Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/43



REMINISCENCES 35

people had emigrated from the Carolinass and they were Covenanters. With the Mumfords, Cathcarts, Stormonts and! Campbells they came to southern Illinois, where they settled. They were all of the old type of God-fearing, law-abiding, Sabbath-observing Scotch. So strict were they that no work was done by man or beast on the Sab- bath day. All food for Sunday was prepared on Saturday and no recreation or amusement was allowed on Sunday. We lived at Sparta for about seven years and went to church at a little settlement called Eden, a mile east of Sparta. There were two churches there both covenanters; one of the Old Light Church and the other the New Light Church. We went to the Old Light Church, of which Rev. Wiley was the pastor.

"When I was a boy a man named Adams came to Sparta and started a saddler's shop. He was a hard worker and a good saddler, but it was whispered around the community that he was a Freemason. He apparently could not decide which church to go to and so stayed in his shop on Sundays and played the flute. Being a Freemason was bad enough, not going to church was worse, but playing a flute on the Sabbath was considered the height of iniquity or the depth of deprav- ity, whichever way you want to put it. At any rate he was pointed out as an awful example and it was thought by all the old covenanters that hell was yawning for him. I was a little chap and one day he asked me to carry in some wood for him and he paid me well for it. I never could be convinced after that that he was altogether a bad man.

"A child's recollections are peculiar. The big and vital things are frequently forgotten while some trifling incident is remembered. My earliest recollection is of getting a clasp knife, one with a strong spring, and shutting it. It nearly cut off my second finger on my left hand and though that was nearly 80 years ago, the scar is still plain today. The next thing I remember was the talk in our family of Queen Victoria being crowned Queen of England. The next thing I remem- ber was the excitement in our family and among the neighbors by a report of Lovejoy's Free Press newspaper at Alton, Ills., being mobbed and his place destroyed. One thing that stands