W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

taught nothing else – making such a specialty that I fell in with him and enjoyed the full benefit of his
instructions. I reached a state of proficiency which qualified me to teach the arithmetic through and through, but
I had never been to a grammar school, nor to a place where I could study any of the collegiate course. I spent
these intervening years cleaning up my father's farm, which had all been worn out (as the soil in that country is
so very light, except the woodlands), and getting the family in really comfortable temporal environments.
All this time I was sticking close to my debating society, which we held in school-houses responsive to the
people, who were constantly calling for it. When the old members dropped out, soon after I entered it, I am sure
that it owed its perpetuity to my humble instrumentality. The retirement of those local preachers and civil
officers who launched it, was much in favor of us boys, as it gave us all the time. I was only able to hold three of
the boys permanently identified with it.
Therefore we four constituted two couplets, as we paired off every Saturday evening on the controversy floor.
Two of them, as a rule, spoke but a few minutes, leaving the bulk of the time for the other one and your humble
servant, who generally spoke from thirty to fifty minutes, our subjects involving historic research. Therefore we
were constantly reading history in order to prepare for those discussions, and of course this was the very thing
for our edification. In my youth I was a great night student, competent to get along with much less sleep than
now. During those years I worked hard all day and read until midnight, often by firelight, as we were poor, and
in that way, improvidently and inadvertently damaged the good eyes which God gave me, which never knew
any flicker till I had passed my twentieth year. Having been a good reader from the age of six, during those
seven years of my toiling farm life I was a constant reader of history, acquiring the knowledge which I utilized
in my weekly speeches in our forensic club. I would study all the week preparing myself to discuss some
question which required information, and would therefore superinduce the investigation of history.
In our speeches we constantly utilized the blessed Word of God, as its moral precepts were always pertinent and
when arranging the field of history, we constantly appealed to the Bible whose sacred testimony appertaining to
the issues involved was always unimpeachable. Therefore our historic argument included the sacred as well as
the secular; consequently our duties in the club kept us incessantly reading the Bible as well as secular history.
This was a most important period in my life; as the manual labor developed my muscles and gave me an iron
constitution, which has been infinitely valuable to me during these fifty-three years of constant preaching and
teaching. We four regular speakers frequently found our number augmented by others who incidentally came in
and were willing to take part in the discussion, a privilege which we always granted. The people gave us
splendid crowds during those whole seven years and listened with untiring appreciation. We generally began by
six or seven and always held on till eleven or twelve o'clock. To me it was an oratorical school of infinite value,
giving me colloquial discipline, which has accompanied me through life, rendering me always ready for
extemporaneous speaking.
Vast quantities of the information, especially historic, which appears in my writings, I received during those
years of hard toil, while following the plow amid roots and rocks all day and reading about half of the ensuing
night. Digesting it as I revolved it over and over in my mind the ensuing day, while holding the plow handles or
wielding the ax or hoe, I was getting it all into shape so as to spread out before the people an intellectual feast
the ensuing Saturday evening.
N. B. “All things work together for good to them that love God with Divine love.” This includes the failure and
feebleness of my eyes. The first flicker of my eyes occurred at twenty-one. Then I had my collegiate education
before me, which of course demanded vast ocular labor. During its entire prosecution, for the lack of eye power,
would have to content myself with a single reading of the lesson, looking on the book and taking it into my
mind then looking away, fixing it in my memory and resting the eyes. But when I came into the recitation room,
I always knew the lesson, while other young men told me they read it over a dozen times and then failed in the
recitation. The failure in my eyes superinduced the necessity of substituting memory for eye power; which is the
very thing to develop the memory in largest capacity.
I was so fond of reading, even from my early childhood, that, if my eyes had not failed, I certainly would live
become an insatiable bookworm, and have spent my life taking in without giving out.