n that
part of Illinois known as the Military Tract, during the three preceding
years; but my residence was in Cedar County, Iowa, one hundred and fifty
miles from my field of labor, and twenty-six miles to the northwest of
the city of Davenport. I had been employed for one year in Iowa as a
co-laborer with Bro. N. A. McConnell; but the church at Davenport, which
was the strongest and richest church in the Cooperation, determined to
sustain a settled pastor, and this left the churches too poor to support
two preachers, and I was left to find another field of labor.

When I first came to Cedar County I came simply as a farmer; and there
were but nine families in the township in which we settled. But when the
country came to be settled up the result was not favorable to the
expectation that we should have prosperous churches in that region.
Those who have watched the progress of the temperance reform in Iowa
have noticed that, while the prohibitory law is enforced almost
throughout the State, there are yet exceptions in the cities of
Davenport and Muscatine and the adjacent counties. Here the law is set
at defiance. This is owing to the presence of a German,
lager-beer-drinking, law-defying population, Godless and Christless,
and that turn the Lord's day into a holiday. This tendency had begun
to be apparent before I left Iowa.

When it became manifest that I could not any longer find a field of
labor in Southeastern Iowa, I was recommended to the churches in the
counties of Schuyler and Brown, in the Military Tract, Illinois.

My first introduction among them was dramatic, if, indeed, we could give
to an incident almost frivolous and laughable, the dignity of a dramatic
incident; and yet the matter had a serious side to it. I had been
commended by Bro. Bates, editor of the _Iowa Christian Evangelist_, to
the church at Rushville, where I held a meeting of days. The meetings
grew in interest, there were some important additions, and the church
was greatly revived. Twelve miles from Rushville was the town of Ripley,
a small village, where the people were engaged in the business of
manufacturing pottery ware. Here two Second Adventist preachers, a Mr.
Chapman and his wife, were holding forth. This Mr. Chapman was a devout,
pious, and earnest man, and a good exhorter, and had an unfaltering
faith that the Lord was immediately to appear. But his wife was the
smartest one in the family. She was fluent and voluble. She had an