I visited an old woman, who told me that soon after she was married some one lent her Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, and that it was the means of the conversion of herself and her husband; that he had died happily some years ago, but she had never been able to get a copy of the book since. I then presented her with one, and she wept for joy. I asked her if she had a Bible; she said, “No;” that they had a Bible when her husband died, but some time after a little school was opened in the neighborhood, and she wanted her four little boys taught to read, but had no books nor any way to get them, and she had to cut her Bible into four parts to make each of them a book, and they soon went to pieces, and she lost her Bible. I then gave her a Bible, and her joy seemed complete.

On another occasion I sent a notice that I would be at a little church in a certain neighborhood to aid them in organizing a Sabbath-school, and to supply the destitute with books. After exhorting for some time, and arranging for the Sabbath-school, I distributed all my stock, and was about to leave.

A young woman came up to me, having just reached the place, and asked me for a book. I told her I had given away all that I had brought with me. She burst into tears, and said, “I left my babe, three weeks old, in the field where my husband was hoeing corn, and walked five miles in my bare feet to get a book; and now I am disappointed.” In a few minutes an old woman who had seen seventy winters came to me with a crutch under one arm, and a cane in the other hand, and told me she had come two miles to get books for her sons, who were raising large families over the mountains, that were as wild as the deers. I returned soon, and gave the necessary supply.

One day a man entered my room wearing a hunting-shirt and moccasins, with a gun in his hand and a long knife hanging to a belt at his side, and asked me if I was the man that gave books to the poor people in the mountains. I told him I was engaged in that business. “Well,” said he, “we live in an out of the way place, where we have neither schools nor preaching; and we met together last Sunday to see if we could not raise a Sunday-school, and teach our children to read, but all the books we could find was one New Testament; and some one said there was a man in F—— that was giving books to the poor, and so I have come to see you about it.” I gave him all the light I could as to forming and conducting a Sunday-school, and added twenty Testaments, with fifty small volumes of Tract Society books, and some tracts. He soon had them all in the bosom of his hunting shirt, and I have seldom seen a happier man.

The next Sabbath the school was started. In six months a church was organized, and soon after a little church built, and a man of God was preaching to them once each month. That bosom full of books was the means God blessed to this result.

On another occasion I stopped over night with a good man, who related to me the following fact.

“A few years ago a minister came to my house late on Saturday night on his way to preach at L——, about thirty miles distant. Finding he could not reach the place in time to meet his appointment, he told me if I would gather in my neighbors, he would preach for us. There were but a few families in all this valley, and so far as I knew, he was the first preacher that ever had been in it, at least he preached the first sermon. I sent my boys out and gathered in my neighbors. At the close of his sermon he gave every one a tract. Among the rest he gave one to a poor widow with a large family, but neither she nor any one of her children knew a letter. She took it home with her without any knowledge of its contents.

“The next morning she returned and requested my wife to read it to her, which she did. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘it is a nice thing to read; I do wish I could do it.’ She took the tract home, and returned the next day to have it read again; and during the reading, the tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Oh,’ said she to my wife, ‘do you think I could learn to read?’ ‘Yes,’ she said to her, ‘no doubt you can.’ So my wife got a New England primer we had, and went over the letters a few times with her. She took home both the primer and the tract. The next morning she returned again, and while the tract was reading, her face was lit up with joy, and peace came into her soul. In a few hours she was able to repeat the alphabet. ‘And now,’ said she, ‘if you will only learn me how to put two of them together, and give them a name, I can learn myself.’ This was soon done; and as soon as she went home, she taught her children all she had learned. In a few months she and her children could read all that was in the primer. We have now a good church here, and she and most of her children are members of it. She seldom sees a tract but with tears of joy she exclaims, ‘If it had not been for one of these little tracts, I and my children might have remained in ignorance and sin.’”

One of the great difficulties I had to encounter was the large number of families that could not read. These I found every day. When I would show my books and urge them to buy, the reply was, “Oh, none of us can’t read.” I soon saw the necessity of planning some means to remedy this evil, and began to establish little Sunday-schools in each neighborhood. I would hunt up the best reader I could find for a teacher, furnish them with a small library of books, give them the best direction I could how to conduct it, and set them to work. Although some of these schools were very superficially conducted, and in many cases there was nothing done in them but teaching young and old to read, still they had the effect of rousing the mind to the acquisition of knowledge, and preparing the way of the Lord. Many of these schools accomplished great things, and resulted in the establishing of little churches. Others seemed to fail, except so far as they woke in the minds of some a thirst for knowledge.

Some families I could not prevail on to take a book as a gift, for fear there was some trick about it. Clock pedlars had been through some portions of the country a while before, sold the cheap clocks at thirty dollars apiece, and took notes for the pay, which had been collected in many cases by distress-sales. They would tell me how they had been treated, and that they were afraid I should send some one for the pay. I often avoided this objection by lending the book, and writing on it, “Loaned till I call for it.”

Another great difficulty we had to encounter with these unlettered masses was their prejudice against education. Almost every day I had to meet this objection: “Oh, I don’t want my children learned to read; it will spoil them. I have got along very well without reading, and so can they.”