By eight o'clock three hundred were there, most of them bringing chairs; by 8.30, there were four hundred; at 9 o'clock, by actual count, five hundred people crowded in and around the door of the church. It was a sight never to be forgotten, to see this great company start off across the prairie in the full moonlight. I spoke to some of them, saying, "Why, you were out at the afternoon meeting."--"Yes," said the man, "I should have come if we had to ride a cow all the way from Enid." This was a place thirty miles away. This church was built by the people, one man working for a dollar a week and his dinner, the farmers working his farm for him while he was at the building. * * * * * [Illustration: AT A CHURCH DEDICATION. _Page 310._] The church had not yet received its chairs, and was seated with boards laid across nail-kegs. Here our minute-man preaches in houses so small that the chairs had to be put outside, and the people packed so thickly that they touched him. It ought to touch the Christian reader to help more. We had fifty miles to ride the next day, into a county town. We found it all alive; for nearly four hundred lawsuits were on the docket, mostly for timber stealing. "Poor fellows," I thought, "Uncle Sam ought to give you the timber for coaxing you here." However, the judge was a fine, well-read man, and let them off easy. Deputy-sheriffs by the score were stalking about, with their deadly revolvers sticking out from under their short coats. The best hotel was crowded, and I had for that night to sleep in another one. The house was old, and had been taken down and brought here from Kansas and rebuilt. The doors up-stairs once had glass in them; rough boards covered the broken places. One door was made up entirely of old sign-boards, which made it appear like so many Chinese characters, such as Pat said he could not read, but thought he could play it if he had his flute with him. I was ushered into a room, and requested to put the light out when I was through with it; meaning I was to place it outside, which I did not do. But what a room! The wainscoting did not reach the floor. Small bottles of oil, with feathers in them, looked awfully suspicious. There was no washstand or water. The pillow looked like a little bag of shot, and was as dirty as the bed-clothes. The door was fastened with a little wooden button, which hung precariously on a small nail. I took off my coat, and put it on again, and finally lay down on the bed, after placing something between my head and that pillow. I had to go several blocks in the morning to find a place to wash, so dirty were the towels down-stairs. I was then given a house to myself, which consisted of a single room, eight by ten, or ten by twelve, I forget which. It was originally the church and parsonage. Here the church was organized, and the first wedding took place.