g health necessitated a change. With him was a daughter who would
teach school. Then of an autumn evening the Williams family arrived and
with them a multitude of envied possessions. Wealth entered the
four-roomed cabin that was scrubbed with furious intensity before the
white iron beds, the modern cooking-stove, the books--in all, a
multitude of bewildering furnishings were placed within its walls. A
period of whitewashing followed, of fencing in of chickens and garden,
of trimming and pruning. It was as though some modern machine with its
driving power, its whirring engine, had dropped into a medieval town.

Brother Williams was a feeble, kindly old man who preached but a short
six months before death came and the Methodist church was again without
a spiritual guide. After his death the preaching was by an itinerant,
but by that time the church had lost its preeminent place in the
community life. Salvation was taught indeed, but in a new guise and
under a new roof, and the leader and prophet of the new gospel was the
school teacher, Brother Williams' daughter Ellen.

Ellen Williams had been educated in one of the Negro colleges, founded
shortly after the Civil War by northern philanthropy, and conducted by
white women, and she had been filled with an unquenchable zeal to help
her race. She went into this poor, remote country school with the zeal
of the missionary to Africa; and if she was confronted by no wild beasts
or savage chieftains she met with disheartening indifference, with envy
and even with malice. But the true missionary burns with so pure a flame
that she destroys in her bright fire the obstructions that are placed in
her path. Moreover, she is made to rule and men and women obey, first
critically, then enthusiastically, her decrees. There were mutterings at
Ellen's demands. First the children must be washed beyond the strength
and dignity of those who have to tote their every pail of water; then an
unprecedented amount of needlework was needed to close up rents; and,
last, they must forever give money, money that might go for whisky, for
patent medicine, for the lodge or for the church, money needed to fill
out the meager four months' salary by the county to the seven months
demanded by the teacher as a minimum school year. Like all fanatics,
Ellen saw one supreme duty--the bringing of education to the children of
Merryvale. Other things, even preaching, might languish if this could be
accomplished.

E