It had been announced in the school-house that Jasper the Parable would preach in the log church on Sunday. The school-master called the wandering teacher "Jasper the Parable," but the visitor became commonly known as the "Old Tunker" in the community. The news flew for miles that "an old Tunker" was to preach. No event had awakened a greater interest since Elder Elkins, from Kentucky, had come to the settlement to preach Nancy Lincoln's funeral sermon under the great trees. On that occasion all the people gathered from the forest homes of the vast region. Every one now was eager to visit the same place in the beautiful spring weather, and to "hear what the old Tunker would have to say."
Among the preachers who used to speak in the log meeting-house and in Thomas Lincoln's cabin were one Jeremiah Cash, and John Richardson, and young Lamar. The two latter preachers lived some ten miles distant from the church; but ten miles was not regarded as a long Sabbath-day journey in those days in Indiana. When the log meeting-house was found too small to hold the people, such preachers would exhort under the trees. There used to be held religious meetings in the cabins, after the manner of the present English cottage prayer-meetings. These used to be appointed to take place at "early candle-lighting," and many of the women who attended used to bring tallow dips with them, and were looked upon as the "wise virgins" who took oil in their lamps.
It was a lovely Sunday in April. The warm sunlight filled the air and bird-songs the trees. The notes of the lark, the sparrow, and the prairie plover were bells—
"To call me to duty, while birds in the air
Sang anthems of praise as I went forth to prayer,"
as one of the old hymns used to run. The buds on the trees were swelling. There was an odor of walnut and "sassafrax" in the tides of the sunny air. Cowslips and violets margined the streams, and the sky over all was serene and blue, and bright with the promise of the summer days.
The people began to gather about the meeting-house at an early hour. The women came first, in corn-field bonnets which were scoop-shaped and flaring in front, and that ran out like horns behind. On these funnel-shaped, cornucopia-like head-gears there might now and then be seen the vanity of a ribbon. The girls carried their shoes in their hands until they came in sight of the meeting-house, when they would sit down on some mossy plat under an old tree, "bein' careful of the snakes," and put them on. All wore linsey-woolsey dresses, of which four or five yards of cloth were an ample pattern for a single garment, as they had no use for any superfluous polonaises in those times.
Long before the time for the service the log meeting-house was full of women, and the yard full of men and horses. Some of the people had come from twenty miles away. Those who came from the longest distances were the first to arrive—as is usual, for in all matters in life promptness is proportioned to exertion.
When the Parable came, Thomas Lincoln met him.
"You can't preach here," said he. "Half the people couldn't hear you. You have a small voice. You don't holler and pound like the rest of 'em, I take it. Suppose you preach out under the trees, where all the people can hear ye. It looks mighty pleasant there. With our old sing-song preachers it don't make so much difference. We could hear one of them if you were to shut him up in jail. But with you it is different. You have been brought up different among those big churches over there. What do you say, preacher?"
"I would rather preach under the trees. I love the trees. They are the meeting-house of God."