? I never got further than the multiplication-table, though I
am a friend to education. My name is Olive Eastman. What's yourn?"

"Jasper."

"You don't? One of the old patriarchs, like. Well, I live this way--you
go _that_. 'Tain't more'n half a mile to Crawford's--close to the
meetin'-'ouse. Mebby you'll preach there, and I'll hear ye. Glad I met
ye now, and to see who you be. They call me Aunt Olive sometimes, and
sometimes Aunt Indiana. I settled Pigeon Creek, or husband and I did. He
was kind o' weakly; he's gone now, and I live all alone. I'd be glad to
have you come over and preach at the 'ouse, though I might not believe a
word on't. I'm a Methody; most people are Baptist down here, like the
Linkuns, but we is all ready to listen to a Tunker. People are only
responsible for what they know; and there are some good people among the
Tunkers, I've hern tell. Now don't go off into some by-path into the
woods. Tom Lincoln he see a bear there the other day, but he wouldn't
'a' shot it if it had been an elephant with tusks of ivory and gold.
Some folks haven't no calculation. The Lincolns hain't. Good-by."

The Tunker was a middle-aged man of probably forty-five or more years.
He had a benevolent face, large, sympathetic eyes, and a patriarchal
beard. His garments had hooks instead of buttons. He carried a leather
bag in which were a Bible and a hymn-book, some German works of
Zinzendorf, and his cobbling-tools. We can not wonder that the boy
stared after him. He would have looked oddly anywhere.

My reader may not know who a Tunker was, as our wandering schoolmaster
was called. A Tunker, or Dunker, was one of a sect of German Baptists or
Quakers, who were formerly very numerous in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The
order numbered at one time some thirty thousand souls. They called
themselves Brethren, but were commonly known as "Tunkards," or
"Dunkards," from a German word meaning to _dip_. At their baptisms they
dip the body of a convert three times; and so in their own land they
received the name of Tunkers, or _dippers_, and this name followed them
into Holland and to America. A large number of the Brethren settled in
Germantown, Pa. Thence they wandered into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,
preaching and teaching and doing useful work. Like the Quakers, they
have now nearly disappeared.

Their doctrines were peculiar, but their lives were unselfish and pure,
and their influence blameless. They believed in being led by the i