An Elder cf Ye Olden Time.-
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��tently at the face of Leland," said the narrator, " watching to hear the imita- tion of the sound, saying repeatedly to myself, I will not feel afraid — when it fell at last from his lips, I sprang in- voluntarily from my seat, trembling in every nerve and fibre, so wierd, so un- earthly, so vivid the unutterable horror in the sound I listened to, as it fell upon the silent room and died away in low, long echoes through every comer."
" Ha ! ha ! " said the old man, " I thought you were not going to be afraid."
Let any one who can imagine the suffering caused by this event alone.
It was in 1791, that John Leland re- turned to the State of his nativity, and made his home in Cheshire, at that time a new town in the wilds of Berk- shire. Here he lived nearly all the years of his life, engaging in every work that would promote the civil and religious rights of man, sustaining ever the character of the patriot and the Christian, and fighting in New England against religious intolerance, as he had in Virginia. During 181 i-i 2, we read of him in the Legislature and the Gen- eral Court at Boston. Among the years at different times, are notes of wonderful religious reformations under his preaching.
It was m March, 1791, that he took ship at Fredricksburg for New England. They dropped do\ni the Rappahannock, crossed the Chesapeake, and entered the ocean between Capes Charles and Henry. When they were fairly upon the Atlantic a wild storm burst upon them, the thunders rolled, the gale in- creased to a hurricane that swept goods off the quarter deck, injured the quad- rant, nor ceased for fifteen hours. When at its height the Captain stepped to the cabin door and said :
��"We shall not weather the gale many minutes."
"To me," he seemed to say, 'send the servant of God."
' Leland ; if you have got a God, now is your time to call upon him." There was no need of this admonition, for I had already began the work. I cannot assert that I prayed in great faith, but can truthfully assert that I prayed in great distress ; and it is the only night that I prayed the whole night through without cessation ; hour after hour, 'mid the shock of tempest, the beating of rain and rolling of thunder I wrested with God Icr the preserva- tion of our lives. As the morning dawned gray and grim over the seeth- ing waves and cruel rocks, my wife stood by my side and said, " We shall be saved. A beautiful woman, clad in white, stood before me just at the morning watch, she held in her hand a great card from which she measured yard after yard of a long white cord and said to me, ' Fear not, the vessel cannot sink. I have undergirded it.'
We outrode the storm and crossed the harbor bar in safety. The captain said he was going to the underwriter to demand the insurance upon the vessel, for had it not been for my prayer it would have been lost."
Leland was a great admirer of Thomas Jefferson ; he labored hard for his election in 1801 and endorsed his policy throughout the entire administra- tion. In November of 1801, he trav- elled South with a cheese made by the dairymen of Cheshire and sent to Jef- ferson as a mark of their good-will, and of the chief industry of their town. All the farmers contributed the milk from their dairies, made the cheese and pressed it in a cider mill ; it was known as the mammoth cheese (weighing fif- teen hundred pounds) . Elder Leland
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