blues, and when they came together for amusement they made the most of their opportunities, and plunged into the most violent sports, which were not always kept within the bounds of propriety. Churches were as scarce as schools, and until the Methodist circuit riders made their appearance in the West, the people were little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal freedom was kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal accountability. They were generous and improvident, frank, fearless, easy-going, and filled with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey clothes, their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough faces. They would have been miserable in a city mansion, but they were lords and kings in their log-cabins. To have sent a preacher bred in the learned schools of New England to such a people would have been folly. The smooth cadences, the polished gestures, and, above all, the manuscript sermon of a Boston divine, would have disgusted the men and women of the frontier. What cared they for predestination or free-will, or for any of the dogmas of the schools? They wanted to hear the simple, fundamental truths of the Gospel, and they wanted to hear them from a man of their own stamp. They wanted a "fire and brimstone" preacher, one whose fiery eloquence could stir the very depths of their souls, and set their simple imaginations all ablaze; one who could shout and sing with true Western abandon; who could preach in his shirt-sleeves, sleep with them on the bare ground, brave all the dangers of a frontier life, and, if necessary, thrash any one who dared to insult him. Such was the man for these sturdy, simple Western folk, and such a man they found in Peter Cartwright.
Peter went at the task before him with a will. The country being sparsely settled, people had to travel a long way to get to church, and it became a matter of expediency for the clergy to hold religious gatherings at stated points, and to continue them for several days, so that those who desired to attend might be able to avoid the necessity of going home every