hands in giving fertility to its valley, and the geographers have
unanimously agreed to strike the "Great American Desert" from the map of
the United States. Sister Shields has grown up since these old days to
be a woman, then a widow, and now a true yoke-fellow with her father in
these great undertakings.

Bro. Lewis Brockman was pointed out to me, when first I came to Mt.
Sterling, as a disaffected member; but, on a better acquaintance, it
became apparent that his disaffection was that the church members had
made a solemn vow to keep the ordinances of the Lord's house, and did
not do it. When better order was obtained, he was once more in harmony
with the church; came to Atchison County, Kansas, and died, a pattern of
fidelity to his conscience and to every known duty.

During the period of three years in which I remained preaching in the
Military Tract, I visited almost all its churches. The number of
disciples was large. They had a large amount of wealth at their
disposal, and were not averse to using it to promote the advancement of
the cause. But the children of this world are, in their generation,
wiser than the children of light, and there is a certain practical
wisdom that has been abundantly learned by other religious communities
that has only come to our churches through a sore and bitter experience;
and it was through the fire of this experience they were passing at the
time of which we write. "Billy Brown" had been a notable evangelist
among them. Indeed, he had been the father in the gospel of the churches
in Brown and Schuyler Counties. He was popularly described as having a
head "as big as a half bushel," surmounted by a great shock of hair. He
was an iconoclast, and devoted his life to the business of
image-breaking, and, of course, the breaking in pieces of the idols of
the people created a great tumult. There was this difference, and only