I have preached the funerals of many, Saints and sinners, people of various ages, nationalities and creeds. I have baptized believers ranging from nine to seventy-two years of age. Although I have been preaching for over fifty years, my preaching has been usually on Sundays. I was a Sunday preacher. I never gave myself wholly to preaching for a livelihood. Yet, except the last ten or twelve years, I have missed but few Sundays. ---0--- C H A P T E R S E V E N Prof Ficklin. Geometry. Bethany, Vir. Ordination. First convert. First funeral. First wedding. On the 15th day of March, 1859 I was asked how old I was. I replied 'Ego sum viginti unum.' You see at that very time I was attending Prof. Ficklin's High School in Trenton, Missouri, and I tried to put into practice my Latin. My studies at that school were Latin, Astronomy and Geometry. Geometry was my favorite study and I was happy to have Joseph Ficklin as my teacher, for he was one of the best mathematicians in the world. The books in the library on Mathematics alone covered all of one end of his study. He became the author of a series of text books on mathematics from a book on mental arithmetic to a book on Trigonometry and calculus. As well as I loved geometry I had to leave school before I finished it. Like many another poor boy, my money gave out. The hardest practical geometrical problem that ever came to me in after life was this: I wished to divide a piece of land which in shape was a trapezoid. This trapezoid had two right angles, and the parallel sides were respectively 170 and 120 rods in length. The shorter of the other two sides was 160 rods in length. Now the question was, at what point in the line of the side 160 rods in length should a line start, running parallel with the parallel sides of the land to the opposite side, so as to divide the land into two equal parts? I have never been able to solve this problem, nor could the surveyor I had employed, but two of my boys, before they were as old as I was when I wanted to solve it, solved it. So you see each generation becomes wiser than the preceding one. This is well, provided the wisdom is such as to direct all knowledge into the ways of righteousness. I had to quit school before I had finished all my studies, but had it not been for the war which came in 1861, I perhaps would have been a graduate of Bethany, Vir. University. For the good, rich brethren of the country in which I commenced to preach had a habit of helping young men to an education, who were called to preach, and who bode to be a success. But the war coming on, spoiled all these plans for me. But I will not express regrets for who would dare to complain when he has placed himself to be lead by the hand of the Almighty. As it is it may be far better than it might have been.