.
The log meeting-house stood near the log school-house, and both revealed
the heart of the people who built them. It was the Prussian
school-master, trained in the moral education of Pestalozzi, that made
the German army victorious over France in the late war. And it was the
New England school-master that built the great West, and made Plymouth
Rock the crown-stone of our own nation. The world owes to humble
Pestalozzi what it never could have secured from a Napoleon. It is right
ideas that march to the conquest, that lift mankind, and live.

It had been announced in the school-house that Jasper the Parable would
preach in the log church on Sunday. The school-master called the
wandering teacher "Jasper the Parable," but the visitor became commonly
known as the "Old Tunker" in the community. The news flew for miles that
"an old Tunker" was to preach. No event had awakened a greater interest
since Elder Elkins, from Kentucky, had come to the settlement to preach
Nancy Lincoln's funeral sermon under the great trees. On that occasion
all the people gathered from the forest homes of the vast region. Every
one now was eager to visit the same place in the beautiful spring
weather, and to "hear what the old Tunker would have to say."

Among the preachers who used to speak in the log meeting-house and in
Thomas Lincoln's cabin were one Jeremiah Cash, and John Richardson, and
young Lamar. The two latter preachers lived some ten miles distant from
the church; but ten miles was not regarded as a long Sabbath-day journey
in those days in Indiana. When the log meeting-house was found too small
to hold the people, such preachers would exhort under the trees. There
used to be held religious meetings in the cabins, after the manner of
the present English cottage prayer-meetings. These used to be appointed
to take place at "early candle-lighting," and many of the women who
attended used to bring tallow dips with them, and were looked upon as
the "wise virgins" who took oil in their lamps.

It was a lovely Sunday in April. The warm sunlight filled the air and
bird-songs the trees. The notes of the lark, the sparrow, and the
prairie plover were bells--

"To call me to duty, while birds in the air
Sang anthems of praise as I went forth to prayer,"

as one of the old hymns used to run. The buds on the trees were
swelling. There was an odor of walnut and "sassafrax" in the tides of
the sunny air. Cowslips and violets margined th