They had their own amusements, of course; no form of society is without them, from the anthropoid apes to the Jockey Club. As to the grosser and ruder shapes taken by the diversions of the pioneers, we will let Mr. Herndon speak--their contemporary annalist and ardent panegyrist: "These men could shave a horse's mane and tail, paint, disfigure, and offer it for sale to the owner. They could hoop up in a hogshead a drunken man, they themselves being drunk, put in and nail fast the head, and roll the man down hill a hundred feet or more. They could run down a lean and hungry wild pig, catch it, heat a ten-plate stove furnace hot, and putting in the pig, could cook it, they dancing the while a merry jig." Wild oats of this kind seem hardly compatible with a harvest of civilization, but it is contended that such of these roysterers as survived their stormy beginnings became decent and serious citizens. Indeed, Mr. Herndon insists than even in their hot youth they showed the promise of goodness and piety. "They attended church, heard the sermon, wept and prayed, shouted, got up and fought an hour, and then went back to prayer, just as the spirit moved them." The camp-meeting may be said, with no irreverent intention, to have been their principal means of intellectual excitement. The circuit preachers were for a long time the only circulating medium of thought and emotion that kept the isolated settlements from utter spiritual stagnation. They were men of great physical and moral endurance, absolutely devoted to their work, which they pursued in the face of every hardship and discouragement. Their circuits were frequently so great in extent that they were forced to be constantly on the route; what reading they did was done in the saddle. They received perhaps fifty dollars from the missionary fund and half as much more from their congregations, paid for the most part in necessaries of life. Their oratory was suited to their longitude, and was principally addressed to the emotions of their hearers. It was often very effective, producing shouts and groans and genuflections among the audience at large, and terrible convulsions among the more nervous and excitable. We hear sometimes of a whole congregation prostrated as by a hurricane, flinging their limbs about in furious contortions, with wild outcries. To this day some of the survivors of that period insist that it was the spirit of the Almighty, and nothing less, that thus manifested itself. The minister, however, did not always share in the delirium of his hearers. Governor Reynolds tells us of a preacher in Sangamon County, who, before his sermon, had set a wolf-trap in view from his pulpit. In the midst of his exhortations his keen eyes saw the distant trap collapse, and he continued in the same intonation with which he had been preaching, "Mind the text, brethren, till I go kill that wolf!" With all the failings and eccentricities of this