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ITEMS FROM WHITLEY COUNTY.

MRS. A.A.  MYERS

In giving a little report of the condition of Prof.  Lawrence, and of what has been done with the assassin who attempted his life in May last, I think I will but be answering the unexpressed wish of many of the readers of the MISSIONARY.  Mr. Lawrence is far from well.  We fear he will never recover from the nervous strain and great suffering of the past year.  He has but little use of his right arm and hand.  He is now at Champaign, Ill., and has not been able to attend trial.  As to the assassin, he walks our streets and frequents our saloons at pleasure.  He is out on $1,000 bail; whiskey men on his bonds.  Northern people need not be surprised at such justice, when Haddock’s murderers are running at large; and here we have not only whiskey and its money against us, but secret fraternities, Southern prejudice, and sectarian intolerance.  We have hardly dared hope for justice in these courts, but rely on the truth of the motto we have put in our church on the wall near where one of the bullets struck—­“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”

One of our native preachers not far from here made this unanswerable argument in a sermon on apostacsy.  He said, “’If they shall fall away’—­means that they cannot fall away, for anybody that knows anything about the English language, knows it is a verb in the impossible mode and everlasting tense.”

Two ministers in Whitley County had called a public meeting to discuss their peculiar doctrines.  They became quite excited, and at the close of the discussion, one of them prayed, “Oh God, make Elder So-and-so’s heart as soft as his head is.”

A good meeting means a big excitement as much among the white people as among the colored.  This little incident, which occurred in a service among the hills of northern Alabama, was told us by an eye witness, and goes to show the depth of Christ-like feeling (?) that prompts some, at least, of the great happiness they express.  An underwitted youth seemed to get religion in one of these times of shouting and excitement.  He swung his arms and marched back and forth shouting with the rest.  To see him so happy made the others shout the more.  Amid all the noise, no one knew what he was saying till, all of a sudden, as often happens, there was a lull; then, as he kept on he was understood, and these were the words he was repeating over and over:  “Run, chicken, with your head pecked off, a’n’t we having a good time?”

It may not be uninteresting to hear how some of the bodily ills are ministered to here in the mountains.

If a person is subject to headache, he can be cured by cutting some of his hair off and putting it in a stream of running water.

In certain kinds of sickness, there must be the greatest care that none of the covering on the bed be turned over.  If it should be, the case will terminate fatally.