and stayed with my own. His
younger brothers came regularly to me for lessons with my sister, and I
added two idiotic children bound to his sister's husband, to whose
darkened minds I found the key hidden from other teachers. His brothers
I adopted from the first, in place of the one I had lost, and they
repaid my love in kind; but books soon appeared as an entering wedge
between their souls and religion, which formed the entire mental pabulum
of the family.

I believe there was not at that time a member of the Pittsburg
Conference who was a college graduate, few who had even a good, common
school education, while two of those who preached in our meetinghouse
and were frequent guests in the family, were unable to read.

My husband's father was old and feeble, and had devised his property to
his wife, to be divided at her death between her sons. My husband, as
her agent, would come into possession of the whole, and they thought I
might object to the "prophet's chamber;" but it required no worldly
motive to stimulate these fiery zealots to save a sinner from the toils
of Calvinism. It is probable many of them would have laid down his life
for his religion, and when they got on the track of a sinner, they
pursued him as eagerly as ever an English parson did a fox, but it was
to save, not to kill. In these hot pursuits, they did not stand on
ceremony, and in my case, found a subject that would not run. My kith
and kin had died at the stake, bearing testimony against popery and
prelacy; had fought on those fields where Scotchmen charged in solid
columns, singing psalms; and though I was wax at all other points, I was
granite on "The Solemn League and Covenant." With the convictions of
others I did not interfere, but when attacked would "render
a reason." My assailants denounced theological seminaries as
"preacher-factories"--informed me that "neither Dr. Black nor any of his
congregation ever had religion," and that only by getting it could any
one be saved. My husband became proud of my defense, and the boys grew
disrespectful to their religious guides. Their mother became anxious
about their souls, so the efforts for my conversion were redoubled.

From the first the preachers disapproved of my being permitted to go to
my meeting, and especially to my husband accompanying me. He refused to
go, on the ground that he had not been invited to commune, and as I sank
in the deep waters of affliction, I did so need the pulpit te