Two men called upon Brother Myers, our general missionary in this mountain region, and requested that he and the writer visit the field, some fourteen miles away, from which they had come that morning. They told a thrillingly interesting story of how God's Spirit had entered their hearts, and stirred them up to desire better things for their children and their community than they had enjoyed. One of them was a son of a French Catholic mother, and had early adopted her faith. His life had been wild and reckless, until he found the Saviour in a meeting led by an A.M.A. missionary. He was an intelligent man of some education. He found others ready to join him in a movement for the elevation of the people. They established a church and organized a Sunday-school. We pushed over the mountain on horseback, after the other visiting brethren had left the mountain region, to inspect personally this field. We found it even as the men had represented it to be. A little church had been organized and Sunday-school gathered. I could learn of no other Sunday-school in that region. I heard afterwards, that one of the old-time preachers warned the people against the Sunday-school, saying, "It war a heap worse than a dancing place." This same preacher had a vision, and gave an account of it to his people. "Two devils," he said, "had been in that country getting up some sort of an institution that they called a church." He warned his people against them. The two men who visited us at Jellico, together with others who had joined with them in this effort to Christianize and educate this community, we found busy on a hillside, laying the foundations of the new "church house." They were enthusiastic in this new movement, which promised so much to their community. They had drawn up a confession of faith and covenant, which were evangelical and Congregational. They reported {pg 204} three thousand people living in the coves and valleys radiating from the point upon which they had planted their "church house," absolutely without intelligent Christian instruction of any kind. There were hundreds of square miles without a church building of any denomination. This little company had been stirred up by God's Spirit, and were almost starving for spiritual food. There was a pathos even in their peculiar mountain vernacular, as one of them said to me, "I don't understand scarcely a word you uns say. I'm too old to larn now. I'se done left. But I does want my chilluns to know somethin'. I tell you, I'd sell my old farm down in the cove so's to help my chilluns to know somethin'." What a tremendous appeal this is from the very heart of our country! All they asked was one hundred dollars, to help them build this Congregational "church house" by the side of Hickory Creek. * * * * *