Autobiographical Passages 5 1 



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 uncle 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 moonlight 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 



