One of the little things to be picked up is Norman Anderson.  Very little, if measured soul-wise.  When his father had read the proclamation of Andrew and divined that Norman was interested in the riot, he became thoroughly indignant; the more so, that he felt his own lack of power to do anything in the premises against his wife.  But when Mrs. Abigail heard of the case she was in genuine distress.  It showed Andrew’s vindictiveness.  He would follow her forever with his resentments, just because she could not love him.  It was not her fault that she did not love him.  Poor Norman had to suffer all the persecutions that usually fall to such innocent creatures.  She must send him away from home, though it broke her mother’s heart to do it; for if Andrew didn’t have him took up, the old Dutchman would, just because his son had turned out a burglar.  She said burglar rather emphatically, with a look at Julia.

And so Samuel Anderson took his son to Louisville, and got him a place in a commission and produce house on the levee, with which Mr. Anderson had business influence.  And Samuel warned him that he must do his best, for he could not come back home now without danger of arrest, and Norman made many promises of amendment; so many, that his future seemed to him barren of all delight.  And, by way of encouraging himself in the austere life upon which he had resolved to enter, he attended the least reputable place of amusement in the city, the first night after his father’s departure.

In Clark township the Millerite excitement was at white heat.  Some of the preachers in other parts of the country had set one day, some another.  I believe that Mr. Miller, the founder, never had the temerity to set a day.  But his followers figured the thing more closely, and Elder Hankins had put a fine point on the matter.  He was certain, for his part, that the time was at midnight on the eleventh of August.  His followers became very zealous, and such is the nature of an infection that scarcely anybody was able to resist it.  Mrs. Anderson, true to her excitable temper, became fanatic—­dreaming dreams, seeing visions, hearing voices, praying twenty times a day[2], wearing a sourly pious face, and making all around her more unhappy than ever.  Jonas declared that ef the noo airth and the noo heaven was to be chockful of sech as she, ‘most any other place in the univarse would be better, akordin’ to his way of thinkin’.  He said she repented more of other folkses’ sins than anybody he ever seed.

[Footnote 2:  Mrs. Anderson was less devout than some of her co-religionists; the wife of a well-known steamboat-clerk was accustomed to pray in private fifty times a day, hoping by means of this praying without ceasing to be found ready when the trumpet should sound.]