The reader may be anxious to know what I did under the circumstances. There was but one thing to do, that was to seek the guiding hand of duty. Our little one was gone. Just as the thoughtful florist takes his tender plants into their winter quarters before the frost appears, or the chilling winds sweep the plains, so a wise, loving, merciful Father had plucked up the little vine which had rooted itself so thoroughly and deeply in our hearts, and transplanted it in his own heavenly garden. Yes, Charley was safe; so I returned to my meeting with a tender spirit, and the work continued with great power. More than one preacher who reads this incident will recall the time, or times, when he, too, passed under the cloud, and walked amid the shadows. Again and again I have been made to feel that some people do not sympathize with the minister and his wife, as they do with others, when the death angel tarries and lays his withering hand upon a young life. Somehow they seem to think that the cup, when administered to the preacher’s family, is not so bitter—that the thorn does not pierce so deeply. But I know better, and so do a thousand others. It is said of Dr. Daniel Curry, a great man in Methodism in his day, that he was so grieved over the death of his little boy that after returning home from the cemetery he went into the back yard, and observing his little tracks in the sand, got down on his hands and knees and kissed them. Words cannot express my sympathy for the faithful pastor and his family, and my admiration of that faith, devotion, and heroism which in so many instances are necessary to keep them in the work. Mason County was one of the first fields occupied by the ministers who crossed the Alleghanies westward. Among these were G. W. Statton, J. Bachtel, and Moses Michael. However, prior to this, preaching had been kept up on the Virginia side by pastors of the Scioto Conference. The main one was Jonas Frownfelter, whose name deserves a place alongside the heroes enumerated in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. On one occasion, when the Ohio River was out of its banks, and too dangerous for the ferryman to venture across, he plunged in a little below the town of Syracuse, swam his horse across, and came out at Hartford City, a half mile below, singing like a conqueror: “From every stormy wind that blows, From every swelling tide of woes, There is a calm, a sure retreat,” etc. All honor to those who put their sweat, and tears, and blood into the foundations of the conference, thus enabling others to build safely and successfully.