In riding through a very rough, wild region, I fell in company with a gentleman on horseback, and rode some distance with him. He told me that a preacher, who was so illiterate that it was with the greatest difficulty that he could study out a chapter in the Bible, sometimes preached in a log school-house in his neighborhood, and he had heard him the Sabbath before. It was in a region where a rough-and-tumble fight would attract more attention than anything else. The preacher had a theme of the deepest interest to himself and the most of his congregation. This gentleman gave me quite a full outline of the discourse, and I write it out from his description, and fill it up as my extended acquaintance with these people, and knowledge of their vernacular, derived from years of constant mingling with them, enable me to do. "Last week, my breethrin, as I was a-readin' my Bible, I found a story of a big fight (1 Samuel, xvii). It was powerful interestin', and I studied it 'most all the week. There was two armies campin' on two mountains right fornenst each other; and a holler and, I reckon, some good bottom-land and a medder-lot lying between 'em. In one of the armies there was a big feller--a whoppin', great, big feller--and every day he went down into the medder-lot and looked up the hill to t'other camp, and jest dared 'em! He told 'em to pick their best man and send him down, and he'd fight him. And he jest strutted around there in his soger-close, and waited for 'em to send on their man. And such soger-close I never heerd tell on afore. He had a brass cap and brass trousers, and a coat made like mail-bags where they are all ironed and riveted together. But the fellers in t'other camp just clean flunked. They darn't fight the big feller, nary one of 'em. They jest all sneaked away, and the big feller he went back to camp. But he didn't quit thar, the big feller didn't. He was spilin' for a fight, and he was bound to have it. He jest went down into the bottom-land, into the medder-lot, every day, mornin' and evenin', and dared 'em and dared 'em. I tell you he did pester 'em mightily. The old feller, Saul, the gineral, he felt more chawed up and meaner than the sogers, and, when he couldn't stan' it no longer, he told the boys if any of 'em would go down and lick that big feller he'd give him his gal, and a right smart chance of plunder. But they was all so skeer'd that even that didn't start one of 'em. The big feller went down and dared 'em and pestered 'em more'n a month--forty days, the Bible says. I don't know what they'd a-done if it hadn't a-be'n that a peart little feller had come down to camp one day to fetch some extra rations to his three big brothers that their old dad had sent to 'em from home. Kind old pap he was, and sharp, too, for he sent along a big present to the boys' cap'en. Well, jest as little brother drove up, they was all gwine out to fight, and the little feller left his traps with the driver, legged