Whatever is incredible in this story is true. The tale I have to
tell will seem strange to those who know little of the social life of
the West at the beginning of this century. These sharp contrasts of
corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild
revivals; these contacts of highwayman and preacher; this _mélange_
of picturesque simplicity, grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of
abandoned wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those
who know the country now. But the books of biography and
reminiscence which preserve the memory of that time more than justify
what is marvelous in these pages.
Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where my
grandfather--brave old Indian-fighter!--had defended his family in a
block-house built in a wilderness by his own hands, I grew up
familiar with this strange wild life. At the age when other children
hear fables and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with
traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen. Instead of
imaginary giant-killers, children then heard of real Indian-slayers;
instead of Blue-Beards, we had Murrell and his robbers; instead of
Little Red Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring
adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with wild beasts
on the very road we traveled to school. In many households the old
customs still held sway; the wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut
and made up in the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting,
apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet fallen into disuse.
In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor the hunter is
the center-piece, but the circuit-rider. More than any one else, the
early circuit preachers brought order out of this chaos. In no other
class was the real heroic element so finely displayed. How do I
remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the old preachers,
whose constitutions had conquered starvation and exposure--who had
survived swamps, alligators, Indians, highway robbers and bilious
fevers! How was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of rude
experience--how was my imagination wrought upon by the recital of
their hair-breadth escapes! How was my heart set afire by their
contagious religious enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I
bestrode the saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the
heavy burden of emulating their toils! Surely I have a right to
celebrate them, since they came so near being the death of me.
It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men without
enthusiasm. But nothing has been further from my mind than the
glorifying of a sect. If I were capable of sectarian pride, I should
not come upon the platform of Christian union* to display it. There
are those, indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I have
frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of early Methodism.
I beg they will remember the solemn obligations of a novelist to tell
the truth. Lawyers and even ministers are permitted to speak
entirely on one side. But no man is worthy to be called a novelist
who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce the higher form
of history, by writing truly of men as they are, and dispassionately
of those forms of life that come within his scope.
* "The Circuit Rider" originally appeared as a serial in _The
Christian Union_.
Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie, I could not
treat the early religious life of the West otherwise than with the
most cordial sympathy and admiration. And yet this is not a
"religious novel," one in which all the bad people are as bad as they
can be, and all the good people a little better than they can be. I
have not even asked myself what may be the "moral." The story of any
true life is wholesome, if only the writer will tell it simply,
keeping impertinent preachment of his own out of the way.
Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with some good people by
confessing in the start that, from the first chapter to the last,
this is a love-story. But it is not my fault. It is God who made
love so universal that no picture of human life can be complete where
love is left out.