Mattie Myers is only eighteen, now, and she speaks with all that age-wisdom one finds in the sober-minded young: "I have been living over all the delights of the past," she writes to a friend, "and when the bright dream passed away before the storm actualities of the present, my heart has wept that the golden hours of childhood shall never, never return. True, my childhood was not all joyous; yet there is a luxury in remembering even the grief that tore my young heart. Many changes have taken place since then. The death-angel has taken from our circle two dear sisters. Is it not hard for the human heart, so full of pride, to pass submissive under the rod? Yet in each affliction there is a blessing. There is a holy, purifying influence that the children of God must feel in order to be made fit for His inheritance,—an influence that even mighty truth, alone, cannot bring; an influence that only trial can exert upon the proud heart. This will make the weakest strong; God accepts no sacrifice without salt or without fire. Trial gives us our Christian character, brings us into closer communion with our God. With it our hearts may be made fair and pure as the snow that encircles the mountain-crest. It was a bright-winged messenger that took from us our sisters, though with the eye of flesh we could not see the brightness of His glory."[5]
"Many of the old friends are married," she continues, "and many are sleeping. One hardly recognizes the old Kentucky Home. Dearest friends have moved away. The home of one's youth seems strange. But of one I must tell you, one dearer to me than all others—my brother. God grant that I may not love him too well lest I forget Him who gave me one so dear!"
This year brought the war to a close. We find Oliver Carr once more on an evangelistic tour, followed, we may be sure, by best wishes from Mattie Myers for his success. He is accompanied by John W. Mountjoy. They borrow horses at May's Lick, load their saddle-pockets, and start for the mountains. Let us take a look at them, July 14, 1865,—"A bright, beautiful morning," says Mountjoy, writing joyously in his pocket-diary; "we rose with the sun, welcomed by the song of birds and the gayety of nature."
It is interesting to note just what preaching means, and what it includes for these young University students. "We led George and Davy to water, fed them and rubbed them off." (Davy is Oliver's colt, so named for David Armstrong, and George is John's colt, so called after George Ranck, who trudged on foot with Oliver to hear his first sermon at a school house on the Perryville road three miles from Harrodsburg, and afterward became the Lexington historian.) "Went to the house, had prayers, and then breakfast. Left immediately on our journey for Vanceburg,—rode slowly on account of the lameness of Ol's 'Davy.' Singing joyously"—this beautiful morning—"we reached rows of cabins humbly situated by the roadside—the little children, the old grand-mother with her white cap—an old man mowing by the wayside. I would gladly have helped him, could I have stopped. * * * We are now at the blacksmith shop, having 'Davy' shod—sixteen miles yet to ride before we reach Vanceburg."
Presently they pass the little school-house where Oliver learned his first lesson, his a b c's the first day; the second day it was a-b ab, and the University student sees himself, barefoot and tiny, trudging up to the doorway that looked so large to him then. It is hard for him to believe that little boy himself. The years at May's Lick Academy have come since then, and the years at Harrodsburg, and now the prospect of years at Lexington. He is already so removed from that little boy, and all the world of that little boy, so removed in life-purposes, in eternal desires! and yet there is something of the little child in his tall awkward form—or in his heart, rather—something always childlike.
"The school-house where Ol. learned his first lesson," says Mountjoy—"I could not enter into half the joys of his sweet remembrances of happier days." Could not, truly; but why "happier" days? Is it not because they are past, those days of youth, never to be ours again; surely it is not because they were in reality happier!
We pass through Clarksburg about 12, we reach Vicksburg about one, and now we—or I should say, "I," am sitting on the bank of the Ohio,—Oliver is doubtless resting from his experiences with "Davy." For, "While riding along about halfway between Mount Carmel and Vanceburg, talking of Geo. Ranck and Davy Armstrong, Ol. took a notion that his beast was becoming insensible to the spur on his right foot, and concluded he would make a change. He raised his left leg over the shoulder of Davy"—and then we are treated to a bit of Greek in the diary-narrative, the spirit, if not the letter, of which may be gleaned from a line further on—"I thought Ol. would surely be killed."
Away goes Davy, free of any spur, scattering saddle-pockets and hymn-books to right and left. A quarter of a mile away he stops, and looks back at the other borrowed horse as if to say, "George, throw John Mountjoy off and let's go back to old man Chancellor!"—the old man, evidently from whom they were borrowed. At which, George's spirit begins to rage, and Mountjoy has all he can do to keep in statu quo. And his thought—if one can afterwards remember what his thought was at such a crisis—ran thus; "Ol. is killed or half-dead; I suppose I will have all the preaching to do!" Preaching he has to do, but only his share, but no funeral, for Ol. staggers up and mounts and clings. And now we find Mountjoy alone on the river bank, wishing that the music of the waves could inspire him to do justice to the thrilling scene just closed.
But after all, Oliver is not resting up from his dethronement, for we are presently to discover him in a situation none too heroic, by the canons of genteel fiction. We have come down to the landing to see the steamer "Telegraph." We are now down the river a little way. "While I have been writing, Ol. has been washing his boots, with sand for soap. The boat has just passed down the river and the waves are lashing the shore, making melody. Ol. will preach tonight in the little school-house."