Wednesday, May 27. Discuss questions, but get through with business by two o'clock; and the Annual Meeting breaks up. I come to Brother Daniel Snoberger's, where I stay all night.
Thursday, May 28. Go to a store at Enterprise and buy a few articles. After dinner come through Snake Spring valley and across Bloody Run to Jesse O'Neil's, where I stay all night. Fine day.
Friday, May 29. Come six miles to Chanyville; then eleven miles to Gibbon; then two miles to John Deacon's where I get dinner and have Nell fed; then twenty miles to Brother Abraham Miller's in Hampshire County, Virginia, where I stay all night. Fine day.
Saturday, May 30. Come ten miles to Souer's, where I dine and feed; then five miles out to the pike, and eight miles to North River; then three miles to Brother Wilson's, but to get there have to ride two miles out of the way to pass unmolested. Stay all night at Brother Wilson's. Rain to-day.
Sunday, May 31. Come twenty-two miles to Nimrod Stradaman's, where I dine and feed; then sixteen miles to James Fitzwater's, where I stay all night. Fine day.
Monday, June 1. Come ten miles to Michael Wine's; get dinner, and in afternoon cross the mountain and get home.
It may not be out of place to call the reader's attention to several points of special interest connected with this journey of Brother Kline to this the next to last Annual Meeting it was his privilege to attend. Let the reader think of the distance to be traveled over in going and coming—three hundred and thirty-four miles—all on the back of his favorite Nell. Over a good road, in a time of peace, with plenty of familiar friends by the way, such a distance with a good horse would be but a delightful recreation to one accustomed, as was Brother Kline, to horse-back riding. But a great part of his way lay through a mountainous and thinly-peopled country, with only a path in some places to direct his course; and, worst of all, he did not know where he was safe from arrest, as army lines at this stage of the war were almost constantly changing. How great, then, must have been his love for the Brethren! Where can another man be found to compare with him in fearless resolution to do what he believed would be pleasing to the Lord and the Brethren, whom he loved more than he did his own life! Neither was he encouraged by the Brethren at home to go. They advised him not to go. But his heart was fixed; and his loving soul would have been filled with melancholy sadness to have stayed at home and thought of the warm hearts and kind hands he might have met by going. He would rather see his Brethren and die, if necessary, than live without the sight.
From the time of his return from this journey to the close of the year he did not venture far from home in a northern direction. On the twelfth day of August he and Jacob Wine went on the yearly visit prior to the visit council. They had to go to the counties of Pendleton and Hardy, as the members in those counties were included in the district over which Brother Kline was one of the overseers. They held visit councils over there, and on their return home the two brethren were arrested and taken before the military authorities on the eighteenth day of August, 1863. Brother Jacob Wine came home with Brother Kline to Brother Kline's house. They had been there but a short while when they were both arrested. They gave a satisfactory account of their business in those two counties, and were accordingly released. On the twenty-fourth, just six days after the previous arrest, he was picked up again and required to give account of himself. This he did in a humble, truthful way, and was again let go. The following is on the last page of the Diary for this year.
In this year, 1863, I have traveled 4,260 miles, all on horseback. I have preached thirty-eight funerals: fourteen for children under five years of age; eight for children between the ages of five and ten years; six for persons between the ages of ten and twenty years; three for persons between twenty and thirty years; two for persons between thirty and forty years; two for persons between forty and fifty years; three for persons over eighty years of age.
In the last five and one-half months of our beloved brother's life, or that portion of it which he lived between the first day of January, 1864, and the fifteenth of June, the memorable day of his death, are not very full of interest. By this it is meant that the state of war in Virginia, together with the hopeless condition of the Confederacy and the demoralizing tendency of that condition upon the soldiery of the land, raised insurmountable barriers in the way of activity on his part. We find him mostly at home, save that he was much called to see the sick and preach funerals in his immediate vicinity.