Adam Clarke portrayed Author:James Everett 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: SECTION II. 1770. The school in which Adam pursued his education, was the parish church; the ruins of which are still to be seen standing close by the side o... more »f the road leading from Coleraine to Portstuart, and nearly at an equal distance from each place ; the more recently erected church being on one side of the road, and its venerable predecessor on the other—the mother and the daughter, and both little more than a field distant from his father's house. The old burying-ground continued to be used, and was likely to remain the only repository for the ashes of the dead for generations to come. While walking round the ruin, and talking of the dead beneath our feet, with many of whom he had conversed in early life, he observed, " It was within the walls of that ruin, I proceeded with my hie, hsec, hoc ; and it was within that sacred enclosure also, that I first received the sacrament of the Lord's supper. Mr. Smith was the officiating clergyman; he preached in the church on the Sunday, and my father used it as aschool during the week. There were only two pews in it, one on each side of the pulpit, both of them very large ; one for Mr. Cromie's family, and the other for Counsellor O'Neill's, the latter of which stood a little forward. The other part of the ground floor was occupied with moveable seats." The writer not perceiving any provision for a fire, and for the escape of the smoke, made a remark to that effect. "We had a fire on the middle of the floor," was replied, " around which we sat in winter; and the building being large, and the roof high, the smoke had sufficient room to fly about without rendering those on the floor invisible to each other." The last sentence though pleasantly expressed, was sufficiently intelligible to shew after all, that it was an atmosphere of ...« less