Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/86

78 Polk, an obscure Tennesseean, over Clay, the great statesman and orator of Kentucky.



My father had a little pamphlet of sixty odd pages which he prized very highly, and brought it to Oregon. My mother kept it among her keepsakes for more than sixty years, until she passed away, November 4, 1912, in her 97th year. The inscription on the front page reads as follows:

He quotes from the Prophets and some from the New Testament, frequently from the writings of Paul, and from other noted writers and commentators on the scriptures and religious subjects. He comments extensively and ably on all the sentences he copied as texts, and makes a very plausible argument in favor of universal salvation of all mankind. My father often argued with orthodox preachers, proving by the Bible, to his satisfaction, that the Bible does not teach or does not mean hell and damnation for lost sinners. According to my understanding it does threaten such punishment. But I hope and believe that the writers of such statements were mistaken. I have more confidence in the justice and good sense of the Lord, or God, or Universal Intelligence, than the men had who wrote such things.



In 1851 our family started to Oregon. In Benton County, Indiana, about thirty miles west of Lafayette, my father's oldest brother, James, resided. We stopped there for a short visit and then concluded to settle and give up the journey to Oregon. My father located on a claim, in the wide prairie, near Parish Grove, where he had to haul his firewood sixteen miles. We lived there one winter and summer. I went to Lafayette, when 16 years old, and worked several months in a brick yard at 25 cents a day. I got only a few dollars of my pay and went back in the winter to try to collect the balance. I got about thirty pounds of brown sugar, which