I visited an old woman, who told me that soon after she was married
some one lent her Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the
Soul, and that it was the means of the conversion of herself and her
husband; that he had died happily some years ago, but she had never
been able to get a copy of the book since. I then presented her with
one, and she wept for joy. I asked her if she had a Bible; she said,
“No;” that they had a Bible when her husband died, but some time after
a little school was opened in the neighborhood, and she wanted her four
little boys taught to read, but had no books nor any way to get them,
and she had to cut her Bible into four parts to make each of them a
book, and they soon went to pieces, and she lost her Bible. I then gave
her a Bible, and her joy seemed complete.
On another occasion I sent a notice that I would be at a little church
in a certain neighborhood to aid them in organizing a Sabbath-school,
and to supply the destitute with books. After exhorting for some time,
and arranging for the Sabbath-school, I distributed all my stock, and
was about to leave.
A young woman came up to me, having just reached the place, and asked
me for a book. I told her I had given away all that I had brought with
me. She burst into tears, and said, “I left my babe, three weeks old,
in the field where my husband was hoeing corn, and walked five miles
in my bare feet to get a book; and now I am disappointed.” In a few
minutes an old woman who had seen seventy winters came to me with a
crutch under one arm, and a cane in the other hand, and told me she
had come two miles to get books for her sons, who were raising large
families over the mountains, that were as wild as the deers. I returned
soon, and gave the necessary supply.
One day a man entered my room wearing a hunting-shirt and moccasins,
with a gun in his hand and a long knife hanging to a belt at his side,
and asked me if I was the man that gave books to the poor people in the
mountains. I told him I was engaged in that business. “Well,” said
he, “we live in an out of the way place, where we have neither schools
nor preaching; and we met together last Sunday to see if we could not
raise a Sunday-school, and teach our children to read, but all the
books we could find was one New Testament; and some one said there was
a man in F---- that was giving books to the poor, and so I have come
to see you about it.” I gave him all the light I could as to forming
and conducting a Sunday-school, and added twenty Testaments, with fifty
small volumes of Tract Society books, and some tracts. He soon had them
all in the bosom of his hunting shirt, and I have seldom seen a happier
man.
The next Sabbath the school was started. In six months a church was
organized, and soon after a little church built, and a man of God was
preaching to them once each month. That bosom full of books was the
means God blessed to this result.
On another occasion I stopped over night with a good man, who related
to me the following fact.
“A few years ago a minister came to my house late on Saturday night
on his way to preach at L----, about thirty miles distant. Finding he
could not reach the place in time to meet his appointment, he told me
if I would gather in my neighbors, he would preach for us. There were
but a few families in all this valley, and so far as I knew, he was the
first preacher that ever had been in it, at least he preached the first
sermon. I sent my boys out and gathered in my neighbors. At the close
of his sermon he gave every one a tract. Among the rest he gave one to
a poor widow with a large family, but neither she nor any one of her
children knew a letter. She took it home with her without any knowledge
of its contents.
“The next morning she returned and requested my wife to read it to
her, which she did. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘it is a nice thing to read; I
do wish I could do it.’ She took the tract home, and returned the next
day to have it read again; and during the reading, the tears ran down
her cheeks. ‘Oh,’ said she to my wife, ‘do you think I could learn to
read?’ ‘Yes,’ she said to her, ‘no doubt you can.’ So my wife got a
New England primer we had, and went over the letters a few times with
her. She took home both the primer and the tract. The next morning she
returned again, and while the tract was reading, her face was lit up
with joy, and peace came into her soul. In a few hours she was able to
repeat the alphabet. ‘And now,’ said she, ‘if you will only learn me
how to put two of them together, and give them a _name_, I can learn
myself.’ This was soon done; and as soon as she went home, she taught
her children all she had learned. In a few months she and her children
could read all that was in the primer. We have now a good church here,
and she and most of her children are members of it. She seldom sees
a tract but with tears of joy she exclaims, ‘If it had not been for
one of these little tracts, I and my children might have remained in
ignorance and sin.’”
One of the great difficulties I had to encounter was the large number
of families that could not read. These I found every day. When I
would show my books and urge them to buy, the reply was, “_Oh, none
of us can’t read._” I soon saw the necessity of planning some means
to remedy this evil, and began to establish little Sunday-schools in
each neighborhood. I would hunt up the best reader I could find for a
teacher, furnish them with a small library of books, give them the best
direction I could how to conduct it, and set them to work. Although
some of these schools were very superficially conducted, and in many
cases there was nothing done in them but teaching young and old to
read, still they had the effect of rousing the mind to the acquisition
of knowledge, and preparing the way of the Lord. Many of these schools
accomplished great things, and resulted in the establishing of little
churches. Others seemed to fail, except so far as they woke in the
minds of some a thirst for knowledge.
Some families I could not prevail on to take a book as a gift, for fear
there was some trick about it. Clock pedlars had been through some
portions of the country a while before, sold the cheap clocks at thirty
dollars apiece, and took notes for the pay, which had been collected
in many cases by distress-sales. They would tell me how they had been
treated, and that they were afraid I should send some one for the pay.
I often avoided this objection by lending the book, and writing on it,
“Loaned till I call for it.”
Another great difficulty we had to encounter with these unlettered
masses was their prejudice against education. Almost every day I had to
meet this objection: “Oh, I don’t want my children learned to read; it
will spoil them. I have got along very well without reading, and so can
they.”