“‘As it was, I have no doubt company added weeks to his sickness, and dollars to the doctor’s bill. I afterward learned that the expenses of his sickness were one hundred dollars.
“‘Let us try to get a glimpse at his wealth and resources. Twelve years ago he was the owner of about two hundred acres of land, less than half of which was capable of cultivation, yielding a liberal return to hard labor. No one, who knows with what energy, diligence, and firmness, Bro. Miller has prosecuted the labors he seems to have been raised up to perform, will need to be told that he is a man of industrious, temperate, frugal habits. Such a man in such a place, with a help meet for him, could not be poor and thriftless. Twenty-five years ago he built his house. Other buildings were erected as they became necessary, but none within the last dozen years, except a bee-house, and small, plain shed, or boiling-house, where food is prepared for his hogs.
“‘He showed me his home farm, consisting of ninety-six acres, lying wholly on the south side of the road. There is some common wall upon it; but the moss-grown, weather-beaten stones unanimously contradict the foolish and malicious lies which have been told about its recent origin. He also owns a rough tract of fifty acres, north of the road, and twenty acres of interval a little distance to the east. When he let out his farm to his son, he sold him $500 worth of stock, and has since sold seventy acres of land to his son-in-law. What he has thus realized, and $100 yearly for the use of his farm, have enabled him to meet the expenses of traveling, printing, and giving away books, company, sickness, &c.
“‘He has brought up eight children, two others having died in early life. His whole family, like Job’s, originally consisted of seven sons and three daughters. Four of them are now in the house with him, and two sons are at the West. As a specimen of the fertility of his farm, he showed us a potato weighing two pounds and seven ounces.
“‘While contemplating this lovely family, and their plain but comfortable dwelling-place, equally free from the marks of wasteful neglect or extravagant expenditure, I saw, as never I saw before, the folly and malignity of those falsehoods which have been so industriously told about them. Look at them.
“‘A diligent student of the Bible tells us he finds prophetic periods reaching down to the resurrection and the second coming of Christ.
“‘Nonsense!’ cries one, who must stand at the Judgment seat of Christ; ‘Mr. Miller is a man of property, and he holds on to it.’
“‘But won’t you please to look in the Bible, and see the evidence that these periods are just running out?’
“‘Humbug!’ says another, who must give an account for the manner in which he treats that message from Heaven; ‘Mr. Miller is building a solid brick wall round his farm.’
“‘But will you not consider and discern the signs of the times, which show that the kingdom of Heaven is nigh, even at the doors?’