“I loved my wife and children as well as another man, but I left them and my happy, happy home to go where duty called.
“My wife could not endure that hot climate, and she lay dying when I was so far South that I could not get to her till she had got so far down in the Valley that she could not hear my voice when I spoke to her.”
Ah! the waves of memory wuz a dashin’ hard aginst Cousin John Richard then, as we could see. It splashed some of the spray up into his bright eyes.
But he kept on: “I was rich enough then to put my children to school, which I did, and then returned to my labors.
“I loved my work—I felt for it that enthusiasm and devotion that nerves the heart to endure any trials—and I don’t speak of the persecutions I underwent in that work as being harder than what many others endured.
“You know what they passed through who preached the higher truth in Jerusalem. The Book says, ‘They were persecuted, afflicted, tormented, had cruel buffetings and scourgings, were burned, were tortured, not accepting deliverance.’
“In the early days after the war, in some parts of the South there were hardly any indignities that could be inflicted upon us that we were not called upon to endure. We had our poor houses burned down over our heads, our Bible and spelling-books thrown into the flames; we have had rifles pointed at our breasts, and were ordered to leave on peril of death.
“And many, many more than you Northerners have any idea of met their death in the dark cypress forests and in the dreary, sandy by-ways of the Southern States.
“They died, ‘not accepting deliverance’ by cowardly flight. How many of them thus laid down their lives for conscience’ sake will never be known till that hour when He comes to make up His jewels.
“I bear the marks upon me to-day, and shall carry them to my grave, of the tortures inflicted upon me to make me give up my work of trying to help the weak and seek and save them that were lost.”