TRAVELING A DISTRICT
The year brought its usual harvest of incidents—some serious, others laughable and amusing. It is well to have a streak of fun occasionally flash across our pathway to enliven a journey, or some task to which we have set our hands.
One bleak Monday morning in December I was riding along a high ridge in Wetzel County on my way home from a quarterly just held in that region. To my right a few rods I observed a young man husking corn. He was evidently working his best to keep warm, and, of course, not in a very good condition to be fooled with by a stranger; but I thought I must say something, and run the risk of an explosion. Reining up my horse and getting his attention, I called to him, “Go it; that’s the way I got my start.” “Yes,” he said, with lightning speed, “and a thunderin’ start you got,” and then made the fodder rattle so that if I had replied he could not have heard me. To be honest, I had not the disposition to talk back, for nothing suggested itself at the moment as an appropriate response; but for the next mile I laughed over the episode and considered myself fortunate that nothing more serious had happened.
I might add that not far from this place Rev. S. J. Graham, years before, suddenly found himself in a kind of menagerie one frosty morning. In those days laymen would frequently make long trips with the preacher or elder; spending several days from home. They thought less about business and more about the church than some do at present. On the occasion referred to, Brother N. Kuykendoll was with the elder. One night they lodged with a friend in his little log cabin of one room. Of course they were well treated and given the best the humble home could afford. Their host arose early next morning and built a fire in an old-fashioned fire-place, which admitted of a “back log” and “fore sticks” before the “kindling” was put in. Soon the shanty was warm. The lay brother awoke first, and, glancing about the room, said to his bed-fellow in a low tone: “Brother Graham, get up; the millennium has come.” The preacher raised himself on his elbow and looked, and sure enough there was a strange mixture of animals lying on the hearth before the fire—a pet lamb, a pet pig, a huge dog, and two or three cats. Years afterward I heard these brethren talk and laugh over the experience with as much zest as if it had occurred only the week before.
To indicate something of the work done this year, and that had to be done to carry out the program of a presiding elder, I here insert a few pages of a brief diary which I kept:
January 1, I wrote: “I now begin a new year. God help me. My time, strength, soul—all must be given to the work of the church. With my family I took dinner with Brother C. R. Brown, a precious man.”
2.—“Worked on a sermon on coveteousness. Got ‘Sweet Sicily’ and read it.”
3.—“Voted for town corporation officers. Wrote a number of letters. Brother Poling came in the evening, and spent the night with me.”
4.—“Worked hard on my sermon on coveteousness.”
5.—“Went to Parkersburg in the forenoon, and held business meeting at night. All was pleasant. Lodged with Pastor Martin.”