that you attempt to insult a preacher; for
if you repeat your abominable sport and persecutions, the next time God
will serve you worse, and the devil will get you.'

"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of reply."

Our preacher was determined that his work should be recognized, and as
he and his fellow traveling ministers had done a good work on the
frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious
condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread
through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says
he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old
Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well
furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or
written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had
memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of
reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and
of course they produced no effect among the people. The great mass of
our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a
block, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or manuscript,
quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences
of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern missionaries
was not very flattering; and although the Methodist preachers were in
reality the pioneer heralds of the cross through the entire West, and
although they had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and
notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local preachers,
accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet these
newly-fledged missionaries would write back to the old States hardly any
thing else but wailings and lamentations over the moral wastes and
destitute condition of the West."

The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the people of the
West, who considered themselves as good Christians; as their New England
brethren, and the people of Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of
denomination, and pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one
thousand dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would
"go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten them on
this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly ignorant."
Circumstances beyond his control prevented his acceptance of this offer.
"How gladly and willingly would I have