id not protest against calling that
Christianity which held out crowns of glory to man-thieves and their
abettors, and everlasting torments to those who had spent their lives
glorifying God and bearing witness to the truth. My defense of Parker
and unwillingness to have all Unitarians sent to the other side of the
Great Gulf, won for me a prominent place among those whom the churches
pronounced "Infidels."

But there came a time when "Providence" seemed to be on the side of the
slave.

Rev. J. Calhoun was a highly-cultured gentleman, a Presbyterian
clergyman, and one of those urbane men who add force and dignity to any
opinion. His wife was Gen. Lowrie's only sister. He preached
gratuitously in St. Cloud, and Border Ruffianism and Slavery gained
respectability through their connection, when he and his wife made that
fatal plunge off the bridge in St. Cloud--a plunge which sent a thrill
of horror through the land. I accompanied my sympathetic, respectful
obituary notice, with the statement that the costly cutter wrecked, and
the valuable horse instantly killed, were both purchased with money
obtained by the sale of a woman and her child, who had been held as
slaves in Minnesota, in defiance of her law, and been taken by this
popular divine to a Tennessee auction block.

The accident was entirely owing to the unprecedented and unaccountable
behavior of that horse, and people shuddered with a new horror on being
reminded of the price which had been paid for him--bodies and souls of
two citizens and the honor of that free State.

CHAPTER XLIII.

FRONTIER LIFE.

The culture which the pale faces introduced into that land of the
Dakotas was sometimes curious. The first sermon I heard there was
preached in Rockville--a town-site on the Sauk, twelve miles from its
confluence with the Mississippi--in a store-room of which the roof was
not yet shingled. The only table in the town served as a pulpit; the red
blankets from one wagon were converted into cushions for the front pews,
which consisted of rough boards laid on trussles. There was only one
hymn book, and after reading the hymn, the preacher tendered the book to
any one who would lead the singing, but no one volunteered. My scruples
about psalms seemed to vanish, so I went forward, took the book, lined
out the hymn, and started a tune, which was readily taken up and sung by
all present. We were well satisfied with what the day brought us, as we
rode home past t