It was a very earnest discussion, and the Bible was on both sides; but I
followed the lead of my church, which taught me to be silent. He quoted
his preachers, who were in league with him, to get me to give myself to
the Lord, help them save souls, by calling on men everywhere to repent;
but I was obstinate. I would not get religion, would not preach, would
not live in the house with his mother, and stayed with my own. His
younger brothers came regularly to me for lessons with my sister, and I
added two idiotic children bound to his sister's husband, to whose
darkened minds I found the key hidden from other teachers. His brothers
I adopted from the first, in place of the one I had lost, and they
repaid my love in kind; but books soon appeared as an entering wedge
between their souls and religion, which formed the entire mental pabulum
of the family.

I believe there was not at that time a member of the Pittsburg
Conference who was a college graduate, few who had even a good, common
school education, while two of those who preached in our meetinghouse
and were frequent guests in the family, were unable to read.

My husband's father was old and feeble, and had devised his property to
his wife, to be divided at her death between her sons. My husband, as
her agent, would come into possession of the whole, and they thought I
might object to the "prophet's chamber;" but it required no worldly
motive to stimulate these fiery zealots to save a sinner from the toils
of Calvinism. It is probable many of them would have laid down his life
for his religion, and when they got on the track of a sinner, they
pursued him as eagerly as ever an English parson did a fox, but it was
to save, not to kill. In these hot pursuits, they did not stand on
ceremony, and in my case, found a subject that would not run. My kith
and kin had died at the stake, bearing testimony against popery and