Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of reply."

Our preacher was determined that his work should be recognized, and as he and his fellow traveling ministers had done a good work on the frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and of course they produced no effect among the people. The great mass of our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a block, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or manuscript, quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern missionaries was not very flattering; and although the Methodist preachers were in reality the pioneer heralds of the cross through the entire West, and although they had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local preachers, accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet these newly-fledged missionaries would write back to the old States hardly any thing else but wailings and lamentations over the moral wastes and destitute condition of the West."

The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the people of the West, who considered themselves as good Christians; as their New England brethren, and the people of Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of denomination, and pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one thousand dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would "go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten them on this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly ignorant." Circumstances beyond his control prevented his acceptance of this offer. "How gladly and willingly would I have undertaken this labor of love," says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and worm-eaten sermons."

Our preacher did visit New England in 1852, not as a missionary, however, but as a delegate to the General Conference which met that year in Boston. His fame had preceded him, and he was one of the marked men of that body. Every one had heard some quaint story of his devotion to his cause, his fearlessness, or his eccentricities, and crowds came out to hear him preach. But our backwoods preacher was ill at ease. The magnificence of the city, and the prim decorum of the Boston churches, subdued him, and he could not preach with the fire and freedom of the frontier log chapel. The crowds that came to hear him were disappointed, and more than once they told him so.

"Is this Peter Cartwright, from Illinois, the old Western pioneer?" they asked him once.

He answered them, "I am the very man."

"Well," said several of them, "brother, we are much disappointed; you have fallen very much under our expectations, we expected to hear a much greater sermon than that you preached to-day."

It was a regular Bostonian greeting, and it not only mortified and disheartened the old pioneer, but it irritated him. "I tell you," says he, "they roused me, and provoked what little religious patience I had.... I left them abruptly, and in very gloomy mood retreated to my lodgings, but took very little rest in sleep that night. I constantly asked myself this question: Is it so, that I can not preach? or what is the matter? I underwent a tremendous crucifixion in feeling."

The result was that he came to the conclusion that he could preach, and that the people of Boston had not "sense enough to know a good sermon when they heard it." A little later old Father Taylor, that good genius of the Boston Bethel, a man after Cartwright's own heart, came to him and asked him to preach for him, and this, after hesitating, our preacher agreed to do, upon the condition that he should be allowed to conduct the services in regular Western style.

"In the meantime," says he, "I had learned from different sources that the grand reason of my falling under the expectations of the congregations I had addressed was substantially this: almost all those curious incidents that had gained currency throughout the country concerning Methodist preachers had been located on me, and that when the congregations came to hear me, they expected little else but a bundle of eccentricities and singularities, and when they did not realize according to their anticipations, they were disappointed, and that this was the reason they were disappointed. So on the Sabbath, when I came to the Bethel, we had a good congregation, and after telling them that Brother Taylor had given me the liberty to preach to them after the Western fashion, I took my text, and after a few common-place remarks, I commenced giving them some Western anecdotes, which had a thrilling effect on the congregation, and excited them immoderately—I can not say religiously; but I thought if ever I saw animal excitement, it was then and there. This broke the charm. During my stay, after this, I could pass anywhere for Peter Cartwright, the old pioneer of the West. I am not sure that after this I fell under the expectations of my congregations among them."