With their exit an immediate change took place. The mills were immediately closed, and word sent abroad that all our agreements were cancelled--only we would fulfill our standing orders--but that hereafter no grain or seed or logs or rags would be purchased by us, excepting such as would be absolutely necessary for our own use. Our horses and wagons and oxen were sold, and the different helpers who were not of our belief discharged, for we were determined that, as we had come here to serve God and not Mammon, God we would serve. But in spite of our resolution such was the excellence of the flour and the wheat and the oil, and the quality of the paper and cardboard we had made, that for many years demands were made upon us repeatedly; but I rejoice to say no effort was made in all the long after years again to reinstate these things for anything except our own uses, and when two years later three of our mills were lost by fire, which certain malicious ones attributed to our superintendent, and which could not be extinguished either by our wooden fire charms or our incantations, not one of us greatly regretted the event, so far as the loss of the mills themselves were concerned, only that we felt the loss of the large stores of wheat and other grain. Thus as Brother Lamech hath well said, "Did the fire, with God's permission, make an end to all the mammon which the Eckerlings, by their flaying, scraping, miserly conduct had gathered in the former household." And now I feel I must turn again to my Sonnlein, who by this time was a sturdy boy of about thirteen, and that it may be known from his actions, instead of my great love for him what manner of boy he was, I shall tell of his first fight, that is, the first one I knew of; and this I can say of him, even though he was not a perfect example of the doctrine of non-resistance, he cared naught for fighting, but suffered in silence many a taunt and vile insult that made the blood rush to his cheeks; for not only did the neighbors' children--learning this from their idle-tongued parents--call him a "nobody's child"--for as he grew older he soon found there were ever ready ones to poison his happiness by telling him of his unknown parentage--but the elders themselves oft nicknamed him "Brother Jabez' chicken," for that he was always under my wing.