said to have traveled on foot from
St. Peter to St. Paul between sunrise and sunset in the interests of St.
Peter. This feat would seem to me a physical impossibility, but it was a
story current when I was a boy in St. Peter. It is a matter of history,
too, that all the attempts to save the Capital were futile, and the
indomitable Captain Dodd had his long walk in vain.

Captain Dodd was considerable of a mimic and an actor. During a
political campaign, he took the platform against a certain Tom Corwin of
Ohio, who was considered a great political orator. On one occasion
Corwin was the first speaker, and to emphasize his speech, he danced
about on the stage, gesticulated freely, and made a great impression.
When Mr. Dodd's turn to speak came, he arose, and without a word,
gravely gave a pantomimic reproduction of the orator's acts and
gestures. Then he sat down amid roars of laughter, that completely
spoiled the effect of his opponent's speech.

Mrs. Nancy Kiethley Bean.

When Edward Eggleston, the author of the "Hoosier Schoolmaster," was
obliged to come west for his health, he was, for a number of years, a
resident of Traverse, and St. Peter. Here on week days he engaged in the
humble occupation of soap-making, and on Sundays he went out to the
country communities to preach the gospel. His church was often the one
room of some farmer's log cabin, and he missed the pulpit upon which to
pound, to emphasize the points in his sermon in the good orthodox style
of the exhorter. One Sunday early in his ministry, he came to our home
near Cleveland, to preach, and that day he strongly felt the need of a
pulpit. "Why can't you make me a pulpit?" he asked my father after the
service. "I can and I will before you come again," father replied.
Father went to work, and from the trunk of a tree, he hewed out a rough
pulpit! The young preacher exhorted with such fervor from his new pulpit
that I was the first convert of the man who afterwards became famous.

In the fall of that same year, the annual Methodist conference was held
at Winona, and Mr. Eggleston prepared to go. Before he went my father
met him, and asked him whether he was going to the conference. "Yes,"
was the reply, "I am going." Now father knew that money was scarce and
that Mr. Eggleston's preaching and soap-making yielded him little
revenue, so he went to one of the brethren, a certain Mr. Arter, who had
recently come from the east, bringing with him gold coin,