Autobiographical Passages 51 



death the infant child of Reuben and Rebecca Wilson, the 

 afflicted parents, with the aged grandmother, the surviving 

 children and other relatives ask the prayers of the congrega- 

 tion that this bereavement may be blessed to their spiritual 

 and eternal good. ' ' As each class of the mourners was desig- 

 nated, they stood up in their pew, and many of the women 

 looking on had tears in their eyes. I remember that I won- 

 dered why imcle did not pray that the child should be raised 

 at once and brought back to her parents, and I tried it my- 

 self when I went to bed. 



I remember being taken up by a sleighing party and 

 driven far by moonhght to a large house where I saw flip 

 made by the kitchen fire; saw the parson's girl drink it and 

 be merry ; saw romping games played around the great chim- 

 ney and when finally I fell asleep, I was put to bed to be taken 

 home in the midst of a furious snowstorm in the bitter morn- 

 ing by one of the boys who treated me to an upset in a snow- 

 drift. 



I don't quite see how the people old and young — even 

 the drunkard — could be on such good terms with the parson 

 as it seems to me they were. I certainly have seen nothing 

 like it since. I think that the temperance reformation was 

 just beginning and my uncle preached and prayed in the 

 meeting, in the school and in the family against intemper- 

 ance, but total abstinence was not yet insisted on. The Anti- 

 slavery agitation had not arisen. Divisions on these two 

 questions I understand were afterwards so bitter that half 

 the congregation refused to come to meeting or to contribute 

 to the support of the minister, who finally was obliged to 

 ask for a dismissal on account of the extreme privations to 

 which his family became reduced. 



I learned to read in a little brown schoolhouse on the 

 bank of a brook in the midst of the woods. I remember 

 chestnut, hemlock, birch and alder trees about it and near by 

 thickets of mountain laurel. The brook must have been a 

 small one for we made a pool by damming it, into which we 



