Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/50

Rh ing on an upper stair, resting his arms upon the desk, and with his hand to his ear listening to the services from beginning to end. In the east part of the town was a farmer named James Gilchrist, a Scotch Irishman, weighing not less than two hundred and fifty pounds, and the father of four grown sons who were his equals in weight, and all of them of great strength. Gilchrist abandoned the Sunday meetings and when Mr. Damon asked him for his reason he said he wouldn’t have his religion strained through old Puffer Kimball.

This same Gilchrist had had a controversy ending in a slander suit with Mr. Damon’s predecessor, the Rev. Timothy Flint. Mr. Flint was a man of recognized ability, a good preacher, but erratic in his ways. For some purpose not well understood, he built a furnace in the cellar of his house. His friends maintained that he was engaged in scientific experiments, and such was his purpose, no doubt, but his enemies and the more ignorant of the community assumed that his plan was to coin money. One day, in a store kept by Mr. Cunningham, (the grandfather or great-grandfather of Gen. James Cunningham,) Gilchrist exhibited a coin and said: “Here is a dollar that Tim Flint made.” Flint returned the challenge with a suit, which I think was adjusted without a trial, but the controversy contributed to the dissolution of the settlement. Flint left the town to which he returned once in my boyhood and preached a sermon in the new meetinghouse, that had been substituted for the old one used in the days of Zabdiel Adams, of Timothy Flint, and David Damon.

After leaving Lunenburg Flint went with his family to the valley of the Mississippi, and led the life of a wanderer, floating down the river with his family and making his way back as best he might. In these expeditions children were born