about liberty, when they come to be
tried, are often the most arrant despots and tyrants on the face of the
earth.

Then the people in the district were not _all_ Come-outers. Some were
Christians. And these I provoked by my disregard of the Sabbath, and by
my advocacy of views unfriendly to religion and the divine authority of
the Bible. I worked in my garden or on my farm on a Sunday, in sight of
my neighbors as they went to church. I had previously called a Bible
convention in the place, and taken the leading part in its proceedings.
I took the skeptical side in a public discussion on Christianity in the
town, and gave utterance to sentiments which pained the hearts of the
religious portion of my neighbors beyond endurance. The consequence was,
I got into trouble again, and had to move once more, or be undone.

So I moved once more. This time I resolved to make sure of a quiet home,
so I went right away beyond the limits of the States, into the unpeopled
territory of Nebraska, a country at that period ten or twelve times as
large as Pennsylvania or England, and containing less than five thousand
white inhabitants--an immense wilderness, occupied chiefly by tribes of
red Indians, herds of buffalo and deer, countless multitudes of wolves,
with here and there a bear, a panther, or a catamount, and heaps of
rattlesnakes. And here I thought I should be safe. And so I was. The
Indians gave me no trouble. I always treated them kindly, and they were
kind to me in return. As for the wild beasts, God has "put the fear and
dread of man upon every beast of the earth;" and as he approaches, they
retire. As a rule, the fiercest beasts of the forest will turn aside to
make way for man. I have lived in the midst of multitudes of wolves, and
taken no harm. I have slept on the open prairie in regions swarming with
wolves, and never been disturbed. I have travelled by night in other
parts of the country, over the wildest mountains, the homes of panthers,
bears, and catamounts, and never been molested. The rattlesnakes were
the most dangerous creatures. Yet even from them I took no harm, I have
walked among them time after time in slippers or low shoes, yet I never
was bitten. I slept once for three nights with a rattlesnake within two
or three inches of my breast, yet escaped unhurt. God took care of me,
when I neither took due care of myself, nor cared as I ought for Him.

The parties I feared the most were the white people. They ha