He was nearly sixty, and had broken his
constitution by hard work, and could not much longer have endured the
incessant riding and preaching of a traveling evangelist, even could
he have been supported. The boys were then old enough to do much of
the farm work, and from that time he preached more constantly, but
spent more or less time at hard labor.
For several years he was employed, for a small salary, at monthly
preaching, by churches at Big Springs, Valley Falls, Round Prairie,
and other points.
In the fall of 1875 he concluded to visit once more the churches for
which he had preached before coming to Kansas, and bid farewell to his
old friends. He accordingly spent the following winter in a preaching
tour throughout Iowa and Illinois.
The State Meeting at Emporia, in 1877, in his absence, elected him
President of the Society. Unable to find a State evangelist who would
undertake the difficult task of reviving the old churches that had
perished--which he thought was the work most needed at that time--he
took the field himself.
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