Wilson, our family physician, a pair of wristbands and collar I had stitched for father, and when they spoke of me as not being three years old--but then I had in my mind the marks of that "great awakening." To me, no childhood was possible under the training this indicates, yet in giving that training, my parents were loving and gentle as they were faithful.

Believing in the danger of eternal death, they could but guard me from it, by the only means of which they had any knowledge.
Before the completion of that momentous third year of life, I had learned to read the New Testament readily, and was deeply grieved that our pastor played "patty cake" with my hands, instead of hearing me recite my catechism, and talking of original sin.

During that winter I went regularly to school, where I was kept at the head of a spelling-class, in which were young men and women.

One of these, Wilkins McNair, used to carry me home, much amused, no doubt, by my supremacy.
His father, Col.

Dunning McNair, was proprietor of the village, and had been ridiculed for predicting that, in the course of human events, there would be a graded, McAdamized road, all the way from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and that if he did not live to see it his children would.