per food. He could get no bread but by riding ten or
fifteen miles to procure it, and if he brought home too much it became
mouldy and sour, while, if he brought home a small quantity, he could not
go for more if he failed to catch his horse, which was turned out to
graze in the woods; so that he was reduced to making little cakes of
Indian meal, which he fried in the ashes. "And then," he says, "I
blessed God as if I had been a king." "I have a house and many of the
comforts of life to support me," he says with great satisfaction; and the
solitude of that house was so precious to him that, however weary he was,
he would ride back twenty miles to it at night rather than spend an
evening among ungodly men. By this terrible stinting of what we should
deem the necessaries of life, he was actually able, in fifteen months, to
devote a hundred pounds to charitable purposes, besides keeping the young
man at the University.

So much, however, did he love his solitude, that he counted it as no
relief, but an affliction, to have to ride to Stockbridge from time to
time to learn the Indian language from Mr. Sergeant, the missionary there
stationed. Something of this must have been morbid feeling, something
from the want of energy consequent on the condition of his frame. For a
man in confirmed decline such an entry in a journal as this is no
trifle:--"December 20.--Rode to Stockbridge. Was very much fatigued with
my journey, wherein I underwent great hardship; was much exposed, and
very wet by falling into a river." Mr. Sergeant could hardly have been
profane company, but Brainerd never enjoyed these visits, thinking that
intercourse with the world made him less familiar with heaven.

Another inconvenience was the proximity of Kanaumeek to the frontier, and
these were the days of that horrid war between England and France in
America, when the native allies of each nation made savage descents on
the outlying settlements, inflicting all the flagrant outrages of their
wild warfare. A message came one evening to Kanaumeek from Colonel
Stoddart, warning all in exposed situations to secure themselves as well
as possible, since an attack might come at any moment; and this Brainerd
quietly records as a salutary warning not to attach himself too much to
the _comforts of life_ he enjoyed.

The attack was never made, but he came to the conclusion that his small
congregation of Indians would be much better with their fellows at
Sto