3
was generous to a fault ever ready to help needy one
whose sympathies were ever enlisted on behalf of the widow and the
orphan never knew a beggar to be turned
-erving he might appear and he would often say to me twas better to feed
dozen impostors than to turn one needy person away
And now as I glance back oer times rapid space I can as it were see
him when I was a little boy surrounded by his family his neighbors and
friends respected and honoredby all with but one grevious fault that has
been the curse of so many good men honored I said by all yes for he was
truly a noble man one whose mind soared above the trifling little things
of earth one who scorned through his whale l.ife to do a mean action but
ever endeavored to hold up before his children the highest standard of
morality and virtue
' Whilst at the same time he suffered himself like Eve in the garden
of Eden to be beguiled by a serpent of as deadly a nature as ever tempted
Eve, that was the tempting bowl and as I have said before with this ex-
ception he was truly a noble man allmost Faultless or at least as near
faultless as attains the lot of man to arrive at in early life he
embraced the christian religion and attached himself to the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church and for several years was a leading and content member
but by contact with the world laid aside as it were the noblest and great-
est gifts ever given to man and went back to the gaudy allurements of the
world and although a warm advocate of the christian religion he appeared
during the greater part of his life to have lost savor and made no preten-
tions as to his christianity at all
But when old age began to dim the eye when buoyant step grew faltering
and slow he looked upon his early l.ife and I trust returned to first love
as he told me but a short time before he died that he saw his way clear
that the religion of his youth was the comfort of his dying hour and I
trust he is in that land where all the errors of life are forgotten in the
saviours presence
V he died the Sth day of March 1858 after a long and protracted illness
aged 73 years 6 months and 18 days I stood by him and saw him breathe his
last calmly sweetly as it were life ebbed out and the spirit took its ever-
lasting flight from earth to its Mak er
I could but feel in that moment that I had lost the best friend I
posessed on earth one whom I honored as a parent and whose memory I shall
revere while life shall last and often now in the still hour when alone I
· see as it were that grey headed venerable form standing about the farm di-
recting by his advice and counsel and then again I reflect that he is gone
forever gone from this troubled woxjd gone to that bourne from whence no
traveller ere returneth and the heart grows sad