She is not cheered by the smiles of admiring crowds, nor does she feel the intoxication of flattering tongues.

She dwells at home in the desolation and loneliness of a practical widowhood, and often ekes out a meager support from a stingy and starveling salary.
But somebody has to do this frontier and pioneer work; and might it not as well be me and my wife as any other man and his wife?
I have given a wide range to these "Recollections." In doing so, I have not followed the example of a cowardly, corrupted and compromising Christianity, but rather have imitated the robust and manly courage of the writers of the Old and New Testament, who tell of the deeds of good men and bad men, and who also use the same freedom in speaking of the evil deeds of wicked rulers that they use in speaking of the things that more immediately concern the spiritual and eternal interests of men.
I have made the briefest possible mention of the hapless condition our churches were in twenty years ago.

The picture is neither flattering nor cheering; but right royally are the churches now redeeming themselves from the reproach they were under then.

A pastor is now being settled in each church as fast as the pecuniary circumstances of the congregation will permit, and a grand enthusiasm in Sunday-school work, simplifying and illustrating all its details, has made it possible for the weakest and poorest church to keep itself alive.
Wherever there are children with their young enthusiasm--and the children, like the poor, are always with us--and wherever there are parents ready to lead their children in the way in which they should go, there the permanency of a church is assured.
And now, with many misgivings as touching our immediate future, but with an abiding hope of triumph in the end, I bid the reader farewell..