converted. A circuit-rider preached the sermon that converted him. His
anguish was awful. The midnight hour found him in tears. The Ohio forest
resounded with his cries for mercy. When he found peace, it swelled into
rapture. He joined the Church militant among the Methodists, and he
stuck to them, quarreled with them, and loved them, all his life. He had
many troubles, and gave much trouble to many people. The old Adam died
hard in the fighting blacksmith. His pastor, his family, his friends,
his fellow-members in the Church, all got a portion of his wrath in due
season, if they swerved a hair-breadth from the straight-line of duty as
he saw it. I was his pastor, and I never had a truer friend, or a
severer censor. One Sunday morning he electrified my congregation, at
the close of the sermon, by rising in his place and making a personal
application of a portion of it to individuals present, and insisting on
their immediate expulsion from the Church. He had another side to his
character, and at times was as tender as a woman. He acted as
class-leader. In his melting moods he moved every eye to tears, as he
passed round among the brethren and sisters, weeping, exhorting, and
rejoicing. At such times, his great voice softened into a pathos that
none could resist, and swept the chords of sympathy with resistless
power. But when his other mood was upon him, he was fearful. He scourged
the unfaithful with a whip of fire. He would quote with a singular
fluency and aptness every passage of Scripture that blasted hypocrites,
reproved the lukewarm, or threatened damnation to the sinner. At such
times his voice sounded like the shout of a warrior in battle, and the
timid and wondering hearers looked as if they were in the midst of the
thunder and lightning of a tropical storm. I remember the shock he gave
a quiet and timid lady whom I had persuaded to remain for the
class-meeting after service. Fixing his stern and fiery gaze upon her,
and knitting his great bushy eyebrows, he thundered the question:

"Sister, do you ever pray?"

The startled woman nearly sprang from her seat in a panic as she
stammered hurriedly,

"Yes, sir; yes, sir."

She did not attend his class-meeting again.

At a camp-meeting he was present, and in one of his bitterest moods. The
meeting was not conducted in a way to suit him. He was grim, critical,
and contemptuous, making no concealment of his dissatisfaction. The
preaching displeased him particul