CHAPTER X.
Close of South Side Mission.—Swimming Creeks.—Crossing Prairies.—Visiting Everybody.—Changing Rooms.—Meetings at New London, Paris, Lick Creek, Hannibal.—Change of Location to the Mississippi River.—One Year and Four Months, Four Hundred Additions.
The Doctor's mission on the South Side closed here, and we made our way home, after an absence of six months, and a travel of over 1,000 miles in our buggy.
The winter of 1851 was very severe on us. The Doctor held meetings in several country churches. In order to get to his appointments, he used to have to swim creeks with our horses, with the water up to the buggy seat. I would get up on the seat and sit on the satchel, while the Doctor put his feet on the dash-board. We crossed many a stream in that way, though they were not always quite so high. Sometimes we would travel all day across a broad prairie, every step the horses took breaking through half an inch of ice. Once, in the middle of one, the tire of one of the hind wheels broke. The Doctor took the halters off his horses and strapped it on, and I had to watch the wheel for five or six miles, while the cold north wind was blowing a blizzard across the plain. Sometimes after church at night we would have to ride three or four miles to stay all night with some good brother, whom we were afraid we should slight if we did not visit him. They were all as kind and good to us as it was possible for them to be.
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Many of the roads were only fit for horseback travel at that season of the year. Often there were gullies in the middle of the road as well as on each side.
For two months we went everywhere we were invited, until one very cold night we went home with a dear old friend of the Doctor's. After a ride of three miles we arrived at the house. The improvements were all new-a story and a half log house.
In order to reach our room we had to climb a ladder. By the time we went to bed it was snowing, and I noticed the snow found its way into our room. I examined, and found there was no chinking under the roof where it rested on the logs, and that we were in for a snow-storm of our own. I piled our clothes under the bed, gave the Doctor my pillow to put over his head, and tucked mine under the clothes. When we waked in the morning there was three inches of snow on the bed and over the floor.
The Doctor rolled off the top cover and shook the snow off on to the floor, and with it brushed a space where he could stand and dress. He handed me my clothes, and I dressed sitting in the bed. My fingers were so cold I actually could not feel the pins I was sticking in my clothes.
On our way to church the next morning I told my husband we must change our programme. "I can never stand this kind of work. We must get some place to stay at night, and keep it. I am willing to visit in the day, but to sleep in a good, warm room one night, and a stone cold one the next, is too severe on me; and it is as bad on you as on me."
After that time we made it a rule to occupy the same quarters every night during a meeting, and visit all we
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could during the clay. I have known several of our preachers to lose their health, and some of them their lives, by accepting the urgent invitations of loving and good brethren.
To all who read this, I say, If you can not entertain your minister comfortably, do not invite him to stay with you, but frankly tell him so, and he will thank you from the bottom of his heart.
During the fall and winter he held meetings also at New London, Paris, Lick Creek, Santa Fe and Palmyra. He writes from Palmyra, Oct. 28, 1851:
"I have been traveling for ten months as State Evangelist, in Missouri and Illinois. I have preached 430 sermons, and immersed 365 persons, and had many added by letter and otherwise."
At Paris he had the able assistance of Bro. Alfred Wilson, who was as modest as he was good. Early in the beginning of 1852 he drifted back to Hannibal, and held another meeting. Dr. T. D. Morton writes (Millennial Harbinger)
"Dr. Hopson held a two weeks' meeting here, at which twenty-five were added to the church and a fine impression made on the community."
About this time he agreed to preach for the church at New London once a month, having in view a change of location to the Mississippi River. This was Feb. 13, 1852.
The March following we went to St. Louis to visit his mother, on his way to attend the Bible Revision Convention, at Memphis.
On his return from that trip he held a meeting in New London, of which Bro. T. M. Allen writes
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"On Tuesday evening last, Bro. H. closed a very pleasant meeting, with seven additions. They are a warm-hearted, large and flourishing congregation, and have just completed a nice, commodious brick church. They are blessed with the ministerial labors of Bro. Hopson once a month."
During all the years of the Doctor's preaching in New London, our home was with the hospitable Bro. Hayes. Our room was always ready for us once a month, and we could drop in at any time, day or night, and find a hearty welcome.
His next meeting was at Thrasher's Chapel, halfway between Hannibal and Palmyra. Dr. Morton was with him. It closed early in May, with seventeen confessions and baptisms. This closed his evangelistic labors of a year and four months, during which time he had 400 additions.
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