CHAPTER XXXIII.

A VERY IMPORTANT CAUCUS, AND A DEBATE.

THINGS progress quite rapidly in a new country, although the highest attainments would be considered very ordinary displays by a New Yorker. For instance, during this summer of '55, I had preached at the crossing of a Creek, where the people either stood or sat down, or did both by turns; from this we had progressed to a grove where they had hewn log seats; it was now in contemplation to erect a "log cabin," to be public property! This was designed, according to the liberal wishes of the masses, to be a School-house for all on week days, and a preaching-house for everybody on Sundays. About fifteen heads of families felt disposed to enter into this project. A meeting was called, to assemble near a certain spring on a certain day. I was asked to draw up a "Constitution" for the Society, to be submitted to the "Sovereigns" at the meeting. For the next week or two I received ten or twelve calls from persons desirous to know where this building was to be located? Some two or three of these persons had come from a distance of seven miles. The movement was regarded as highly important. The most thought that there was a speculation at the bottom of the project. It was regarded as the beginning

of a town, perhaps a city. I was not in the secret if this was the design, and yet I saw that the movement did require a little watching.

There were Free State men and Pro-Slavery men equally interested, and in about equal numbers. I began to be a little suspicious that power might be the object sought for in this matter. Trustees, and other officers, were to be appointed for this joint School, or Meeting-house. I disclosed my views to a few on whom I could rely, and told them how to conduct themselves in case the Pro-Slavery party should muster too strongly at the meeting. I was afraid that if everything fell into the hands of the Pro-Slavery men, then, even after we had built the cabin, I should be forbidden to preach in it.

We assembled on the day appointed at the spring. There were about fifteen men. I observed with much satisfaction, that the Free State men were the most

numerous.

For two or three hours we debated the size and the material of which that one-room building should besixteen feet square was decided as the size. Each one was to have cut and hewn on his own place, three logs, and have them drawn to the spot hereafter to be described. In addition to this, each was to give in money two dollars and fifty cents, to procure a door, and windows, and flooring, and also for the plastering of the

room.

After this was done I read the "Constitution;" which was debated and altered in many particulars. I found I had a thousand things to learn with reference to

backwoods school-keeping.

The permanent officers had now to be appointed, and I gave the private signal which had been agreed upon in caucus of the Free State men. Nomination after nomination was made by the Free State party of those Pro-Slavery men whom we knew could neither read nor write; these were generous enough to decline the honors, and return the compliment by nominating Free State men who could read and write. With much show of hu

It was with the

mility these accepted the offices.
greatest difficulty that I could preserve my gravity at
the complete success of this manœuvre. A Free State
Treasurer was appointed, who received the moneys on
the spot. A building committee was appointed, a ma-
jority of whom were Free State men. The Trustees
were quite closely balanced, but in a full meeting the
Free State interest, on any important issue, would have
been sustained.

The site was chosen, and the logs were drawn on the ground; but when I was taken severely ill the interest was lost in the project, and I never had the privilege to preach within the walls of the building, which furnished us with so much matter for discussion in its inception.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

ONCE MORE CALLED TO MOURN.

WHILE struggling along, working a mile or two from the cabin in the field, or endeavoring to make things a little smooth for my wife at home, our second and only child of five months old, whom I had named after one who had been more than a mother to me in my struggles with poverty in my boyhood, very suddenly died. It was a sweet child. It would lie on the poor couch and laugh at the sunbeams pouring in through the many holes of our cabin; and the mother would laugh at it as the loveliest sunbeam of all.

My brothers went and dug another little grave. A very pretty little walnut coffin was made; many a kind-hearted person came to attend the funeral: my wife was so unwell she could not sit up on the bed. I was very feeble, but I read a portion of the service at the cabin. A neighbor took the coffin under his arm, I was placed on horseback, and we wended our sad way to the grave, and there I read, for the second time, the service over my own child. A parent's only earthly comfort, and a mother's little companion in her loneliness, in that home worse than exile, was buried from our sight. The mother was never able to go and look on that little grave. When I got sufficiently well, a

ONCE MORE CALLED TO MOURN.

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week or two before I left the country, I went and had the body of our first babe raised out of the grave at Weston, and took it over to the Territory, and buried it in the same grave with the last, in a beautiful grove on the top of what the Indians call Strawberry Hill, from the circumstance that vast numbers of this fruit grow wild thereon.

Lovely in their lives were these infants, and in death they are not divided.