In the mind of most if not all of the Baptist preachers whom Lincoln heard while he was at New Salem, a belief that the earth was round was sufficient to brand a man as an infidel. The Methodists, as a rule, would have admitted that the earth was round, but Peter Cartwright would probably have considered a man an infidel who believed that the earth was not created in seven literal days. At Vandalia, Lincoln heard some ministers of wider vision, such as Edward Beecher and Julian M. Sturtevant, who were occasionally there, and John Mason Peck; but these experiences were rare. His association with Methodists was largely in the political arena, where he crossed swords three times with Peter Cartwright. That doughty hero of the Cross was born in Virginia on September 1, 1786, and exerted a mighty influence for good in early Illinois. With a nominal salary of $80 a year, and an actual salary of $30 or $40, he rode thousands of miles through deep mud, baptized 8,000 children and 4,000 adults, conducted camp-meetings and political campaigns, and sang and shouted and in his own language whipped the devil round the stump and hit him a crack at every jump until his death at Pleasant Plains, Illinois, September 25, 1872. He defeated Lincoln for the Legislature, and was defeated by him for Congress in 1846. So far as we know, Lincoln left no record of his feeling toward Cartwright and the Methodists. He could not have failed to respect such men, but it is not altogether certain that he was tempted to love them. By the time Lincoln was seventeen, and possibly earlier, he believed the earth to be round. I shall not succeed in making the reader understand the possible effect of this discovery upon him and certain of his associates without relating an experience of my own. In the summer of 1881, being then a college student on vacation, I taught school in the mountains of Kentucky far beyond the end of the railroad. The school was a large and prosperous one and brought many students from other districts who paid a trifling tuition and were preparing to teach. The curriculum included everything from the alphabet to a simplified normal course. A majority of my pupils had but one textbook, Webster's Blueback Speller. I endeavored to make up for the lack of textbooks by lessons in the Natural Sciences and in such other branches of study as seemed adapted to the requirements of my pupils. After a few weeks one of my pupils, son of a Baptist minister, was taken out of school. His father being interviewed stated that he was sorry to have the boy lose his education, but could not afford to permit him to be converted to infidelity. What the boy had learned which disturbed his father was that the earth was round. The subject provoked widespread discussion, and finally resulted in a joint debate between two school teachers and two Baptist preachers on the question: