File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 9, page 219, October 11, 1858.jpg

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nephew John [Conworth], who came out at his invitation. (The Tews, also his nephews, Mrs T, their mother, being sister to the elder Conworths, had heretofore lived on this very farm, and I fancy there may be some soreness and grudging lingering in the minds of the stalwart brothers at John’s superior good fortune in getting the land.) To go back to Conworth pere [William Conworth, Sr.]. It is a marvel that a man can have lived so long in this great world knowing so exceedingly little ot it as he. No woman’s existence has been more completely horizoned by the rim of tea cup and slop basin. A kindly, simple hearted man of, I think, narrow capacity, he, having vegetated rather than lived for nearly eighty years, now manifests symptoms of intellectual decay. “His wits — God help us — are not so blunt as they should be — an old man, but honest as the skin between his brows.” His pleasures and troubles are alike trivial. His one hobby is Adam Clarke’s bible; and comparing text with text, especially on the subject of prophecy and Revelation. He does this in the simplest, barrenest manner. Its profitless as milking he-goats into a sieve, as [Francois] Rabelais has it. He will talk to you of the Millenium, defining its duration, will back Daniel as a prophet in despite of canuchism and other Rabbinical objectives; will set innocent little traps to induce you to read this or that comment on scriptural texts. Doubt never seems to have occurred to him, now can I fancy he has encountered any of the struggles which beset stronger souls who are in earnest on the awful question of existence. If one were to cry Pshaw upon his dead Hebrews, to tell him that you believed that no one human soul would be damned, that the miraculous was the element