I kept up the habit of reading during services till the pastor mentioned it so pointedly in Sunday School that I had to stop. When the sermons interested me, I no longer cared to read. I recall three of our ministers who were liberally educated for pastors in small churches. One, in particular, a Scotch-Irishman, was an original thinker, emotional, with a tumultuous Carlylean eloquence. He preached remarkable sermons. Father and I followed his thought, I think, more closely than any one else in the congregation. He seemed to feel this, too, addressing us almost personally, sure of sympathetic attention. Many of his stolid hearers had no idea “what he was driving at.” Sometimes he would labour so to bring forth his thought that it was painful to watch him--it was as though his mind was laid bare. Carried away with the grandeur of a conception, he would wrestle with it, conquer it, and finally unfold it. His influence on my mental and religious nature (I was seventeen then) was unquestionable, but unsettling, seeming to increase the chaotic state of my mind; at least, it was during his “dynasty” that I became so unsettled--doubting and trying to think a way out of the inconsistencies I was continually coming upon. But earlier wanderings in the old paths claim their share in this backward glance. Tenting at camp-meeting (Auburndale), perhaps four times in all--not four years in succession, for that would have been too great a boon--was a keen pleasure of our childhood. How we felt the deprivation of the blank years! What a homesick longing for our tent in the woods when the August days came round! The woods were perhaps five miles away. It seemed a long journey. What fun to see the wagon piled with bedding, furniture, and tinware; to see kettles dangling below; to hear the rattle as we sat a-top of the heterogeneous array! Then the ride along the sunny country road to the camp-grounds! I wonder if a part of my fascination for gypsy wagons and the life of the Romanys isn’t due to our own gypsying in the camp-meeting woods. Mother usually shared a tent with a certain good sister, an old-fashioned fat countrywoman who was very devout and who made good cookies. We liked her best for the last quality.