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I introduced our errand by proposing to sell them some good books, which they declined even to look at. I then commenced a general exhortation, which had no effect more than pouring water on a rock. I then called on my friend to pray, as it was his turn, and we had agreed to lead in turns. This he did with great fervor, and was responded to by the men with vulgar songs, and such other behavior as I have never seen before or since.

At the close of his prayer I turned to the old woman and told her I was astonished at the mercy of God that permitted such a family to live, and portrayed the awful consequences of her meeting her household in hell. I drew every alarming picture I could summon from the Bible or the resources of my own mind. After some time the old woman began to weep, and she promised to attend the mission chapel the next Sabbath. After supplying them with a copy of Baxter's Call, and a number of suitable tracts, we left them.

The next Sabbath the old woman was at the chapel. A series of religious meetings began that day, and before its close, as my friend informed me, who was a worshipper there, the old woman and one of her sons professed religion.

One day we entered a room where a man was lying sick. We introduced the subject of religion to him. He ground his teeth with rage, and swore he did not want to hear any thing on that subject. I then began to inquire about his complaints, and to prescribe some simple remedies, and he soon became calm. After some time I remarked that afflictions did not come by chance, neither did trouble spring out of the ground, but they were all sent of God for some wise purpose. "Do you think so?" said he. "Yes," said I, "and for our good." He then listened attentively, and soon shed tears. Though he was very poor, he bought some books. I prayed with him, and left him, but not without many thanks and entreaties to come and see him as often as I could.

This closed the work of three days, in which time we had visited eighty-five families.

After a day or two of rest I resumed my labors for three weeks, when I went home a few days.

I then returned to the same place, and spent a month in visiting new families and revisiting old ones; and I shall never forget the cordial shake of the hand that I got almost every day, when I would meet some one in the house or on the street whom I had before conversed with and supplied with a book or tract. Special services had been held in several churches, and quite a number had professed religion. One minister told me he had taken into his church forty, many of whom dated their first religious impressions to reading the books and tracts I had sold or given them, others referred to the visits as the means of their awakening.

There was one thing in the work which struck me with great force--the effect on Christian people. I tried as far as possible to get some good man to go with me in my visits. It was a great help to me and added to my success, and at the same time it stirred up many to work for Christ that had never done any thing before.

I now add a number of facts and incidents that occurred during these two months of labor.

At last I felt constrained to call one evening; but he had not returned from his work. I had a long, earnest talk with his wife, who seemed very careless and wicked. All I could say made no impression on her. I gave her a copy of Baxter's Call, with the earnest request that she and her husband would read it. What followed I will relate as near as I can in his own words in a prayer-meeting in his own house about two weeks after.

He then added, "If it had not been for that book, I think myself and wife would have been in hell to-night. That gun was loaded," pointing to an old gun in the corner, "with a view of killing myself and wife near a month ago, and if God had not saved me, it would likely have been done before this time. I was a miserable man; life was a burden; but now I am happy."

This narrative brought tears to all our eyes, and joy to our hearts.

I visited some of the grog-shops around the village every day to supply their customers with temperance tracts. In the village proper, no liquor could be sold, as in all the deeds for lots there was a temperance clause that forfeited the property if liquor was sold; but all round the village the grog was abundant, and customers plenty.

Passing one of these drinking places one day I saw several customers in, and entered the bar-room with my tracts. The liquor-sellers had got to know me, and often looked daggers at me. A good-looking man, well dressed, and about half drunk, was approaching the counter to get a six-cent drink. Said I, "My friend, I can give you something for six cents that will do you much more good, and no harm." He asked me what it was, when I presented to him Baxter's Call. I told him the liquor might kill him, and if he would read that book with prayerful attention, it might save his soul. He said he would buy the book if he had the money, but that he had only six cents to pay for that glass of liquor, which by this time was standing on the counter.

We both came up to the counter, when I laid the book beside the glass, saying, "Here is life or death for six cents." The grog-seller said I had no business to come there annoying his customers, and injuring his business. I urged the man at the risk of losing his soul to buy and read the book. The struggle seemed to be between life and death. At last he handed me the money, took the book, and went out of the room. I then handed the landlord a book worth more than the whiskey, and told him to read it, and then sell it to make up the loss. This is only a sample of every day occurrences in village and city colportage. Eternity only will reveal the results.

At the request of the proprietors of a large rolling-mill, I visited those in their employ.

Among them was a man that professed to be a kind of Universalist preacher. He was a boss over a number of hands, and I was told was shrewd and fond of argument, and was doing much injury in propagating his opinions. Late one evening I called at his rooms. There was no one in but his wife. I conversed with her some time, and found her a pious Christian woman. I asked her about her husband. She burst into tears, and said he was a kind husband, but a wicked man; that he preached sometimes, and was a Universalist.

While I was urging her to labor and pray for his salvation, a fine-looking man, of a haughty mien and deportment, came in.

I replied that it was often hard to get rid of a mother's instructions and prayers; that it had taken the devil four years to silence his conscience, and get them put to sleep.

"Do you feel confident," I said, "that you are this moment prepared to enter heaven if you were to die?" "Yes," said he, "as certain as I am that the sun rises and sets." "Well," said I, "is not this rather a toilsome world to live in?" "Yes," said he, "it is, and I have a full share of it." "Then," said I, "why not cut your throat, and go right to heaven this evening?" "Oh," said he, "I have my wife to provide for." "Oh," said I, "cut her throat, and take her along." "Oh," said he, "that would be wrong." "No," said I, "if your creed is right, it cannot be wrong; and even if it should, you would be done with all the consequences of the wrong as soon as you were dead." He hung his head, and made no further reply. I told him I hoped that he had seen the fallacy of his belief, and would at once abandon such soul-destroying opinions. I sold him several books, and left him.

As the men worked by turns all night in the rolling-mills, and it was difficult to gain access to them, one of the proprietors proposed that he would join me to visit them all the next Sabbath, when they often gathered in groups to play cards and drink. Accordingly the next Sabbath morning we were joined by a theological student, and commenced going round the houses and rooms, near one hundred in number.

We all three united in urging him to repent and believe in Christ, but he made no answer. At last I said, "Brethren, unless God will hear and answer prayer in this man's behalf, he is a lost man." His wife was weeping as if her heart would break. We knelt in prayer, and I think there were four earnest hearts lifted up to God. He sat still some minutes, but at last he knelt. When we rose from our knees the tears were running down his cheeks. I said, "Do you feel no 'pangs' now?" With a sob that seemed to come from his heart, he said, "I don't know what has come over me." We then pointed him to the Saviour, and told him we believed his feelings were produced by the Spirit of God. Of all the penitents that I have ever seen, I hardly remember one who seemed so deeply moved as this man. During the time he remained in that place he seemed to be an entirely changed man.

At last I told him they violated the second commandment by the use of images in the worship of God. But this he denied. I asked him to get his Bible and compare it with mine. He brought out the Douay Catechism to prove he was right, and told me that was his Bible. I got mine; but he forbade my reading it, as it was a heretic's Bible. I insisted on having Bible authority for the use of images in God's worship. As the old man seemed to be at a loss to defend his position, one of his daughters, a beautiful girl, presented herself before me, and said, "I can give you Bible plenty for the use of images, and the good resulting from the use of them. What was it that Moses put up on the pole for the Israelites to look at when the fiery serpents bit them?" I explained to her that the brazen serpent was set up, not to be worshipped, but simply looked at as a type of Christ, to whom dying sinners may look and live. But all my efforts were in vain. As I left them, she was still asking me to repent, and come over to the true Roman-catholic church as the only place of safety.

Said he, "It depends very much, sir, on the kind of religious books you want to circulate here. I suppose you have the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian church among them, and I can prove that it is full of falsehoods; and more than that, I want you to know, sir, that I have made a promise to kick out of my house every man that comes in it that has graduated at Jefferson College, and studied theology at the Western Seminary." As he closed the sentence, he stood up before me, as if he was going to make good his promise. I requested him to wait till I should explain my object. I told him I had no Confessions of Faith, nor any denominational books; that they were all the books of the American Tract Society, and approved by nearly all evangelical Christians, and consequently not sectarian. And as to the other objection, I had never graduated either at Jefferson College or the Western Theological Seminary, consequently he was barking up the wrong tree. "Why," said he, "are you not a Presbyterian preacher?" "No, sir," said I, "I have not the honor to be a preacher." He turned instantly and walked out, leaving me alone.

In the first cabin we called at, we found a young woman in the last stages of a decline. I have seldom seen any soul so full of joy and peace. She talked more like an inhabitant of heaven than of earth. While we spoke of Christ's love, and what he had done for her, I saw the tears course down my companion's cheeks. When we left her he said, "Religion is a reality."

As I approached the house, I got off my horse, and took my big saddle-bags, filled with books, on my arm, and stepped into the house. In a few minutes all the children were in. They were fine, intelligent children; and to my surprise, I recognized their mother as a once dashing young lady I had known well fifteen years before; but she had entirely forgotten me.

We set a day to visit a neighborhood that was noted for its wickedness. There were several families owning fine farms who never entered a church. On the day set, we took an early start. As we approached the first house, we saw all the inmates running to the barn. We knocked at the door, but no answer. We went to the barn; but before we reached it they were running across the adjoining field. We understood the cause, and came back to the house, and put in at the window Baxter's Call and a few suitable tracts, with the earnest prayer for God's blessing to attend the reading of them.

Some weeks after, while visiting along the Ohio river hills among the wood-choppers near the same place, I called at a cabin, and found a woman in deep distress about her soul. She told me she had got a book that was the cause. That a man had sold it to a neighbor. They were the fourth family that had read it, and all were concerned about their souls. I found all the families she named, and the book thus blessed was a copy of Baxter's Call which that man stole from me and sold to one of these families.

We entered the village the next morning soon after breakfast. The first four or five houses we stopped at we could find no one at home, and we soon found they were hiding from us. We could see heads out at the doors and windows as we approached the house; but when we would knock there was no answer. As soon as we understood the matter, I told my colaborer they should not foil us in this way; that I would install preachers in every house before I left the place. I immediately commenced pushing in the old hats that were stuck in the broken windows, and threw into the houses a Baxter's Call, Alleine's Alarm, or a Sabbath Manual, and some of the most awakening tracts.

We spent two days in this work. With all the skill we could use, we did not get into one third of the houses; but we put good books into every one.

Some few months after, a minister who was preaching near by found many interested about their souls. He held daily meetings for some time, and more than fifty professed faith in Christ; many dating their first religious impressions to the silent preachers thrown into their houses at the time of our visit. In 1861, on the railroad, I passed in sight of this town lying across the Ohio river, and instead of the old dilapidated village it was seventeen years before, it looked to be new and flourishing.

He often gave me directions where to go, and what kind of people I should find them to be. On one occasion he directed me to a neighborhood where he had four or five families living some miles from the church. The parents all professors, with large irreligious families, and no family altars.

The first family of them I called on, I soon found to be but little interested about religion. I spoke with the father as if he were a devout praying man; but told him I had no doubt there were some prayerless families in that neighborhood; and that God had declared that he would "pour out his fury on the families that call not on his name." I spoke of the sad effect of such ungodly living on children, and urged him to try and talk with all his neighbors about it, and to go with me a day or two till we should try to wake up such professors of religion. His family were present. I saw his very soul was pierced.

I visited all the families the same way. God's Spirit seemed to stir every soul. In a few months after, the pastor was able to visit them, and found that each had established the family altar. Each one resolved that he would begin to pray in his own family, and then he could go and urge others to do the same. Neither of them supposed that I suspected them of living without prayer till they began to compare notes; and then they found I had talked to all the same way. They sent me their thanks by their pastor for "catching them with guile."

In another neighborhood, I was urged by a very good man to visit his brother-in-law, who he told me was a wicked man, and raising a large family like heathen. He told me that he was a gentleman in his behavior to strangers, and would treat me kindly; but to secure for me a kind reception, he sent with me a young man who was a nephew both of himself and of the gentleman. The day was extremely cold, and the distance some four or five miles. We visited several cabins along the river hills, and expected to reach his house about noon, and remain there till the next day.

Eighteen years have now passed since these labors were performed, and sufficient time has elapsed for all the dust and excitement to pass away; and on a calm review of that period of my life and labors, I look on it as the most important of any through which I ever passed: not in actual results, but in the development of a great system of evangelization, which has carried salvation to thousands who had never been reached by saving truth. A few had previously entered this field of Christian effort for the destitute, and done much, north and west; but this was the beginning of the work in the middle and southern states, which has reached millions of all classes and conditions, both bond and free. As to myself, I found it the best school I ever entered for spiritual and intellectual improvement, and if I have since been the instrument of any good to my fellow-men, the labors of the little time referred to prepared me for it.

I immediately replenished my stock, and commenced my work in the country among the mountains. It was like a translation from sunlight into darkness--from a high civilization into one of ignorance and superstition, with here and there a family of wealth and refinement.

The very broken, rugged state of the country, with a sparse population, rendered it impossible for the people to support either schools or churches. Consequently in many isolated communities whole families grew up without any one knowing the alphabet, and very few places had preaching more than once in a month, and that on a week-day in some log cabin to a few women. I have visited as many as ten families in succession, in one case fourteen, without finding a Bible. It will hardly be thought strange that youth of both sexes were often found who could not tell who is the Saviour of sinners, and that when they were told of Christ dying for sinners, they would look incredulous and say, we live so much out of the way that we never hear any news. They often lived in small cabins, without any furniture but such as they made with an axe and an auger. All they raised to eat was corn and potatoes, with a few hogs; most of their meat being that of the various wild animals which abounded in the mountains. They were mostly kind and hospitable, and seemed to be sorry that they could not accommodate me better. I shall endeavor faithfully to describe one journey, which will represent many more.

He had been once or twice round the circuit before I became acquainted with him. As soon as he learned my business he invited me to go with him. He told me the people were without books of any kind, that very few could read, and that many of them were not half civilized; that at one house, where he spent the night, they cut off the skirts of his saddle to sole their moccasins, and at another the woman cut off the tail of his overcoat to make a pair of pants for a little boy. I agreed to go, and at the set time we filled each of our saddle-bags with little books and tracts, and our pockets with lunch.

The first appointment was some twenty miles distant, and we had to start the evening before. We stopped over night with a wealthy Christian family, and fared sumptuously.

The next day we rode twelve miles to the place where he was to preach. They had a church built of round logs. It had no floor but the ground, and was neither chinked nor daubed, consequently it was only used in warm weather. The house was full at the appointed hour. More than half of the congregation were barefooted, and but few had on them more than two garments. Most of the men came in with their guns in their hands, and a good supply of small game they had killed by the way. The guns were all set up in the corner of the church, and the game laid beside them.

At the close we had to ride some miles to a stopping place for the night. We found the cabin small and destitute of any seats except stools. The beds were poles put through the corners, covered with the skins of deers and bears. Many of the spaces between the logs were wide enough for the dogs and cats to pass out and in at pleasure. The food was bread made of corn ground in a hand mill, or pounded in a hominy block. The meat was coon or opossum, and the coffee made of chestnuts. The night was spent in self-defence against unseen foes, and in dread of snakes. After partaking of a breakfast similar to the dinner and supper just described, and praying with the family, we left them.

Our appointment for that day was about twelve miles distant, with a constant succession of mountains to cross. We stopped at all the cabins by the way, which were about like that just referred to, with one exception; and as the house and family were different from any that I have ever seen, I shall try to describe them.

The cabin was about eighteen feet square; had been the birthplace of a large family; had neither floor--except the earth--upper story, chimney, chair, table, or bed, except a pile of straw in one corner, and an old spinning wheel and loom. The family we saw consisted of the father, mother, and five daughters, no one of which, we supposed, would weigh less than one hundred and fifty pounds. Each of the females had on a single garment made of coarse linen, held on by a drawing-string round the neck, all fleshy and hearty, while we could not see any thing for them to live upon.

No one of them knew a letter in the alphabet, or who was the Saviour of sinners. They were children of nature isolated from the world, equally ignorant of both its vices and its virtues. We spent more than an hour trying to teach them the alphabet of Christianity, and then commended them to God. They seemed amazed at what we said; God only knows the results.

We reached the place where our evening meeting was to be held after one o'clock, exhausted with hunger and heat. The cabin was but little better than the one just described; it contained some kind of table and a few stools, but had neither door nor floor, and cattle and hogs ran into it to avoid the flies when they chose.

We were soon invited in to our dinner from under the shade of a tree where we had observed the whole process. The table was a block of wood, with four legs to hold it up, and a stool at each side for us to sit on. Some pet pigs were under it waiting for the crumbs: they tramped on our toes, which led us to kick them; but our kind hostess soon made the children catch them and confine them behind my back in a big gumm, a tub sawn off a hollow log, which treatment, from their noise, they seemed to dislike very much.

Soon after our meal was finished the people began to gather in to hear the gospel. The cabin was more than full, with the same appearance of the congregation as last described. We supplied all with books and tracts--in most cases with the first book they ever had. The night was spent much like the previous one, food and lodging about the same.

It was three days before I was sufficiently recovered to resume my work. We had visited twenty-seven families, talked and prayed with them all, given them books and tracts, and held three meetings. One half of the people were without any part of a Bible. As for other books they had none, and not one in ten could read a word.

I have detailed this one journey of three days not only to show the condition of this portion of our country, but as little more than a fair representation of destitute parts of many states in the Union. If each colporteur of the Tract Society who has visited these dark, broken, isolated regions of our country for the last eighteen years, had kept a journal of all the ignorance and wretchedness he met, it would have been the most interesting missionary journal the world ever saw. Their reports would differ as widely as the reports of those whom Joshua sent out to visit the promised land. While some would bring in the rich clusters of Eshcol, others, with equal truthfulness, could say that the land was inhabited by giants, whose walls were ignorance and superstition.

I was often reminded in my journeys of the early pioneers of our country who went through the forests, tomahawk in hand, blazing the trees as a signal of their intended occupancy of the land at some future time. These visits were the Christian pioneer's way-marks, not blazed on the trees with axe or tomahawk, but blazed on the hearts of men in a state of nature by kind Christian words, and sealed with earnest prayer; while the books and tracts, including many Bibles and Testaments, were deeds of trust to those that faithfully used them; and many by them have secured a title to eternal life.

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