Still, with her magnificent figure and strangely attractive face, she was a young woman to strongly draw just two classes of men towards her--students of character and students of form. The first she invariably disappointed and repelled, always awakening the indefinable dread I have mentioned, while her presence among the latter class as swiftly opened the floodgates of passion to swiftly sweep the better nature and all good resolves before it. So, with her peculiarly unfortunate construction, it is not strange that, on arriving at that period of life when the almost omnipotent power of a self-willed woman begins to develop and hint at the possibilities beyond the threshold of the strange life her inexperienced feet had just reached, Lilly Nettleton should have felt an oppressive sense of littleness in the quiet community in which she lived, and experienced a burning desire to cast these humble associations from her, to compel admiration and conquer whoever and whatever she might meet in the wide, wide world beyond.
The "Circuit-Rider."-- Mr. Pinkerton and these Gospel Knights-Errant in the early Days.-- The Rev. Mr. Bland appears.-- "And Satan came also!"-- A "charge" is established.-- A Compact "where the golden maple-leaves fall."-- Bland departs.-- "The scared form of a young Woman steals away from her Home!"
During the summer the presiding elder of the Kalamazoo district decided to bid for the benighted souls that dwelt in Mr. Nettleton's neighborhood, and made arrangements to "supply" the school-house at the corners where Lilly had distinguished herself in giving the schoolmaster a cold bath in the snow-bank, with circuit-riders, or with young clergymen who had just graduated and were supposed to be in training for more extended fields of labor.
At that time the system of salvation as carried on by the Methodist Church--which must certainly be credited with a vast amount of push and energy in furthering its peculiar plan of redemption--outside of the large cities was almost exclusively one which necessitated the employment of circuit-riders, as they were then called, and are now called in some portions of the extreme west. They were usually men of great suavity of manner, personal bravery, unbounded zeal, and remarkable religious enthusiasm. They trusted principally in the Lord, but also placed implicit confidence in the extraordinary hospitality of the plain pioneer people with whom they came in contact, who, if not prepared to accept everything told them, responded to their strenuous efforts for their salvation by an unqualified welcome; so that the appearance of the circuit-rider, or "supply," was not only cause for unusual Bible catechism and hymn reading, but also a signal for culinary preparations on a grand scale, to which, as a rule, the hen-roost materially contributed.