in the spirit on that Lord's Day. How I should love to feel that burning once more before I die! We speak of some event or experience as worth a year of our life. I think the worth of that afternoon has gone into all the years since then. After the benediction Brother Taft gave me a fine grip of the hand, and said, “Brother, you shall have all the work you want to do." And the promise was kept. After some time a church was built on the hill, and then there were four in the circuit. I took my turn and turn about in them all through the nine years. Slowly but surely I caught the new tongue in some measure; for I have a pliant and sensitive ear and was much pleased when, after I had mastered the speech, an old man said to me: "I did not understand you for a long time when you came to preach for us, but I felt good. So I always came to hear you." Still I am not sure that I am already perfect in this tongue; for within a month, on a Sunday morning after the sermon, a lady came forward and said, with tears in her voice, “I am from Yorkshire, sir, and was so glad to hear the dear old burr here and there in your discourse."

VIII

As I touch these memories of the old time, I would fain feel that I am as one who sits by the fireside in the evening, and talks with his old friends not in monologues, but in conversation of the give and take. Then when I notice here and there a man it is always a man - lift his hand toward his face to hide a yawn, I think it is time to shut up and shut down. So they go home, to drop in again, and then there are more memories and more, until the tale is told in the evenings at home. The last of these closed with the remark of my old friend, that, in the early years when he heard me speak, he did not understand the half of what I said, but he felt good; and this I take to be the truth touching a good many beside old Robert. But in no long time there was always a good congregation in each of the chapels to hear me, no matter about the aspirates and accents or the way I had of putting things. William Jay of Bath in England, a very eminent minister in his time, would say to the students for the ministry, "Do

not be afraid of using 'likes' in your sermons: the people like to hear them, and that was the Master's way who taught the people by parables." So my great hunger for reading all the books I could lay my hands on stood me now in good stead, and drew the folk about me. Moreover, there were times when the fire burned as in the schoolhouse on the hill and the farmer's kitchen on the moorside, and there was a song of deliverance which helped all round.

It was within a year also of this ministry that a fine old farmer halted his team at our door, on his way to the city, to see if I would come for a Sunday to preach in their church some six miles away in another circuit. They had heard about me, and were eager, he said, to hear me. So I accepted the call without demur. Nothing was said about transport, though it was a stiff walk; but this made no matter, for in those days it was about as easy. for me to walk as to sit still, the good days that are no more. So I went, and found a good audience, of sorts, to hear or see me; but on opening a ragged Bible to find my lesson, it was not to be found, the lesson or the text, and I used no manuscript. So I took what there

was left and went through with the service, perhaps with a touch of temper. They thanked me with warmth when the service was over, and asked me to come again soon. "Yes," I answered, “I shall be glad to come again when I am free," but told them my bother with the old Bible, and said, "I cannot come again until you get a new one." So this they promised they would do, and made their promise good.

The trouble I found was this, in talking with

my host: the church was endowed with an income of about three hundred dollars a year, if my memory holds good, and this was no blessing, but a bane, because it tapped the springs of their own striving and giving, though they were well-to-do farmers in the main. So the church was as poor as Job's turkey,-I get the similitude from my mother.

There was no fee of course, but all the same there was a rich reward. I found the town had a library in which my host held a share he did not use; and, finding out, with no great trouble, my passion for books, he said, "I shall be glad if you will use my share, with no cost to yourself, sir." So most gladly I accepted the gift. There was no money to spare for books in our home. We had brought over about

twenty, volumes, and these were precious; and my pen pauses here as I try to reckon all the money I spent in books through the nine years at the anvil, and I cannot make it amount to ten dollars. Here the dear house-mother put her foot down: the money was wanted in the home. And she held me so well in hand that I remember laying out not quite a dollar in a very thick volume of Littel I could not resist, but durst not bring in under my arm. So I hid it under a currant bush until the next morning, and arose up early to smuggle the thing into the house. It was some days before my guardian saw it in my hand, and said, "My dear, where did you get that book?" And I answered softly," Why, I have had this book some time." Which was in some sort true: I had owned the book a whole week. Tennyson, in "The Grandmother," says,

"A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest

of lies ";

but I do not feel the sting. The mother smiled, but said no more. I was forgiven: we were good at forgiving, my wife and I.

The free pass for the library was a great boon. Here was a fine wealth of American