So I moved once more. This time I resolved to make sure of a quiet home, so I went right away beyond the limits of the States, into the unpeopled territory of Nebraska, a country at that period ten or twelve times as large as Pennsylvania or England, and containing less than five thousand white inhabitants--an immense wilderness, occupied chiefly by tribes of red Indians, herds of buffalo and deer, countless multitudes of wolves, with here and there a bear, a panther, or a catamount, and heaps of rattlesnakes. And here I thought I should be safe. And so I was. The Indians gave me no trouble. I always treated them kindly, and they were kind to me in return. As for the wild beasts, God has "put the fear and dread of man upon every beast of the earth;" and as he approaches, they retire. As a rule, the fiercest beasts of the forest will turn aside to make way for man. I have lived in the midst of multitudes of wolves, and taken no harm. I have slept on the open prairie in regions swarming with wolves, and never been disturbed. I have travelled by night in other parts of the country, over the wildest mountains, the homes of panthers, bears, and catamounts, and never been molested. The rattlesnakes were the most dangerous creatures. Yet even from them I took no harm, I have walked among them time after time in slippers or low shoes, yet I never was bitten. I slept once for three nights with a rattlesnake within two or three inches of my breast, yet escaped unhurt. God took care of me, when I neither took due care of myself, nor cared as I ought for Him. The parties I feared the most were the white people. They had heard of me, and as they passed me in the street, they looked at me askance, regarding me apparently as a mystery or a monster. But I never shocked them by skeptical lectures, or by any other act of hostility to religion, so they bore with me, and came at length to treat me with respect and confidence. My wife and family were regarded with favor from the first. And I shall never forget the kindness of one of our Christian neighbors to my wife, in a time of affliction and sorrow. And it is from my settlement in this desolate and far-off region, that I date the commencement of a change for the better in the state of my mind. I do not say that my opinions began to change, but the state of my _feelings_ got better, which rendered possible a change for the better in my sentiments.