Sword and Pen; Or, Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier in War and Literature (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EARLY LIFE AND HABITS. Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism of twenty-five years ago.?The " little deacon."?First days at school.?Choosing a wife.?A youthful gallant.?A close scholar but a wild lad.?A mother's influence. ?Ward Glazier a Grahamite.?Young Willard's practical jokes. ?Anecdote of Crystal Spring.?" That is something like water." IT must not be supposed that young Willard's home was gloomy and joyless, because it was presided over by a religious woman. The Presbyterians' of that day and that race were by no means a lugubrious people. They did not necessarily view their lives as a mere vale of tears, nor did they think the " night side of nature" the most sacred one. The Rev. Mr. Morrison, one of their divines, tells us that " the thoughtless, the grave, the old and the young, alike enjoyed every species of wit," and though they were "thoughtful, serious men, yet they never lost an occasion that might promise sport," and he very pertinently asks, " what other race ever equaled them in getting up corn-huskings, log-rollings and quiltings and what hosts of queer stories are connected with them !" Fond of fun, there was a grotesque humor about them, which in its way has, perhaps, never been equaled. " It was the sternness of the Scotch Covenanter softened by a century's residence abroad, amid persecution and trial, united to the comic humor and pathos of the Irish, and then grown wild in the woods among their own New England mountains." THE "LITTLE DEACON." 3Q Such was the Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism of that period. Other cheerful influences were also at work in the two villages that comprised the town of Fowler. The only house of worship in the town proper was a Universalist church, and the people were compelled fof the most part, notwithstandi...