INTRODUCTION. BY T. M. EDDY, D. D. YEARS ago, when the writer first came to the North-West, among his earliest and most hearty greetings was one from Stephen R. Beggs. We found so pleasant a spirit, so happy a disposition, so cheerful a retrospect that we sought further acquaintance. His experience ran back into pioneer days, swept along the rough places, and wound among the bridlepaths of frontier settlements. So interesting were his reminiscences that, at our request, he wrote a portion of them, which appeared in successive numbers of the North-Western Christian Advocate. Artless, natural, just, they attracted favorable attention, and called out an expression favorable to publication in a more extended and permanent form. The thought of a book came to him as an amazement. He, Stephen R. Beggs, become the author of a duodecimo volume! He had never thought of entering into history, much less writing it. When he made his way from one appointment to another by blazed trees, and stood up on a puncheon floor and preached in the dim glare of one or two tallow candles, kept alight by the snuffing of backwoods fingers, he would have laughed outright at the prediction that he should ever make a book to be read by the light streaming into richly carpeted parlors from patent gas-burners. Yet why not? These early Methodist pioneers have led an eventful life, and its record is almost as marvelous as any thing |