While living there, at the solicitation of his neighbors, he held a
debate with a Universalist preacher, to the satisfaction of his friends
and the discomfiture of his opponent.

Many parts of the Plains were covered with water, and were musical with
frogs in the spring, but in hot weather they dried up, leaving here and
there a stagnant pond. I have heard father tell how one of his neighbors
tried to break a field by beginning on the outside, and plowing farther
in as the land dried up. But the snakes and frogs grew thicker and
thicker, as he neared the center. At length the grass seemed almost
alive with snakes, and his big ox-team became wild with fright, and ran
away, and he could not get them back there again.

Of course, such a country was unhealthful, and father's family was much
troubled with sickness. His parents both died; my mother was nearly worn
out with the ague; and he not only suffered from poor general health,
but from a sore throat, and had to quit preaching. He moved to Sullivan,
but without any permanent benefit to his health. He did not at that time
attribute his sore throat entirely to the climate, but thought it a
chronic derangement that would utterly unfit him for a preacher. Many
years afterward he wrote of that disappointment as follows: "For five
years I saw myself sitting idly by the wayside, hopeless and
discouraged. I felt somewhat like a traveler, parched with thirst, on a
wide and weary desert, who sees the mirage of green trees and springs of
cool water that has mocked his vision, slowly fade away out of his
sight. So seemed to perish my castles in the air. At that time making
proclamation of the ancient gospel was too vigorous a work, and too full
of hardship and exposure to be undertaken by any except those possessing
stalwart good health. If I had been predestinated to the life I have