Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

horse, knelt in the wet grass and prayed aloud. He began, at one time, to ques tion a young woman about the condition of her soul. He met with cool answers. "Well," said he at last, "I'll pray to God to send a fit of sickness upon you, if nothing else will do, to bring you to good; and if you won't repent, to take you out of the way, so that you shall not hinder others."

"If you'll pray for such things as this," was her answer, "you can't be the friend to my soul you pretend to be, and I'll venture all your prayers."

She was angry at first, then grew restless and uneasy, became troubled in mind, and finally was one of Dow's most zealous converts and friends. He asked another woman to pray. She responded that she did not have time. "Then I'll buy your time," said Lorenzo, whereupon she agreed to give one day for a dollar. She supposed he was in jest, but he threw the dollar in her lap and went away. She called after him to take the money, but he refused, and added, "If you go to hell it may follow and enhance your damnation." She put off the task for ten days, when, "her conscience roaring loud," as Dow says, "she took the day and read two chapters in the Bible and retired thrice to pray to God to show her what she was and what he would have her to be. Before night she felt distressed on account of her soul, and before long found the comforts of religion."

One evening when he had a houseful of young men he placed his back against the door so none of them could escape, and preached to them with such fervor that some cried aloud for mercy. A young

woman with whom he was talking suddenly broke away from him and ran. He followed her to the house of a neighbor, and sitting down in a door, would not let her out until she had chosen to serve either God or Satan for a fortnight. She chose the latter, saying: "I can't keep the other." Lorenzo solemnly called on God to witness, and added: "I'll pray God that you may be taken sick before the fortnight's up." Before night she grew uneasy, soon broke her promise, and became a convert and a member of the church.

A man whom he had offended by plain preaching came into church and tried to pull his nose. Dow dodged, whereupon the women arose en masse and put the intruder out of doors. In his diary Lorenzo sets down many incidents which show the peculiar bent of his mind and the tenor of his belief. In illustration:

A reprobation preacher sought to do us harm, when I publicly besought God, if he was a true min

ister, to bless his labors and make it manifest; but if he had jumped presumptuousiy into the work that God would remove him, so that he should not hurt the people. Shortly after he fell into a scandalous sin, and so his influence was lost. . . As I entered the meeting-house, having an old borrowed greatcoat on and two hats, the people were alarmed, and thought it singular that I did not bow to every pew as I went toward the pulpit, which was the custom there. My hat being taken from me without my consent, and two others forced upon me, I was carrying one to give to a young man. I besought God in public that something awful might happen in the neighborhood, if nothing else would do to alarm the people. A company of young people going to a tavern one of them said, "I will ride there as Christ rode into Jerusalem." Instantly his horse started, ran a distance, and threw him against a log. He spoke no more until he died, which was next morning. . . . In Alford I preached Methodism, inside and outside. Many came to hear; one woman thought I aimed at her dress. The next meeting

she ornamented far more, in order that I might speak to her. But I, in my discourse, took no notice of

dress, and she went away disgraced and ashamed.

Lorenzo had determined to marry no woman who would object to his traveling, and when he came to his courtship it was pursued after his own peculiar plan. One, S. M., of Western, kept a house for preachers, or "Methodist tavern," as it was called by the people. When Dow preached in that neighborhood M. asked him to come to his house, and added, "My daughter will be glad to see you." Lorenzo remained there all night, but not a word passed between him and Peggy, who was an adopted child. He went to his appointment, and while he was preaching he felt "an uncommon exercise" to run through his mind. He pondered on it, and before evening he asked M. if he would object to Lorenzo's talking with the girl about matrimony. The reply was, "I have nothing to say, only I have requested her, if she has any regard for me, not to marry so as to leave my house."

On reaching the house Dow abruptly asked the wife what they had been doing in his absence. She told him, and added that Peggy was resolved that she would never marry, except to a preacher, and that he must keep on traveling. Just then Peggy came into the room. Lorenzo repeated this remark, and asked her if she had made it. She answered in the affirmative, whereupon Lorenzo said: "Do you think you could accept of such an object as me?" She made no answer, but retired from the room. He went away, but returned in a few days, when he told her he would be back again "in a year and a half or so " and receive her

answer! After he had been south some time the family removed to that section, and he was quietly married to Peggy in the fall of 1804.

During the closing months of that year and the early ones of 1805 he crossed Ohio and went into the Mississippi valley, preaching at Pittsburgh, Steubenville and Wheeling on the way. He makes this entry: "I have been in each of the seventeen states of the Union." Of Chillicothe, then the capital of Ohio, he writes: "Stayed with the governor two days. No slavery can be introduced here. There are lands laid off for schools in great magnitude." Once he traveled all night, until ten o'clock on the following morning, stopped at a place called Bethel, finished his sermon, stepped from his pulpit to an open window, jumped out, mounted his horse, rode seventeen miles, making nearly eighty miles of travel and five meetings without sleep. He had been threatened on one occasion, and thus describes the outcome: "A chump of wood being thrown in through the window, I leaped out after the man. He ran and I after him, crying 'Run! Run! Old Sam [Satan] is after you!' He did run as for his life, and, leaping over a fence, hid among the bushes. Next morning I cut Old Sam's name on the wood, nailed it to a tree, and called it Old Sam's monument." One young man who had led in the attack had, according to Lorenzo, the end of his nose bitten off; another was flung from his horse and killed, while several others were "remarked to be followed with chastisement from the Lord."

In recording his experiences in England, he gives a view of the religious divis

ions of the day. There were seven varieties of Methodists alone, saying nothing of other denominations; one, Old Society; two, Kilhamites; three, Quaker Methodists; four, Whitefield's Methodists; five, Revivalists or Free Gospelers; six, Welsh Methodists, commonly called "Jumpers ;" seven, Church Methodists. He tells of one Margaret Keen, who had "accurately dreamed of Bonaparte's disaster" before it occurred. Of Pittsburgh even in that early day he says: "Pittsburgh has become famous in the New World, and by nature combining with art promises to be one of the great manufacturing towns in America. Seven or eight glass works in the neighborhood, and as many places of worship." "One thing is observable, that for hundreds of miles on the Kentucky side the

people were dilatory at night and morning in coming to meeting, but on the opposite side [Ohio] the thing was quite different. The only thing as a reason that I can assign for this is slavery."

The concluding entries in his diary are as follows: "In a few weeks I expect to start for the west again, but where I may be this time twelvemonth is very uncertain to me; whether in England, Sierra Leone, in Africa, West Indies or New England, or eternity; but the controversy with the nations is not over, nor will it be until the divine government be reverentially acknowledged by the human family." His troubled and remarkable career came to an end at Washington, D. C., on February 2, 1834.

J. H. KENNEDY.

THE MAKING OF THE GREAT WEST.*

THERE never was in the history of man, and there never can be again, so important a geographical event as the discovery, conquest and settlement of the American continent; and could the story be told with such fullness as all the detailed incidents in each of the avenues of approach could furnish, nothing more marvelous in romance or more thrilling in the wars and conquests of the dark ages, could be found and written to the edification and instruction of mankind. One indeed needs an elevation from which to view all the roads leading across ocean to America before he can gain the faintest idea of the grand events that commenced in the sixteenth century, and have had their continuance on into the present. Columbus merely touched the outer shore, and sailed back to Spain to find that Diaz, the Portuguese mariner, had found the Cape of Good Hope. Great events these and greater still in their effect upon Spain and Portugal, whose monarchs cooly proceeded to divide between themselves "all the unknown lands and seas to the east and to the west of a meridian line which should be drawn from pole to pole, one hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores;" a partition which received the sanction of the greatest power in

*The Making of the Great West: 1512-1883.' By Samuel Adams Drake. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

Europe, when Pope Alexander VI confirmed it by special decree. With De Soto in Florida and upon the broad. Mississippi, Cortez in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru, Spain indeed made a secure and profitable foothold upon the new land her adventurous adopted son had discovered. But the prize was not to be drawn home and divided without claimants. Quoting from Mr. Drake in the admirable work mentioned below: "The newly awakened spirit of discovery would not down at the bidding of prince or pontiff, let him be never so great or powerful. Once aroused it was sure to find ways by which some part of the benefits to accrue to mankind from this grand discovery should not be monopolized by a single nation. We might even say that all the nations of Europe instinctively felt this to be their opportunitythe opportunity of the human race." France was not last in the field, and when Jacques Cartier raised the cross and the banner of France over the new land, and took possession of it in the name of his king, there was another strong and courageous claimant upon the soil. England was not far behind, while the lesser nations of the old world made such ventures and laid such claims as their courage would permit or their means of defense allow them to make good.

[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« AnteriorContinuar »