evening, each man having one hour’s time. That was typical of the early founders of Silverton. No admission was charged, and the occasion was carried on with much dignity until the last evening’s debate when somebody started something, and when it was over several of the best families in town were on terms unbecoming to neighbors; but even this only lasted a few months and all the differences of a stormy night had passed. The manhood and womanhood that had brought them together during the hardships and trials of a pioneer life, in the covered-wagon days, had brought about a brotherhood that was after all too strong a bond to be broken by even religious whims and differences, and they were soon back together as one big family. All men and women who in their higher spiritual selves were even more religious in the truer form than the minister that had started the trouble, they were genuinely under the atmosphere and living in it that the old blind Arab poet described in his verse written during the eleventh century and saying, “when young, my friends I would defame, if our religious faiths were not the same, but now
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PREFACE
