And, while herding sheep, he finished committing the New Testament to memory.

He could repeat it from beginning to end, and even in his later years he remembered it so well that he could repeat whole chapters at once.

I never saw the time that any one could repeat a verse in the New Testament to him, but that he could tell the book, and nearly always the chapter in which it was found.
He and his father's family put their membership into the church at Letimberville, some miles distant; and there he occasionally preached.
He sometimes went back to Wadsworth, and on the way back and forth stopped and preached for the little church at Sullivan, Ashland Co.
There he made the acquaintance of Sibjl S.Carleton, the daughter of Joseph Carleton, one of the leading members of the church.

They were married August 17, 1843; and he never had cause to regret his choice, for she proved to him a helpmeet indeed.
While living there, at the solicitation of his neighbors, he held a debate with a Universalist preacher, to the satisfaction of his friends and the discomfiture of his opponent.
Many parts of the Plains were covered with water, and were musical with frogs in the spring, but in hot weather they dried up, leaving here and there a stagnant pond.

I have heard father tell how one of his neighbors tried to break a field by beginning on the outside, and plowing farther in as the land dried up.