. Finally, not
content with these ordinary and established channels for preaching the
gospel, he sought out for himself a new one. About eight miles from the
village there was a negro settlement known as "The Cedars." It was a wild
place. Great outcropping ledges of granite, with big boulders toppling
over, and piled upon each other, and all knotted together by the gnarled
roots of ancient cedar-trees, made the place seem like ruins of old
fortresses. There were caves of great depth, some of them with two
entrances, in which, in the time of the fugitive slave law, many a poor
hunted creature had had safe refuge. Besides the cedar-trees, there were
sugar-maples and white birches; and the beautiful rock ferns grew all over
the ledges in high waving tufts, almost as luxuriantly as if they were in
the tropics; so that the spot, wild and fierce as it was, had great
beauty. Many of the fugitive slaves had built themselves huts here: some
lived in the caves. A few poor and vicious whites had joined them,
intermarried with them, and from these had gradually grown up a band of as
mongrel, miserable vagabonds as is often seen. They were the terror of the
neighborhood. Except for their supreme laziness, they would have been as
dangerous as brigands; for they were utter outlaws. No man cared for them;
and they cared for no man. Parson Dorrance's heart yearned over these
poor Ishmaelites; and he determined to see if they were irreclaimable. The
first thing that his townsmen knew of his plan was his purchase of several
acres of land near "The Cedars." He bought it very cheap, because land in
that vicinity was held to be worthless for purposes of cultivation. Unless
the crops were guarded night and day, they were surreptitiously harvested
by foragers from "The Cedars." Then it was found out that Parson Dorrance
was in the habit of driving over often to look at his new property.
Gradually, the children became used to his presence, and would steal out
and talk to him. Then he carried over a small microscope, and let them
look through it at insects; and before long there might have been seen, on
a Sunday afternoon, a group of twenty or thirty of the outcasts gathered
round the Parson, while he talked to them as he had talked to the
children. Then he told them that, if they would help, he would build a
little house on his ground, and put some pictures and maps in it for them,
and come over every Sunday and talk to them; and they set to work