o account.

A few years ago I tried to recall the number of weddings, and I got
up among the hundreds, and got lost and gave it up. And I am sure
that the funerals were as many or more than the weddings. As a
matter of fact I always had many calls to weddings and funerals. I
have married all kinds of people, of various ages, nationalities and
religions. Among them octogenarians, negroes, and Mormon. Some had
been married from one to five times before. But I never hear of but
two couples who, after I had married them, were divorced. Nor did I
every marry any that had been divorced.

I have preached the funerals of many, Saints and sinners, people of
various ages, nationalities and creeds. I have baptized believers
ranging from nine to seventy-two years of age.

Although I have been preaching for over fifty years, my preaching has
been usually on Sundays. I was a Sunday preacher. I never gave
myself wholly to preaching for a livelihood. Yet, except the last
ten or twelve years, I have missed but few Sundays.

---0---

C H A P T E R S E V E N

Prof Ficklin. Geometry. Bethany, Vir. Ordination. First
convert. First funeral. First wedding.

On the 15th day of March, 1859 I was asked how old I was. I replied
'Ego sum viginti unum.' You see at that very time I was attending
Prof. Ficklin's High School in Trenton, Missouri, and I tried to put
into practice my Latin. My studies at that school were Latin,
Astronomy and Geometry. Geometry was my favorite study and I was
happy to have Joseph Ficklin as my teacher, for he was one of the
best mathematicians in the world. The books in the library on
Mathematics alone covered all of one end of his study. He became the
author of a series of text books on mathematics from a book on mental
arithmetic to a book on Trigonometry and calculus.

As well as I loved geometry I had to leave school before I finished
it. Like many another poor boy, my money gave out. The hardest
practical geometrical problem that ever came to me in after life was
this: I wished to divide a piece of land which in shape was a
trapezoid. This trapezoid had two right angles, and the parallel
sides were respectively 170 and 120 rods in length. The shorter of
the other two sides was 160 rods in length. Now the question was, at
what point in the line of the side 160 rods in length should a line
start, running parallel with the parallel sides of the land to the
opposite side, s