“Arter this I lived in Old Springfield and was sexton of the church there; and while I rung that bell I heard good preachin’ every Sunday, and I larnt more ’bout religion than I’d ever knowed in all my life. I begun to feel a good deal more serious and the need of gettin’ religion.
“Arter my time was out there, I went down to New York, and there I met Solena’s brother, and that brought every thing fresh to mind agin, and for weeks agin I spent sorrowful hours. I thought I had about got over it and the wound was healed; but then ‘twould git tore open agin and bleed afresh, and sorrowful as ever. It did seem to me that nothin’ would banish the image of that gal from my heart.
“I used to call and see Susan Macy occasionally, and she was now Mrs. Williams, and lived in good style tu, for a colored person. She was married at Mr. Macy’s and they made a great weddin’, and all the genteel darkies in New York was there; and I wan’t satisfied with waitin’ on one, I must have two, and if we didn’t have a stir among our color about them times I miss my guess; and Mr. Macy set her out with five hundred dollars, and she had a fine husband and they lived together as comfortable as you please.
“Now I concluded I’d quit the city for good, I spent more money there and had worse habits, and besides all this I wanted to git away as fur as I could from the scene of my disappintment.
“Well, I pulled up stakes agin and put out for the Bay State agin, and I put into Westfield, and stayed there eighteen months, and made money and saved it, and behaved myself, and ‘tended meetin’ every sabba’day, and gained friends and was as respectable as any body. From Westfield I went to Sharon and there I stayed six months, and ‘tended a saw mill, and there was a colored man there by the name of Joshua Nichols, who had married a fine gal, and he lived with her till she had one child and then left her, and went out to Columbia county, New York; and I started off for Albany, and she axed me if I wouldn’t find her husband on my route, and so I left Sharon and got here to Spencertown, and found him, and axed him why he would be so cruel as to leave his wife? He says ‘if you’ll go and carry some money and a letter down to her I’ll pay you.’ So he gin me the things and I put out for Sharon, and when Miss Nichols broke open the letter she burst into tears, and says I, “why Miss Nichols what’s the matter?” “Why Joshua says this is the last letter I may ever expect from him.”—Well, I stayed one night, and come back and concluded I’d go on for Albany, but when I got to Erastus Pratt’s he wanted to hire me six months, and I hired, and his family was nice folks, and he had a whole fleet of gals—and they was all as fine as silk, but I used to tell Aunt Phebe, that Harriet was the rather the nicest—on ’em all. Arter my six months was out, I worked a month in shoein’ up his family, and I guess like enough some on ’em may be in the garret yet.
“Next summer I hired out to old Capt. Beale, and he was a noble man, and did as much for supportin’ Benevolent Societies as any other man in town, and in the mean time, I had got acquain’ted with her who is now my wife, and this summer I was married to her by Esq. Jacob Lawrence, and in the winter we went to keepin’ house.
“When we had been married over a year, we had a leetle boy born, and the leetle feller died and I felt bad enough, for he was my only child, and it was despod hard work too, to give him up. I had at last found a woman I loved, and all my wanderings and extravagancies was over, and I was gettin’ in years, and I thought I could now be happy and enjoy all the comforts of a home and fireside, but this was all blasted when I laid that leetle feller in the grave, and my wife was sick and helpless eight months.
“In 1827 a great Revival spread over this whole region, and was powerful here, and I used to go to all the meetin’s, and I begun to think more about religion than I ever did in all my life; and these feelin’s hung on to me ’bout a year, and agin I gin myself up to the world, and plunged into sin, and grieved the Spirit of God, and grew dreadful vile, as all the folks ‘round here will say, if you ax ’em.—And I myself, who knows more ’bout myself than any other body, s’pose that at heart, I was one of the wickedest men in the world.
“Well, along in 1828 the religious feelin’ ‘round in this region, begun to rise agin ‘round in this neighbourhood, and there was a good many prayer meetin’s held, principally at Deacon Mayhew’s, and Esq. Pratt’s, and I used to ‘tend ’em pretty steady, and I got back my old feelin’ agin, and now felt more a good deal like gittin’ religion, than I ever had; and rain or shine, I’d be at the meetin’s, and I detarmined I’d go through it, if I went at all. This church here, which has since got so tore and distracted, was all united, and seemed to be a diggin’ all the same way, and Christ was among ’em. There was one Sabbath day, I shan’t ever forgit, and when I went to meetin’, and the minister took his text ‘Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?’ the very minute the words come out of his mouth, an arrow went to my heart, and I felt the whole sarmint was aimed at me, and I felt despod guilty. I went home, and that night I was distressed beyond all account, and I went to bed troubled to death. But I formed the resolution, if there was any thing in religion I’d have it, if I could git it, and I was detarmined as I could be that I would hunt for the way of Salvation; and when I found it, I travelled in it, and consider that there I begun right. But I was as ignorant of rale religion as a horse-block, and I didn’t know how to go to work. Sometimes, something would say, ‘Oh! Peter, give up the business, you can’t git it through,’ but I held on to my resolution despod tight; and I think, that is the way for a body to go about getting religion; on the start, be detarmined to hunt for the path of duty, and as soon as you find it, go right to travellin’ on it, and keep on; I knew I had some duty to do to God, and I knew I must hunt for it if I found it, and do it if I ever got the favor of God.
“Well, one night there was a prayer meetin’ in the church, and a shower of prayer come down on the house like a tempest, and oh! how they did beseech God that night—as the Bible says, ‘with strong cryin’ and tears.’