audience at large, and terrible convulsions among the more nervous and
excitable. We hear sometimes of a whole congregation prostrated as by
a hurricane, flinging their limbs about in furious contortions, with
wild outcries. To this day some of the survivors of that period insist
that it was the spirit of the Almighty, and nothing less, that thus
manifested itself. The minister, however, did not always share in the
delirium of his hearers. Governor Reynolds tells us of a preacher in
Sangamon County, who, before his sermon, had set a wolf-trap in view
from his pulpit. In the midst of his exhortations his keen eyes saw
the distant trap collapse, and he continued in the same intonation
with which he had been preaching, "Mind the text, brethren, till I go
kill that wolf!" With all the failings and eccentricities of this
singular class of men, they did a great deal of good, and are entitled
to especial credit among those who conquered the wilderness. The
emotions they excited did not all die away in the shouts and
contortions of the meeting. Not a few of the cabins in the clearings
were the abode of a fervent religion and an austere morality. Many a
traveler, approaching a rude hut in the woods in the gathering
twilight, distrusting the gaunt and silent family who gave him an
unsmiling welcome, the bare interior, the rifles and knives
conspicuously displayed, has felt his fears vanish when he sat down to
supper, and the master of the house, in a few fervent words, invoked
the blessing of heaven on the meal.

There was very little social intercourse; a visit was a serious
matter, involving the expenditure of days of travel. It was the custom
among families, when the longing for the sight of kindred faces was
too strong to withstand, to move in a body to the distant settlement
where their relatives lived and remain with them for months at a time.
The claims of consanguinity were more regarded than now. Almost the