d
closely to business every one; and popular meetings were confined to
religious gatherings on Sunday in each neighborhood, and the meeting
of a few who could spare the time at court, in the village
county-seat, twice a year. There were no places of public resort for
dissipation or amusement; a stern morality was demanded by public
opinion of the older members of society. Example and the switch
enforced it with the children. Perhaps in no country or community was
the maxim of good old Solomon more universally practised upon, "Spare
the rod and spoil the child," than in Middle Georgia, fifty years ago.
Filial obedience and deference to age was the first lesson. "Honor thy
father and mother, that thy days may be long in the land," was
familiar to the ears of every child before they could lisp their a, b,
c; and upon the first demonstration of a refractory disobedience, a
severe punishment taught them that the law was absolute and
inexorable. To lie, or touch what was not his own, was beyond the pale
of pardon, or mercy, and a solitary aberration was a stain for life.

The mothers, clad in homespun, were chaste in thought and action;
unlettered and ignorant, but pure as ether. Their literature confined
to the Bible, its maxims directed their conduct, and were the daily
lesson of their children. The hard-shell Baptist was the dominant
religion; with here and there a Presbyterian community, generally
characterized by superior education and intelligence, with a preacher
of so much learning as to be an oracle throughout the land.

The Methodists were just then beginning to grow into importance, and
their circuit-riders, now fashionably known as itinerants, were
passing and preaching, and establishing societies to mark their
success, through all the rude settlements of the State. These were the
pioneers of that truly democratic sect, as of the stern morality and
upright bearing which had so powerful an influence over the then
rising population.

It is more than sixty years since I first listened to a Methodist
sermon. It was preached by a young, spare man, with sallow complexion,
and black eyes and hair. I remember the gleam of his eye, and the
deep, startling tones of his voice--his earnest and fervent manner;
and only yesterday, in the Baronne Street (New Orleans) Methodist
Church, I listened to an old man, upward of eighty years of age,
preaching the ordination sermon of four new bishops of the Methodist
Church. It was h