Few ever knew the strong desire that he constantly felt for a life devoted wholly to study and preaching. Living, as we did in those days, in a log house with only one room, he had no private place for study, but read or wrote in the midst of the family. Yet neither crying babies nor the noisy play of older children distracted him. Often he sat, with a look of abstraction, in the midst of our conversation; and we frequently had to speak to him several times before we could attract his attention. We have several hundred of his newspaper articles saved in scrap-books. He preached altogether without notes, and never seemed to make any especial preparation for preaching a sermon. I once asked him how long it took him to prepare a sermon, and he replied, "Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, generally two or three years. Of course I do not think of it all that time, but I seldom preach on a subject when it first enters my mind, but let it mature. I always have several subjects on hand at once, and when I am reading I retain whatever strikes me as pertaining to anyone of my subjects." "When do you do most of your thinking?" I asked. "Whenever I can; mostly on horseback." His education was never finished; he was a student to the day of his death. Even during his last sickness he asked me to return a volume of Macaulay's "History of England" that I had borrowed, so that some one could read to him from it. In July, 1859, he was sick for some time; but in September reports thus: "Since I recovered from my sickness I have held a series of meetings,--one near Atchison, which resulted in eight additions; one at Big Springs, at which four were added by baptism; and one at Pardee, where there was one baptized." November 1, 1859, the Northwestern Christian Missionary Society was organized at Indianapolis. Father attended it, and remained preaching and collecting money until February. He collected about the same amount as the previous year.