“Well, I don’t believe in such conversions as that,” says a sentimental lady;--a church member;--though she spent the half of the preceding night over a specimen of the yellow-colored “light” literature that now fills all our highways and by-ways;--and sighing and sentimentalizing over an unreal and mawkish story of love and suicide. “’Tis all fox-fire,” declares a grave and reverend divine, whose intellect is as clear and as cool as an iceberg, and who has not enough of impulse to raise the slightest emotions in his soul. “What a lamentable thing it is to have ignorant persons carried away with such enthusiastic notions,” responds a metaphysical philosopher, who can map out the whole field of the human mind, and describe to the tenth part of a grain the degree of emotion one ought to have under all circumstances. Those who weigh the impressions and emotions of gospel truth in one metaphysical scale; who cannot endure any excitement in others above their own passionless temperament;--who never had a muscle agitated nor a nerve affected by the unseen workings of the inner man, will have very orthodox notions about such impulsive feelings as Mrs. Wells manifested when she suddenly felt herself relieved from the burden of her sins, and enjoyed the gracious conviction of the power and mercy of Jesus Christ in her salvation. It is a very queer kind of philosophy that admits persons to faint, fall, and even die under the pressure of some sudden and overwhelming calamity; or from ecstacy from hearing joyful news of an earthly kind, and yet accounts such paroxysms as Mrs. Wells had, “fox-fire,” “enthusiasm,” and the fruits of “ignorance.” Mrs. Wells was a woman of strong emotions, easily excited, and never trained to disguise her feelings under a cold, conventional exterior. She behaved naturally, and under the circumstances quite decorously enough. No one was disturbed or interrupted by her shouts, but every unconverted sinner in the room became most deeply impressed, and the revival became general in the congregation. The meeting continued and the excitement kept up for more than a week; during which a large society was gathered, chiefly of those who professed to be converted, and Mrs. Wells joined. A new circuit was formed, and a preaching station fixed in the neighborhood of Wellsburgh; as some waggish traveler named the ferry farm. It was not strange or singular that Mrs. Patsey Wells greeted Father Clark so joyfully, or that her husband, who had heard her describe the preacher at the meeting on Coon Creek should have guessed so readily. He not only spent the night with this hospitable family, but could not get away even had he desired, until he had made an appointment, and word was sent through the settlement for the people to gather for preaching.