women, whose time
and strength were devoted to the same cause, in a less conspicuous way.

While Indiana was yet a Territory, and her one-roomed house, with a
half-story above, was yet unfinished, and while the Indian reservation,
yet inhabited by the Delawares, was less than two miles distant, and no
Methodist preaching had yet been established in Brookville, my mother
opened her doors to the transient preacher and for prayer-meetings, then
for class-meetings and for preaching, and thus she entered upon her life
work, and for more than fifty years those doors stood open to Methodist
preachers. Was it any inferior heroism which would prepare that single
room, at once parlor and bed-room and kitchen, for prayer-meetings, and
then, after the meeting was over, clean up after the filthy tobacco
chewers who not only defiled the floor, but sometimes, from sheer
devilishness, would besmear the walls? Later, and when an addition was
built to the house, the best room was specially fitted up for a
preacher's room, with its bed, and table, and chair, and fire-place, and
then another bed was added, because one bed, though carrying double, was
often insufficient for the demands. That room was never occupied for
twenty-five years by any member of the family, for it could never be
certain, even at bed time, that some belated traveler would not call for
entertainment before morning.

A panorama of that heroic woman's work for twenty-five years would give
new ideas to many of this generation of the demands made upon the women
of that heroic period, and how they were met. For many years either
Bishop Soule or Bishop Roberts, or both, were frequent guests, going to
or returning from one of their Conferences, and Presiding Elders
Griffeth, and Strange, and Wiley, and Havens, for twenty years never
stopped in Brookville with any other family, whether attending our own
quarterly meetings or passing through to some other; and for more than
twenty years the bi-weekly rounds of the circuit preacher never failed
to bring a guest, while the junior preacher, always an unmarried man,
made it his headquarters, and spent his rest weeks in that preachers'
room. There John P. Durbin studied English grammar without a teacher,
and Russel Bigelow, and John F. Wright, and James B. Finley were
frequent guests. The new preacher, with his family, always stopped with
us until some house somewhere on the circuit could be rented, for it
was before the days of