INCIDENTS AND CHARACTERS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF METHODISM

By

The Reverend John Elmore DuBois

Edited by Elizabeth A. DuBois
(c) 1998  DuBois Publishing Co, Simsbury, Connecticut. All rights
reserved.


Five 
Up the Alabama River
	
	The Alabama river was not navigated by steamboats even as late as
1823.  We had to bring our supplies from Mobile in the ordinary flat
bottom, or pole-boats.  This was, as may well be imagined, a task of no
ordinary magnitude.  To make a trip from Vernon in forty days, required
not only favorable conditions of wind and weather, but the constant
stroke of the sturdy oarsman.

	I have sometimes thought that if the students of Harvard and other
literary institutions, so devoted to the regatta, had to make a few such
trips the boat race would hardly be so popular.  However, the romance
and novelty of such a voyage softened many a hardship and the stirring
scenes of busy preparation for departure always found a number of
stalwart pioneers ready to share the promised toil and fun of such an
expedition.

	While this system of navigation was slow and laborious, it,
nevertheless, taught us an important lesson on the practical workings of
the recently vexed question of local option of prohibition.

	It so happened on one occasion that no ardent spirits could be found
with any of the liquor vendors of the village, nor of the surrounding
country.  The result was, that on the next muster day everything passed
on in peace and harmony: there were no differences; whereas on previous,
similar occasions when whisky freely flowed the man that proved himself
the champion of the pugilistic ring paid sorely for the honor.  Then, as
now, a large per cent of crimes and problem was traceable directly or
remotely to the use of whiskey.
	
[To be continued]

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