108 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



we had voted only a little while before and we didn't think we had 

 to ask father and mother about everything. My brother had just 

 bought a new buggy, and we had some good horses. The roads 

 were fine. New buggy, fine horses, beautiful sunny Sunday after- 

 noon, good roads — just imagine that — and Walter suggested to me 

 that we have a buggy ride. We didn't say anything to father 

 and mother about it. We did not think it necessary. We had our 

 drive, and when we got back they didn't say a thing to us, but the 

 way they looked ! And I want to tell you, that that night after we 

 had our prayers together we looked into each other's faces and 

 said, "Just as long as we are together here at home we will accept 

 father's religion." That is the way I was brought up. The preacher 

 would announce that he was going to visit in Deacon Adams' neigh- 

 borhood, and about Tuesday morning I would have to have my best 

 clothes on waiting for the preacher to come. He would usually 

 come about dinner time, and always somebody had to wait — it was 

 not the preacher, either. We always had chicken the day the 

 preacher came and I had to stand around hungry — and I was so 

 hungry, and that did not increase my love for the preacher a bit. 

 Then after we had eaten dinner we would go into the parlor. Do 

 you remember that parlor with all the curtains drawn down and 

 with the pictures of dead folks on the walls? Do you remember 

 that parlor when you opened it? Do you remember that air that 

 was canned in there from the last time it was opened? It may have 

 been a month or two before, but it was the same air that was in 

 there then after the curtains were drawn ; it was a religious duty 

 to keep out of there; only when the preacher came did anyone go 

 in the parlor. You remember that parlor? Thank God they are 

 being abandoned. We would go in that parlor and I would stand 

 up and say my catechism and we would have family worship and 

 the old pastor would place his hands on my head and say, "God 

 bless you Bub," I was just "Bub" to him, not old enough to under- 

 stand the mysteries of religion. And then after it was all over 

 the preacher would go to the next place and I would run upstairs 

 and put on my everyday clothes and be a boy again. I think they 

 had that idea in that community about the preacher. 



The first thing we did then was to start this revival with an 

 agricultural teacher giving us a lecture on dairying; it was a re- 

 vival — shades of John Wesley ! I thought that the old people would 

 topple over. Do you know I had at that meeting so many people 

 that the church would not hold them, and they even looked in the 



