own only a few miles away, and a place which, like
Shawneetown, has held its own.

The issue was the same old classic--hogs had rooted up the man's garden,
and then the hogs had been impounded. This time there was a tragedy, for
before the hogs were released the owner had been killed.

The people for miles had come to town to hear the eloquent young lawyer
from Peoria. The taverns were crowded, and not having engaged a room,
the attorney for the defense was put to straits to find a place in which
to sleep. In this extremity 'Squire Parker, the first citizen of the
town, invited young Ingersoll to his house.

Parker was a character in that neck of the woods--he was an "infidel,"
and a terror to all the clergy 'round about. And strangely enough--or
not--his wife believed exactly as he did, and so did their daughter Eva,
a beautiful girl of nineteen. But 'Squire Parker got into no argument
with his guest--their belief was the same. Probably we would now call
the Parkers simply radical Unitarians. Their kinsman, Theodore Parker,
expressed their faith, and they had no more use for a "personal devil"
that he had. The courage of the young woman in stating her religious
views had almost made her an outcast in the village, and here she was
saying the same things in Groveland that Robert was saying in Peoria.
She was the first woman he ever knew who had ideas.

It was one o'clock before he went to bed that night--his head was in a
whirl. It was a wonder he didn't lose his case the next day, but he
didn't.

He cleared his client and won a bride.

In a few months Robert Ingersoll and Eva Parker were married.

Never were man and woman more perfectly mated than this couple. And how
much the world owes to her sustaining love and unfaltering faith, we can
not compute; but my opinion is that if it had not been for Eva
Parker--twice a daughter of the Revolution, whose ancestors fought side
by side with the Livingstons--we should never have heard of Robert
Ingersoll as the maker of an epoch. It is love that makes the world go
'round--and it is love that makes the orator and fearless thinker, no
less than poet, painter and musician.

No man liveth unto himself alone: we demand the approval and approbation
of another: we write and speak for some One; and our thought coming back
from this One approved, gives courage and that bold determination which
carries conviction home. Before the world believes in us we must believe
in ourselve