Our garden was quite creditable.  Vegetables were plentiful and my flower-beds, though formal, were pleasing.  Stock-raising was very interesting.  One year I had the satisfaction of breaking three heifers and raising their calves.  My brother showed more enterprise, for he induced a plump young mother of the herd to allow him to ride her when he drove the rest to pasture.

Upon our arrival in Uniontown we found the only church was the Methodist.  We at once attended, and I joined the Sunday-school.  My teacher was a periodically reformed boatman.  When he fell from grace he was taken in hand by the Sons of Temperance, which I had also joined.  “Morning Star Division, No. 106,” was never short of material to work on.  My first editorial experience was on its spicy little written journal.  I went through the chairs and became “Worthy Patriarch” while still a boy.  The church was mostly served by first-termers, not especially inspiring.  I recall one good man who seemed to have no other qualification for the office.  He frankly admitted that he had worked in a mill and in a lumber-yard, and said he liked preaching “better than anything he’d ever been at.”  He was very sincere and honest.  He had a uniform lead in prayer:  “O Lord, we thank thee that it is as well with us as what it is.”  The sentiment was admirable, but somehow the manner grated.  When the presiding elder came around we had a relief.  He was wide-awake and witty.  One night he read the passage of Scripture where they all began with one accord to make excuses.  One said:  “I have married a wife and cannot come.”  The elder, looking up, said, “Why didn’t the pesky fool bring her with him?”

In the process of time the Presbyterians started a church, and I went there; swept out, trimmed the lamps, and sang in the choir.  The preacher was an educated man, and out of the pulpit was kind and reasonable; but he persisted that “Good deeds were but as filthy rags.”  I didn’t believe it and I didn’t like it.  The staid pastor had but little recreation, and I am afraid I was always glad that Ulrica Schumacher, the frisky sister of the gunsmith, almost always beat him at chess.

He was succeeded by a man I loved, and I wonder I did not join his church.  We were good friends and used to go out trout-fishing together.  He was a delightful man, but when he was in the pulpit he shrank and shriveled.  The danger of Presbyterianism passed when he expressed his doubt whether it would be best for my mother to partake of communion, as she had all her life in the Unitarian church.  She was willing, but waited his approval.  My mother was the most saintly of women, absolutely unselfish and self-sacrificing, and it shocked me that any belief or lack of belief should exclude her from a Christian communion.