From Lagrange to Lindley, continued. In a murderers bed.
Maple sugar. Philosophy and Morality. Dr. Elmore shot. More
philosophizing. Firsts. Baptist College. Pikes Peak or Hell.
I got up early and took a walk, (the weather had moderated) to see
the world. I felt just a little bit homesick. The next evening we
stopped for the night at a large public house and they put me in a
large upper room where a murderer had slept the night before. I
slept. Here let me state this was not the only time I was the next
to sleep in a bed where a murderer had slept. A few years after
this, during the awful war of the rebellion, I was late in the night
getting into the City of Vincennes, Indiana and called a hotel for a
bed. I was told there was but one empty bed, and it had just been
vacated by a murderer. He became uneasy and left; the officers in
pursuit of him came to the hotel, and searched his bed, but he was
gone. I said to the landlord, "Do you suppose the officers will come
back to search that bed again?" He said he supposed not. I told him
that I would occupy it. The bed was still warm. I have seen, boys,
about as much of the world as I want to see. I would not go fifty
miles to see the Rocky Mountains or the Jerusalem that now is.
The third night we staid with a farmer who, that very night, has a
maple sugar stirring off, and we had a good time, but the horse I
rode was so tall he could not get through the stable door and he had
to be tied out all night. The next day we arrived at Lindley, where
I made my headquarters for almost five years.
But before I proceed with the story of my life chronologically, let
me philosophize and moralize a little as suggested to me by my own
experience in both young life and old life.
What, from a worldly, physical, selfish stand point, do you
consider,