Before my return home I also visited Millersburg, Kentucky, to see my sister Susan and her family. Her husband, William Vimont, had suffered some during the war. His negro cook and her grown boy had been emancipated by their own will, the fugitive slave law being then practically inoperative. Morgan, in his raid through the country, had also stolen Vimont's fine horse, which served somewhat as an antidote for the wrong that he felt had been visited upon him by the Union people. In passing over from his house to the village of Millersburg two incidents occurred which served to illustrate the state of affairs at that time in Kentucky. Upon reaching the turnpike near Mr. Vimont's house we met one of his uncles riding in a buggy, just coming out of the gate which led to his residence, and he informed us with much feeling and passion that when he woke up that morning he discovered that there was not a nigger on his place, that he had no nigger at home to cook his breakfast for him, and that he had to "hitch up his own horse, sah." This last item appeared to be the culmination of his grief. A few hundred yards further we passed a blacksmith shop, and upon the large door that constituted the entrance to the shop we found in red chalk the image of a man drawn, and the door within the lines of this image was full of bullet holes. Mr. Vimont informed me that the blacksmith, who was a violent secessionist, had been accustomed to amuse himself by drawing upon the door of the shop the outline of a person, calling it Lincoln, and then standing a short distance away, revolver in hand, gratifying his rebel heart by filling the image full of bullet holes. It was during this visit to my brother-in-law that I urged upon him the propriety of selling his little farm and purchasing land in some western state and removing his family thither, which he finally did a few years later, when he removed to Tuscola, Illinois. I attended religious services in the village on the Sabbath, and was much interested in hearing a sermon from the text, "Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." The sermon that the minister preached was by no means the same as my thoughts framed from this text when I thought of the desolation that I had witnessed through this state, and the effects of the dark shadow that was just then lifting from one of the fairest lands that a benevolent Creator had ever prepared for a people, but which the stupidity and cupidity of man had cursed with human slavery. The preacher appeared to be perfectly blind as to the crop that his audience had reaped from the fearful sowing of their fathers, or dared not mention even had he thought of it. CHAPTER VII PLEASURE TRIP TO COLORADO