God brings
me as near heaven as I shall ever be in the flesh.

It was a common thing with me, when I came home from meeting, to get up
one of my own by gathering the children together and preaching to them
the sermons I had heard; and while these were not verbally correct,
there was in them the substance of what the preachers had delivered. I
would sing and pray, and go through the whole performance. I improvised
a little pulpit, and had a church after my own notion; I was a great
plagiarist, and in this, too, I copied after some others.

I attended the first Sunday-school I ever heard of; it was conducted by
Floyd Wellman, a gentleman who afterwards became a prominent and
honored citizen of Louisville. Sunday-schools were then poor things, as
I fear many of them are yet. Little question-books, with the answers
supplied, and reading-books, mostly about angelic boys and girls who
died of early piety, furnished the staple of our reading, while but
little of the Scriptures was taught, or thought about.

To chew tobacco seemed to me to be manly; so to let the people see I
was thus far developed, I prepared me a rough twist of "long green;"
this I stuck in my pantaloons pocket, for the occasion, and when
everything was propitious in the Sunday-school, I drew out the twist
and bit off a "chaw." It raised quite a laugh, in which the
superintendent himself joined; and this ended for life my chewing
tobacco to be seen of men.

I often went with my parents to "love feast." At the first of these
which I attended I had an experience of my own. The light-bread was cut
into slips about two inches long and a half an inch wide and thick.
Some of these were then divided into small pieces. On the plate which
was passed around were two long pieces, and I concluded that if there
was any virtue in the thing it would be enhanced by my taking a long
one; but when I discovered that all the rest had taken but a bite my
philosophy failed, and I hid the remainder where Rachel hid the gods of
her father Laban.

When about fifteen years of age the Methodists had a big revival at
Mount Tabor, a neighboring country church. In this meeting a great many
of my friends and companions were "getting religion" at the altar of
prayer. I became intensely desirous of the same blessing, and in great
anxiety and hopefulness I went to the altar. Day after day did I go,
but only to be disappointed. Every time some would "get through," and
there would be gre