He has often been misunderstood, but in no point more than this.  I never knew a man who cared less for wealth than he.  The one all-absorbing object of his life was to preach the gospel.  But he had also resolved to have the means to pay his debts, and to have a home for his family.

About that time he spoke to me, in substance, as follows:  The one great anxiety of my life has been to preach.  I had intended to go to Bethany, and devote my life entirely to preaching.  My sore throat caused me to give that up, but going to Iowa improved my health, and I began to preach again.  When I took my claim in Kansas it was with the intention of holding on to the land, while I preached in Illinois, until Kansas should be thickly enough settled to furnish me preaching here.  But you know how necessity has driven me, and how preaching for a meager salary, and neglecting my farm, ran me in debt; and what a hard necessity has been laid on me to pay those debts, and to improve my farm, so that you and your mother and the boys can make a living from it.  You have no idea what a sore and bitter trial it has been to me the last six or eight years to see the old churches going to pieces before my eyes, and so many opportunities for planting new churches being lost to us.  There is only one thing more I must do, and then I am determined to give myself wholly to preaching.  As for myself, I would live in a log house all my days before I would take from my preaching the time necessary to earn and build a better house.  But Sybil has been a good and faithful wife, and has borne with commendable patience all the trials of the hard life through which I have led her; and it worries her to entertain so much company as we have in her log house.  With the lumber and saleable stock I have on hand, I can build it without incurring any further debt.  And then I will be ready to preach without being dependent on any man.

The house was built; but before it was finished a series of misfortunes befell him, that threw him in debt nearly as badly as before.  From snake-bites, disease, and accidents, he lost four or five horses, and several head of cattle, and the cholera killed nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of his hogs.

He went to work again, but somewhat discouraged, for he saw that his long-deferred hope of devoting his entire time to study and preaching, could never be realized.  He was nearly sixty, and had broken his constitution by hard work, and could not much longer have endured the incessant riding and preaching of a traveling evangelist, even could he have been supported.  The boys were then old enough to do much of the farm work, and from that time he preached more constantly, but spent more or less time at hard labor.

For several years he was employed, for a small salary, at monthly preaching, by churches at Big Springs, Valley Falls, Round Prairie, and other points.

In the fall of 1875 he concluded to visit once more the churches for which he had preached before coming to Kansas, and bid farewell to his old friends.  He accordingly spent the following winter in a preaching tour throughout Iowa and Illinois.