Five Years in the Alleghanies

by Jonathan Cross

The next morning we started, full of zeal and hope. We met with many of the most wicked and degraded people that I had ever seen. Some listened to us with attention, while others treated us with contempt. Late in the evening, while we were visiting a row of board shanties, occupied by coal diggers, I was told not to venture into one of the shanties; that the man was almost a giant in size and strength, and a very dangerous man; that he was a terror to the neighborhood, and had beaten his wife very badly the day before. I replied there was the more need to see him, and I would go in. My friend would not even come to the door of the shanty, for fear of him.

The shanty was sixteen feet square, no floor but the earth; neither chair, table, nor bed except a bundle of straw in one corner. He was seated on a large block of coal at one side of the fire, and his wife on another block at the other side, while the children were lying on the ground playing between them. The woman’s face bore testimony of the beating she had gotten the day before.

He was one of the most fiendish-looking men I ever saw. He was of enormous size, was clothed with rags, and did not appear as if he had been washed for months. He was as black as coal-dust could make him. I must confess it required all the courage I could summon to speak to him.

I approached him, and extended my hand, and said to him, “I have come to supply you with some good books to comfort you and point you to heaven. Have you a Bible?” “No,” said he. “Can you read?” “Yes, a little.” “Do you love Jesus Christ?” “I fear not, sir.” I then urged him by every thing sacred to attend to his soul’s salvation without delay; that death, judgment, and eternity were hastening on, and pictured to him as well as I could the awful consequences of dying in his sins. The tears ran down his blackened cheeks till the coal-dust was washed away below his eyes. I gave him a book, and prayed with him. He begged me to call again, and said, “You are the first man that ever spoke to me about my soul.”

During this day we visited twenty-two families, and had religious conversation and prayer with each of them. Mr. S—— had become so deeply interested, that he said he must go another day.

The next day we concluded to visit a coal digger’s boarding-house, said to be the wickedest den that was to be found in the whole district. I will not attempt to describe its character. We entered late in the evening, as this was the only time we could find the men in. The house was kept by an old woman and her sons, who worked in the mines and were notorious for their daring profanity.

When we entered the house several men were playing cards, others were lying on benches about the room in various stages of intoxication. My colaborer was a small, timid man, and seemed somewhat alarmed.

I introduced our errand by proposing to sell them some good books, which they declined even to look at. I then commenced a general exhortation, which had no effect more than pouring water on a rock. I then called on my friend to pray, as it was his turn, and we had agreed to lead in turns. This he did with great fervor, and was responded to by the men with vulgar songs, and such other behavior as I have never seen before or since.

At the close of his prayer I turned to the old woman and told her I was astonished at the mercy of God that permitted such a family to live, and portrayed the awful consequences of her meeting her household in hell. I drew every alarming picture I could summon from the Bible or the resources of my own mind. After some time the old woman began to weep, and she promised to attend the mission chapel the next Sabbath. After supplying them with a copy of Baxter’s Call, and a number of suitable tracts, we left them.

The next Sabbath the old woman was at the chapel. A series of religious meetings began that day, and before its close, as my friend informed me, who was a worshipper there, the old woman and one of her sons professed religion.