THE CIRCUIT RIDER

A Tale of the Heroic Age,

BY

EDWARD EGGLESTON,

Author of "The Hoosier School-master" "The End of the World," etc.

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness."—Isaiah.

"——Beginners of a better time, And glorying in their vows."—Tennyson.

NEW YORK: J. B. FORD & COMPANY 1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by J. B. FORD & COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.

TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS, THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I.—The Corn Shucking II.—The Frolic III.—Going to Meeting IV.—A Battle V.—A Crisis VI.—The Fall Hunt VII.—Treeing a Preacher VIII.—A Lesson in Syntax IX.—The Coming of the Circuit Rider X.—Patty in the Spring-House XI.—The Voice in the Wilderness XII.—Mr. Brady Prophesies XIII.—Two to One XIV.—Kike's Sermon XV.—Morton's Retreat XVI.—Short Shrift XVII.—Deliverance XVIII.—The Prodigal Returns XIX.—Patty XX.—The Conference at Hickory Ridge XXI.—Convalescence XXII.—The Decision XXIII.—Russell Bigelow's Sermon XXIV.—Drawing the Latch-String in XXV.—Ann Eliza XXVI.—Engagement XXVII.—The Camp-Meeting XXVIII.—Patty and her Patient XXIX.—Patty's Journey XXX.—The Schoolmaster and the Widow XXXI.—Kike XXXII.—Pinkey's Discovery XXXIII.—The Alabaster Box Broken XXXIV.—The Brother XXXV.—Plnkey and Ann Eliza XXXVI.—Getting the Answer

ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. Spinning-wheel and Rifle ... Frontispiece 2. Captain Lumsden 3. Mort Goodwin 4. Homely S'manthy 5. Patty and Jemima 6. Little Gabe's Discomfiture 7. In the Stable 8. Mort, Dolly and Kike 9. Good Bye! 10. The Altercation 11. The Irish Schoolmaster 12. Electioneering 13. Patty in her Chamber 14. Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard 15. Patty in the Spring-House 16. Job Goodwin 17. Two to One 18. Gambling 19. A Last Hope 20. The Choice 21. Going to Conference 22. Convalescence 23. The Connecticut Peddler 24. Ann Eliza 25. Facing a Mob 26. "Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken" 27. The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge 28. The Reunion 29. The Brothers 30. An Accusing Memory 31. At the Spring-House Again

PREFACE.

Whatever is incredible in this story is true. The tale I have to tell will seem strange to those who know little of the social life of the West at the beginning of this century. These sharp contrasts of corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild revivals; these contacts of highwayman and preacher; this mélange of picturesque simplicity, grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of abandoned wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those who know the country now. But the books of biography and reminiscence which preserve the memory of that time more than justify what is marvelous in these pages.

Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where my grandfather—brave old Indian-fighter!—had defended his family in a block-house built in a wilderness by his own hands, I grew up familiar with this strange wild life. At the age when other children hear fables and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen. Instead of imaginary giant-killers, children then heard of real Indian-slayers; instead of Blue-Beards, we had Murrell and his robbers; instead of Little Red Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with wild beasts on the very road we traveled to school. In many households the old customs still held sway; the wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut and made up in the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting, apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet fallen into disuse.

In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor the hunter is the center-piece, but the circuit-rider. More than any one else, the early circuit preachers brought order out of this chaos. In no other class was the real heroic element so finely displayed. How do I remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the old preachers, whose constitutions had conquered starvation and exposure—who had survived swamps, alligators, Indians, highway robbers and bilious fevers! How was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of rude experience—how was my imagination wrought upon by the recital of their hair-breadth escapes! How was my heart set afire by their contagious religious enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I bestrode the saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the heavy burden of emulating their toils! Surely I have a right to celebrate them, since they came so near being the death of me.

It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men without enthusiasm. But nothing has been further from my mind than the glorifying of a sect. If I were capable of sectarian pride, I should not come upon the platform of Christian union* to display it. There are those, indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I have frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of early Methodism. I beg they will remember the solemn obligations of a novelist to tell the truth. Lawyers and even ministers are permitted to speak entirely on one side. But no man is worthy to be called a novelist who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce the higher form of history, by writing truly of men as they are, and dispassionately of those forms of life that come within his scope.

Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie, I could not treat the early religious life of the West otherwise than with the most cordial sympathy and admiration. And yet this is not a "religious novel," one in which all the bad people are as bad as they can be, and all the good people a little better than they can be. I have not even asked myself what may be the "moral." The story of any true life is wholesome, if only the writer will tell it simply, keeping impertinent preachment of his own out of the way.

Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with some good people by confessing in the start that, from the first chapter to the last, this is a love-story. But it is not my fault. It is God who made love so universal that no picture of human life can be complete where love is left out.

E. E.

BROOKLYN, March, 1874.

"NEC PROPTER VITAM, VIVENDI PERDERE CAUSAS."

THE CIRCUIT RIDER

A TALE OF THE HEROIC AGE.