's boys to school as he had proposed. He said he had received the letters, but gave some excuse or reason for not having sent them as yet. He ordered them dressed and called into the parlor for my inspection, that I might judge of their capacity for an education. This I afterward learned caused a great commotion in the "negro quarters," as they all thought I must be a "nigger-trader," and this examination was in reference to the price I would pay for them.
As my duties were very pressing, I spent but two nights with my host, and left him the next morning, with many thanks for his hospitality, and with earnest expressions of regret on his part—never to see him again.
A few months later I read a notice of his death in the papers, accompanied with this statement: