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I heard my mother's dying pangs, her prayers, her doubts, her agonies, for my reprobate soul, dissected for the public good by my old enemy, Mr. Wigginton, who dragged in among his fulsome eulogies of my mother's "signs of grace," rejoicings that there were "babes span-long in hell."

She took the book and left the room. It was Saturday morning, and I spent two miserable days, for she never spoke a word to me till the two ministers had made their appearance, and drank their tea on Sunday evening: then at last she opened: "And now, Mr. Wigginton, what account have you of this Mr. Mackaye, who has seduced my unhappy boy from the paths of obedience?"

She declined my offers; saying, that she could not live with any one whose religious opinions differed from her own, and that she had already engaged a room at the house of a Christian friend; and was shortly to be united to that dear man of God, Mr. Wigginton, who was to be removed to the work of the Lord in Manchester.

Wigginton, was a younger man; tall, grim, dark, bilious, with a narrow forehead, retreating suddenly from his eyebrows up to a conical peak of black hair over his ears. He preached "higher doctrine," i.e., more fatalist and antinomian than his gentler colleague, and, having also a stentorian voice, was much the greater favourite at the chapel.

I yanked his boot off and we took to our heels, the militia within 20 yards. Talley’s pistol had filled with snow and he could not fire a shot. But we reached the timber and stood at bay. George Talley was shot dead at this last stand, but when the militia fell back, their dead and wounded numbered seventeen. Nathan Kerr, Geo. Wigginton, Bill Hulse and John McCorkle did well that day.

J. J. Platt, forbade my attempting to do anything in the premises, but Jim’s body was taken in charge in my behalf by Chief of Police O’Connor, and borne to Lee’s Summit, Mo., our old Jackson county home, where it was laid to rest. The pallbearers were G. W. Wigginton, O. H. Lewis, H. H. McDowell, Sim Whitsett, William Gregg and William Lewis, all old neighbors or comrades during the war.

You know, as well as I, whether the religious conversation of that body has heightened your respect for sacred things." "I do, too well." And I thought of Mr. Wigginton and my mother's tea parties. "I dare say the vulgarity of that school has, ere now, shaken your faith in all that was holy?"