rds, "But in the night of death, hope sees
a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing," and,
"while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of a grander
day," there is a yearning for "the touch of a vanished hand," and a
hope that no philosophy could dispel of a reunion sometime and
somewhere with the loved and lost.

Two decades later, again "the veiled shadow stole upon the scene,"
and the sublime mystery of life and death was revealed. The awful
question, "If a man die shall he live again?" was answered, and to
the great agnostic _all was known._

XVII
A CAMP-MEETING ORATOR

PETER CARTWRIGHT, METHODIST PREACHER--HIS FEARLESSNESS AND ENERGY--
HIS OLD-FASHIONED ORTHODOXY--HOW HE CONVERTED A PROFANE SWEARER
--HIS ATTENDANCE AT A BALL--OLD-TIME CAMP-MEETINGS--CARTWRIGHT'S
AVERSION TO OTHER SECTS--CONVERSION OF A DESPERADO INTO A PENITENT
--CARTWRIGHT MR. LINCOLN'S COMPETITOR FOR REPRESENTATIVE--HIS SPEECH
AT A DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION.

The Rev. Peter Cartwright was a noted Methodist preacher of pioneer
days in Central Illinois. Once seen, he was a man never to be
forgotten. He was, in the most expressive sense of the words, _sui
generis;_ a veritable product of the times in which he lived,
and the conditions under which he moved and had his being. All in
all, his like will not appear again. He was converted when a mere
youth at a camp-meeting in southern Kentucky; soon after, he was
licensed to preach, and became a circuit rider in that State,
and later was of the Methodist vanguard to Illinois. It was said of
him that he was of the church _military_ as well as "the church
militant." He was of massive build, an utter stranger to fear,
and of unquestioned honesty and sincerity. He was gifted with
an eloquence adapted to the times in which he lived, and the
congregations to which he preached. There would be no place for
him now, for the untutored assemblages who listened with bated
breath to his fiery appeals are of the past.

"For, welladay! Their day is fled,
Old times are changed, old manners gone."

The narrative of his tough conflicts with the emissaries of Satan is
even now of the rarest reading for a summer's day or a winter's
night. How he fought the Indians, fought the robbers, swam rivers,
and threaded the prairies, in order that he might carry the Gospel
to the remotest frontiersmen, was of thrilling interest to many of
the new generation as his own sands were runni