practical man, and prefers the practical questions of
theology to those merely theoretical. He is as little like the typical
parson as one can imagine, and yet he is one whose place will be hard to
fill when he is gone, and whose works will live in the grateful memory
of those whom his counsel has saved from sin, and his sympathy
encouraged to continue in the path of duty.

CHAPTER XXXII.

PETER CARTWRIGHT.

One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is PETER
CARTWRIGHT, the "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial
labors have passed over his head, and yet he still continues in the
field in which he has done such good service, and retains all the
popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.

He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of September, 1785.
His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his mother
was an orphan. Shortly after the close of the war, the Cartwrights
removed from Virginia to Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken
wilderness. The journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the
Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family reached
their destination in safety. For two years they lived on a rented farm
in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of that time removed to what
was called the Green River Country, and settled in Logan County, nine
miles south of Russellville, the county seat, and within one mile of the
State line of Tennessee.

The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's childhood and
youth were passed was the very last place one Would have cared to bring
up a candidate for the ministry. It was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was
thickly settled with fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union.
They actually constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the district,
and when the respectable citizens sought to bring them to justice they
readily "swore each other clear," and thus set the law at defiance. They
carried on such a course of outrage and violence that the respectable
citizens were at length compelled to combine for defence against them by
means of an organization known as the Regulators. Several fierce
encounters took place between the desperadoes and the Regulators, in
which many lives were lost, before the supremacy of the law was
established.

"When my lather settled in Logan County," says Mr. Cartwright, "there
was not a newspaper printed South of Green River