that:
his muscles were toughened already. He learned what it was sometimes to
eat his dinner in the fields, warming it, maybe, on the coals of a
stump set on fire near his brake; to bale his hemp at nightfall and
follow the slide or wagon to the barn; there to wait with the negroes
till it was weighed on the steelyards; and at last, with muscles stiff
and sore, throat husky with dust, to stride away rapidly over the
bitter darkening land to other work awaiting him at home.

Had there been call to do this before the war, it might not have been
done. But now men young and old, who had never known what work was,
were replacing their former slaves. The preexisting order had indeed
rolled away like a scroll; and there was the strange fresh universal
stir of humanity over the land like the stir of nature in a boundless
wood under a new spring firmament He was one of a multitude of new
toilers; but the first in his neighborhood, and alone in his grim
choice of work.

So dragged that winter through. When spring returned, he did better.
With his father's approval, he put in some acres for himself--sowed it,
watched it, prayed for it; in summer cut it; with hired help stacked it
in autumn; broke it himself the winter following; sold it the next
spring; and so found in his pocket the sorely coveted money.

This was increased that summer from the sale of cord wood, through
driblets saved by his father and mother; and when, autumn once more
advanced with her days of shadow and thoughtfulness--two years having
now passed--he was in possession of his meagre fortune, wrung out of
earth, out of sweat and strength and devotion.

Only a few days remained now before his leaving for the
university--very solemn tender days about the house with his father and
mother.

And now for the lad's own sake, as for the clearer guidance of those
who may care to understand what so incredibly befell him afterward, an
attempt must be made to reveal somewhat of his spiritual life during
those two years. It was this, not hard work, that writ his history.

As soon as he had made up his mind to study for the ministry, he had
begun to read his Bible absorbingly, sweeping through that primitive
dawn of life among the Hebrews and that second, brilliant one of the
Christian era. He had few other books, none important; he knew nothing
of modern theology or modern science. Thus he was brought wholly under
the influence of that view of Man's place in Nature w