the attractiveness of the spot, giving credit to "the few English gentle¬ men who have thus shown their Christian regard for their deceased re¬ latives now at rest in the city of the dead." In 1926, the year following Church Union , the cemetery became known as the Peoples' Cemetery of Mount Stewart , and, by act of the Provincial Legislature, Marion Clark , Jennie Clark , Beatrice Glover , Ma¬ tilda MacAssey and Mary Elizabeth Jay , its first officers, were recognized as a body corporate. Many improvements were subsequently effected, notably the erection of the pillared gateway and, at the close of World War I, the imposing Soldiers' Monument. The latter, bearing the in¬ scription, "Rest ye in peace, ye honoured dead," was transferred to the care of the Royal Canadian Legion in 1933. The work of the trustees and of the plot-holders generally has recently been recognized by the Rural Beautification Society. I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls The burial ground God's Acre! It is just; It consecrates each grave within its walls, And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust. - Longfellow Methodist Church Methodism always made good use of laymen, and none of these was more imbued with evangelical fire than Thomas Dawson who, with his wife and family, came to Prince Edward Island from Ireland in 1801. He bought a 600 acre farm, subsequently called Dawson's Grove, at Head of Hillsborough and plunged into the task of carrying the Wesleyan inter¬ pretation of the Scriptures to the Islanders. During the Christmas season of 1801, one reads of his preaching at an establishment in Charlottetown called the "Coffee Pot." Nor, in the true Methodist tradition, did he neglect the rural areas, for in the prescribed manner of the circuit rider, with Bible and hymn book in his saddle bag, it is said he visited every settlement on the Island, "preaching and holding services among the people, who hailed his visits with delight." The privation attendant upon such a course in a pioneer country was more than could be endured. On January 22, 1804 he walked to Head of Hillsborough from Charlottetown , a distance of 22 miles. On March 1st he was brought to Charlottetown for medical attention. He died on March 4th at the early age of 42. In spite of Dawson's labours, it was not until 1859 that Mount Stewart was included in an organized Methodist circuit. According to D. W. Johnson , an historian of Methodism in America, arrangements were made in that year for a circuit encompassing Morell and Mount Stewart , to be visited from Charlottetown . By 1862, this had been changed to Souris and Mount Stewart , with Rev. W. C. Brown as minister. The last minister in charge of that extensive mission was Rev. Douglas H . Lodge who wrote that, until 1875, it was necessary for the incumbent to drive from Souris to Mount Stewart every two weeks to hold services. He concluded, however, that, although "the labour was hard, .... it was not all in vain, for we gathered there a good congre¬ gation . . . ." That Reverend gentleman, who was later to return to Mount Stewart , did not stint his vocation, for he declared that in order "to extend the Zion we love" he had branched out from the old estab¬ lished preaching places to found some new ones. —76—