University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

“Really, Mr. Carlton, unless you tell us whither you are
travelling we will proceed no further.”

And really I could not blame you, friends, since, had it
not been for very shame and impracticability, we ourselves,
on the third morning, would have imitated Sawney of apple-orchard
memory, and “crawled back again.” But I am on
the very point of telling as distinctly as possible about our
destination—and as you have got thus far, and have paid[1]
(?) for the book, you may as well finish it.

We are proceeding as slowly as we can in search of the
Glenville Settlement, a place somewhere in the New Purchase.
Among other persons we hope to find there, my
wife's mother, my wife's aunt, my wife's uncle, and her
sisters and her brother, John Glenville. One of my purposes
is to become Mr. Glenville's partner in certain land speculations,
and with him to establish a store and also a tannery.
Of the New Purchase itself we will speak at large when
we reach that famous country—famous in itself out there—
and to become so elsewhere when its history is published.
As to Glenville Settlement itself, lofty opinions of its elegancies

began to fall, and misgivings began to be felt, that
its houses would be found no better than they ought to be:
and in these we were not disappointed, as the reader may
in time discover.

The third night of the Searching now approached; and
we had come to a very miserable hut, a ferry-house, on the
top of a high bluff, and fully a quarter of a mile from the
creek below. An ill-natured young girl was apparently the
sole occupant; and she, for some reason, refused to ferry
us over the water, stating, indeed, that the creek could as yet
be forded, but giving us no satisfactory directions how to
find or keep the ford. Judge our feelings, then, on getting
to the bank, to find a black, sullen and swollen river, twenty
yards wide—a scow tied at the end of the road—and that
road seeming to enter upon the ford, if, indeed, any ford
was there! I stepped into the boat and, with its “setting-pole,”
felt for the ford; and happily succeeded in finding the
bottom when the pole was let down a little beyond six feet!

No house, except the ferry-hut on the bluff above, was on
this side the water for many a long and weary mile back; and
beyond the water was a low, marshy and, at present, a truly
terrific beech-wood, and, from its nature, known to be necessarily
uninhabited: so that, unless we could help ourselves,
nobody else was likely to help. With great difficulty, there
fore, and no small danger from our want of skill and hands
enough, we “set” ourselves over in the scow: and when
safely landed in the mud beyond, we at first determined to
let the boat go adrift as a small punishment to the villany of
the ferry people; but reflecting that possibly some benighted
persons might suffer by this vengeance, we tied the scow—
(but of course on the wrong side the river)—and splattered
on. In half a mile, strange enough, we met a large party
of women and children, to whom we told what had happened
and what had been done with the scow: on which they
cordially thanked us, it being necessary for them to cross

the river, and in return assured us of a better road not very
far forward, and which led to “a preacher's” house, where
we should find a comfortable home and a welcome for the
night.

What the oasis of dry deserts is, all know; but the oasis
of waste woods and waters is—a clearing with its dry land
and sunlit opening. Such was now before us, not indeed
sunlit,—for the sun was long since set—such was before
us; and in the midst of a very extensive clearing was not
a cabin, but a veritable two-story house of hewn and squared
timbers, with a shingle roof, and smoke curling gracefully
upward from its stone chimney! Yes, and there were corn-cribs,
and smoke-house, and barn and out-houses of all sorts:
and removed some distance from all, was the venerable cabin
in a decline,—the rude shell of the family in its former
chrysalis state!

But our reception!—it was a balm and a cordial. We
found, not indeed the parade and elegant variety of the East,
but neat apartments, refreshing fire after the chill damps of
the forest, a parlour separate from the kitchen, and bedrooms
separate from both and from one another. There,
too, if memory serves right, were six pretty, innocent girls
—(no sons belonged to the family)—coarsely but properly
dressed; and who were all modest and respectful to their
elders and superiors—a very rare thing in the New Purchases,
and, since the reign of Intellect, a rarer thing than
formerly in most Old Purchase countries. The mere diffusion
of “knowledges,” without discipline of mind in their
attainment, is not so favourable to virtue and good manners
as Lyceum men think. Our six little girls were mainly
educated on Bible principles—living fortunately in that dark
age when every body's education was not managed by legislatures
and taxes. The law administered by irreligious
or infidel statesmen, or by selfish and sullen demagogues,
is always opposed to the Gospel.

No pains were spared by the whole family in our entertainment:
and all was done from benevolence, as if we
were children and relatives. The Rev. William Parsons
and his lady, our hosts, had never been in the East, or in
any other school of the Humanities; and yet with exceptions
of some prejudices, rather in favour, however, of the
West than against the East, this gentleman and lady both
beautifully exemplified the innate power of Christian principles
to make men not only kind and generous, but courteous
and polite.

In my dreams no oasis of this kind had appeared—yet
none is so truly lovely as that where religion makes the
desert and the wilderness blossom as the rose. I have
been much in the company of clergy and laity both, and in
many parts of the Union, and my settled belief in consequence
is, that the true ministers of the Gospel, in spite
of supposed characteristical faults and defects, and prejudiees,
are, as a class, decidedly the very best and noblest
of men.

We discovered that Mr. Parsons, like most located and
permanent pastors of a wooden country, received almost
literally nothing for ecclesiastical services. Nay, Mrs.
Parsons incidentally remarked to Mrs. C. that for seven
entire years she had never seen together ten dollars either
in notes or silver! Hence, although suspecting he would
refuse, and fearing that the offer might even distress him, I
could not but sincerely wish Mr. P. would accept pay for
our entertainment: and the offer was at last made in the
least awkward way possible. But in vain was every argument
employed by me, that decorum would allow, to
induce his acceptance—he utterly refused, only saying:—
“My dear young friend, pay it to some preacher of the
Gospel, and in the same way and spirit the present service
is rendered to you.” And here, in justice to ourselves,
we must be permitted to record that we did most gladly,

and on many more occasions than one, repay our debt to
Mr. Parsons in the way enjoined.

Formerly it was indeed rare, that any one in the Far
West, however poor, a ferryman or a tavern keeper, would
ask or take if offered, a cent for his services from any
man known as a preacher. True, the immunity existed
in a few places under a belief that preachers ought not to
expect or receive the smallest salary; and sometimes a
preacher was actually questioned on that point, and treated
according to his answer: but still in the primitive times,
especially of the New Purehase, the vast majority of
woodsmen would have indignantly scouted the thought of
demanding pay from a preacher, and that whether he received
a small stipend for his own services, or as was the
common case, nothing. Once a clerical friend of the
author's travelled nearly one thousand miles in woods and
prairies, and brought back in his inexpressibles-pocket, the
identical pecunia carried with him for expenses—viz. Fifty-Cents!
That, on leaving home, he had supposed would
be enough;—it proved too much!

During my Western sojourn, I was powerfully impressed
with the importance and necessity of forming a new Society;
nor has the notion been abandoned since leaving that
country. I have been indeed always deterred from making
the attempt, from its internal difficulty, from its entire novelty,
and a deep settled conviction of its great unpopularity
the moment it is announced. Indeed, I fear the thing
is wholly impracticable in an age when all kinds of public
instruction is gratuitous—and it is deemed enough to be
honoured with a hearing in public, and to hear the criticisms
of audiences that all know all things, and even
something to boot, as well and maybe a little better than
the literati themselves; but so much would my scheme, if
adopted, do to alleviate the great distresses, anxieties and
privations of many very worthy clergymen, that I will

venture to give a hint of the plan, even though I may deemed
a visionary. The Society I propose is to bear this title:—

“The-make-congregations-PAY-what-they-voluntarily-PROMISE-Society.”
For which I shall only now name one
reason—viz that most clergymen do perform all they ever
promise—and often a very great deal more. If the Society
is now ever formed by others, I must here once for all,
however, positively decline the honour of being one of the
travelling agents—I can stand some storms, but not all.

Certain wits sneer here, and reversing the Indian's remark,
say “poor preach—poor pay;” and please themselves
with drawing contrasts between the Western and
the Eastern styles of preaching. But take away libraries
from our preachers, take away the sympathy and the
applause; make such work, not with small and very often
incompetent stipends as is the case pretty generally here,
but with no salary whatever; make them work, chop wood,
plough, ride day after day, and night after night in dim,
perilous, endless wilds; bid them preach in the open air
or between two cabins, or in an open barn, or even barroom,
without notes or preparation, and all this weary,
sick, jaded; smoke and suffocate them in a cold, cheerless
day, with a fire not within but without the house, to which
the congregation repair during the sermon in committees
both for heat and gossip—do all this and we shall hear no
more of the contrast. And yet within those grand old
woods you shall often hear bursts of eloquence—stirring
appeals—strains of lofty poetry—ay, the thunderings of
resistless speech, that would move and entrance through all
their length and breadth the cushioned seats of our bedizzened
churches! True, as a whole, even such discourses
may not do to print. What then? Is a sermon the best
adapted to be spoken, always the best to be printed? Does
not the patent steam press squeeze the very life and soul
out of most sermons? Granted that the notes of a preacher

may be printed as the notes of a musician—still that
preacher himself must be present to make his notes speak
forth the latent sense—and if he find not the sense and
spirit there he expected—to put them there at the impulse
of the moment. The very Reverend Lord Bishop Baltimore—

“Mr. Carlton!—we are impatient to continue the search
for Glenville.”

Oh! yes—true—true!—advance we then to a new
chapter.