The Land Claim — page 127: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

REMINISCENCES OF FAIRVIEW. 123 “Go on with your story.” “Qne—the youngest—was a Methodist minister, and a good, hard-working, earnest man he seemed to be. I don’t think I should have known him if he had not related his experience to the congregation—which he did with great effect. While he was expatiating eloquently on the dangers youth are exposed to from the influence of bad men of superior minds and powers of persuasion, he suddenly fixed his eye on some one in the immense crowd, and called out: ‘Jim! I see you! Will you not repent and. be saved? ‘ Yes,’ answered a voice which I remembered, ‘I have repented—but I am not yet saved. I want you all to pray for me. Here- upon the minister made one of the most touching prayers I ever heard, and the hardened villian wept like a child, while the congregation shouted, sung, and responded to the prayer. It was the strangest scene I ever witnessed.” “J doubt if Jim was saved by all their prayers. What has “become of Mauvais—is he still trading with the Indians?” “No: he has pretty much shaken off the Omahas, who were his last friends among the tribes. Any day you may see the little Frenchman driving over the country, pell-mell, as if the furies were after him, never stopping for hill or bridge, or any thing else, It’s a way he has of working off the extra vim of his excitable French nature. He still lives at the old trading- post, and when he is not driving is smoking cigars on the piazza. He gets thinner and thinner, and one of these days must dry up and blow away, if he don’t break his neck. He is never without friends, and never without something to treat them with ; and his eye twinkles as merrily as it used to, when he utters his pious benediction, ‘the Lord be good to you, my friend !” or, his still more familiar expression, ‘such is life on the upper Missouri? But here we are at my door.” Here we will leave them, reader; only pausing to assure you that the constable and his wife are no longer straitened in their circumstances, and that the Newcome claim has become their property. ’ Commicloooks.aconn