"If I could only have none but good people for associates, I believe I could be a good man. But I haven't got a bit of stability. I am just carried away by the crowd I am with. If I could only have you here, I believe I could be a Christian. If you will only stay here and preach for us, I will give the ground for a church and help build it, and I will bind my estate for a part of your salary after I am dead and gone, as long as you will stay. The trouble is now, if we do go to church, any one else there might just as well get up and preach as the man that does preach.[2] You are an educated man, and I believe you are a good man; and then you are a gentleman. If they would only send such preachers into this country, I tell you they would take the crowd. My mother was a Baptist, and I believe she was a good woman, and if I was fit to belong to any church, I should like to join the Baptist Church on her account. But I don't care very much about that. You are a Presbyterian, and if you will only come and start a Presbyterian church, I will do everything for you that I say." When the hour for dinner arrived, we two alone sat down to a table that fully redeemed the promise of the night before. We had as nice a turkey as ever tempted the appetite, and a superabundance of other dishes, "the best that the plantation afforded." As I could only make a brief stay with my friend, I was anxious to leave something with him that would, if possible, deepen his religious impressions, and give him the instruction that he so much needed, after I had gone. Sitting at his bedside, I gave him Rev. Newman Hall's "Come to Jesus"--a few copies of which I usually carried in my saddle-bags. I expressed to him my very high appreciation of the little work, and, in order so to enlist his interest in it that he would not fail to read it after I had left him, I told him how very highly it was esteemed by the late General John H. Cocke, of Virginia, whom I had known some years before, while superintendent of the colporteur operations of the American Tract Society in that State. My host was of an old Virginia horse-racing, sporting family, and his pride in the old State insured his attention to anything I would say in regard to so distinguished a Virginian. So I proceeded: