He mistook the dramatic instinct, that entranced him with these splendid epics, for religion. He sang loud and long in the meetings, with a rich voice and a fervid indorsement of the sentiment of the rude hymns, but he told few experiences; his soul seemed untroubled, unstirred; he neither shouted nor exhorted others, and in the midst of exhortation he often dropped asleep. But if the text were from the Old Testament, rich in narrative, his fine head was alert, his eyes grew eager and intent; he would lean forward, to lose no word, his hand on the back of the bench in front of him, and often his strong hand trembled. He was an earnest advocate of education. “Let the Bible be read!” he would exclaim in a thunderous, coercive voice, strong with the sincerity of his own wish to read. For he was sometimes aware that he carried with him broken impressions of the stories that emblazoned his mind. Then his quick supplementing fancy would unconsciously assert itself anew, the rift would close, and the continuity would stretch forth perfected. His was the mind receptive, romantic. The endowment to believe the essential verity, undemonstrable though it be, to see that which is not before the material eye, to feel the abstract sentiment, he shared with those for whom tradition has woven its fine, embellished webs, and history has penned its heroic page, and poets have sung and have soared. The gift was in the nature of a sarcasm, bestowed here. He had not even the cradle lore of other men. Niggard circumstance had environed him with all the limitations of ignorance. In these close bounds, the readings of the circuit rider gave him the only collations of connected fact, the only narrative, the only glimpse of a status of people more amply endowed than those about him; and the dramatic instinct vivified the meagre details, caused them to glow before him, and they served for him as the libraries of the world serve for other men. Encompassed by the democratic sovereignty that hedges about an American voter; knowing no rank, no gradations of caste, other than that of the sheriff, the constable, the justice of the peace,—and latterly the high estate of a circuit judge had been brought to his knowledge,—it was curious how he caught from the spirit of the text the sentiment of awe and reverence for the exalted in the earth, prophets and high-priests, kings and great captains. He exulted in the Scriptural pageantry. His fancy would marshal again and again the fine show of the serried ranks of opposing armies along the mountain side, when David went out in the valley to fight Goliath. The triumph would hardly have been what it was to him without those multiplied martial spectators,—nor, it is safe to say, to David either.