The Story Of Aunt Lizzie Aiken (1880) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. DISCIPLINE. In April, of 1847, Mr. Aiken having become restless and tired of Peoria, gathered up what remained of his property, and bought a farm of eighty acres on the State Road to Iowa, twenty miles from Peoria, and near a little village called Brimfield. His wife had worked very hard during the winter. She had tried to save what she could, and to earn money by keeping a house full of boarders. Of course the thought of quitting the city was a welcome one to her, brought up as she had been to love the free life of the country; and she entered gladly into the arrangements for moving. It seems to have been her destiny to begin housekeeping in unfinished houses. At Brimfield, although the farm was all under cultivation, there were but two rooms in their dwelling ready for use. Mrs. Aiken took up with great delight the work of fitting up the house and adorning the place, overseeing the setting out of many fruit and shade trees, and the planting of a garden. The village of Brimfield had been settled almost exclusively by New Englanders, who gladly welcomed a Vermont family among them. Mrs. Aiken immediately commenced here the missionary labors that had occupied so much of her time at Peoria. Young as she still was, she had been sought out by both pastor and people to visit the sick, look after the poor, and lay out the dead. A peciiliar gift of sympathy and helpfulness was recognized in her by all. When Mrs. Aiken first went to Brimfield there were no churches in the place. Union meetings were held in the school house, which were sustained by Christians of whatever name. Mrs. Aiken greatly missed her own church, which of course she could attend only occasionally. Dr. Henry Wes- ton, now President of Crozier Theological Seminary, but then pastor of the Peoria ...