On Monday we visited an old minister, one of the pioneers of the West, and the bishop makes this melancholy record. I never read it without pain: “This has been an awful day to me. I visited Francis Poythress. ‘If thou be he; but O how fallen!’” Perhaps no record in his journals has been so little understood as this, and none more liable to be misinterpreted. Some have supposed that he had fallen like wretched apostates, who have made shipwreck of the faith; but it was not so, and the bishop would not willingly or knowingly have done the unfortunate brother injustice. My journal reads thus: “Monday 15, we went with Brother Harris to see Francis Poythress, one of our old preachers. He _has been for ten years in a state of insanity, and is still in a distressed state of mind_. We then returned to Brother Harris’s.” This is the record I made over fifty years ago, and it was italicised as the reader now sees it. Francis Poythress was one of the leaders in our Israel. He was admitted into the traveling connection at the third conference, held in 1776, with Freeborn Garrettson, Joseph Hartley, Nicholas Watters, and others. He was a pioneer of the West. In 1790, John Tunnel dying, Francis Poythress was appointed elder at the West, having five large circuits on his district, and on them were Wilson Lee, James Haw, and Barnabas M’Henry. We have not space to trace his history. His excessive labors shattered his system, and his body and intellect were both injured. About the year 1800 he became deranged, and a gloom settled down upon him not to be removed. When Asbury saw him he was shocked, contrasting his former look with his appearance then. He was then living with his sister, twelve miles below Lexington. Bishop Asbury never saw him more; death soon came to the relief of poor Francis Poythress, and none who knew him doubt but he is among the clear unclouded intellects of the upper and better world. On Friday Bishops Asbury and M’Kendree, James Gwin, and myself started for Cumberland, Tennessee. Before we left an event occurred that pleased me much. Bishop Asbury sold our sulky and bought a horse. His object was to get through the wilderness to Georgia easier. The bishop remarked, “The reward of my toils is not to be found in this world.” No, thou venerable man of God, but thou art finding it in the other, “for if we suffer with him we shall also reign with him.” At Springfield Hills Bishop M’Kendree preached an excellent sermon in the morning; I exhorted. In the afternoon the Rev. Mr. M’Clelland preached from “The time is short.” Bishop Asbury followed right after from “Now is the accepted time,” and James Gwin exhorted after him.