service was held in the church, to which they all came, bringing the flowers they had nursed,

all they had as I guess. I was abroad that summer when she died, but they told me how the children came and laid the flowers on the casket with tears and lamentations. They had lost the mother who had blessed them in His name through the two or three years. The day home is still open, doing its noble and beautiful work. Eli Bates, who was one of the founders and most munificent maintainers of the church through many years, left the money at his death to build a home for the good work and for the matchless statue of Lincoln by St. Gaudens at the entrance of Lincoln Park, and for other good uses I need not name. And now no sweeter memories of my ministry through the twenty years in our old home city abide in my heart than these of the good day home.

XXI

Now I must return to the church and my own work there, in which we were as one family in our work and worship; and I was quite content with my hearing, with no thought of a wider. But after some time eager souls in the society began to talk about a new adventure. It was a far cry forty years ago from the South and West Sides to Chicago Avenue on the North Side where our church stood then, to which some came from the distance; but with this they were not content. We must go to them who would not come to us, they said. So they proposed to hire a hall, the Metropolitan Hall, the only one of note the city had to her name in those early times; and, if I was willing to take hold and do the preaching, they would see to the funds, and we would hold services there on Sunday evenings. A good many would come to the hall, they said, who would not go to a church. So, while I was not hopeful at all about the enterprise, I said, "I will take the services and see what can be done." These

services were held through one year. The congregations were large right along. Very few of our own people came. Our own people are inclined to think that two sermons on Sunday are like two pellets in a potato popgun: the one drives the other out. Those who came were mostly what we call outsiders of the brand that

66

go nowhere"; but they came to these meetings, and, after they closed, some came to the church and joined us there. And for many years after some one would tell me he or she had attended the meetings and been helped by them. Indeed, when I was near the eightieth milestone in this journey, a gentleman spoke to me in our church, told me he had attended those services, and still remembered the sermon I preached about what it is to be forty. That sermon with so many more was burnt in the great fire also, yet I still think it was not very dry.

May I mention one memory which can never grow dim, and went into my heart to stay, while perhaps I should leave it in "the silence of the breast"?

Some years after those meetings a gentleman wrote me from California, to tell me how he had found a poor fellow who had fallen very

low and was dying, friendless and alone. "I did what could be done for him; and, on the last day I was with him, he told me he had lived in Chicago before he came here, and had attended those services in the hall. Then he reached under his pillow for a small photograph and said: This is the picture of the man I heard preach there. I have always saved it. And now will you be so kind, sir, as to pin it on that curtain? I want to see his face the last I can see before I die.' And it was so." How I love the memory for his sake, the hapless man!

All sorts and conditions of men and women came to the hall, and other memories might be touched, but not now, except to say that some came from Boston, eminences who were in the lecture-field, Wendell Phillips, I think, and Mr. Emerson, who said to me, as we walked from the hall, very kind and heartening words about the sermon I cannot remember and yet cannot forget: my brethren in the ministry will know what I mean. Some things I had said were also printed in the Christian Register — thanks be! and in other journals. And then something befell I could no more have dreamed of than the little maid of two years in our home. An invitation came asking me to take the

66

services for a Sunday in Music Hall, where Theodore Parker had preached, with a matchless power and an eloquence quite unique, for ten years, and before this through seven years in the old Melodeon. He died in May, 1860. Five years ago last summer I laid my hand in reverence on his grave in Florence. Since his death the pulpit-platform had been " supplied.” It was a great wonder, this invitation, but was so warm that I could not say them nay; and so I went down, as we say, with my heart in my mouth, to find such a crowd as I had not dreamed of, and the hall so vast that, when I had spoken for two or three minutes, the fear clutched me that I was not heard. So I paused and held out my hand to a man in the far-away top gallery who was leaning forward listening, as it seemed, for all he was worth, and said quietly, "Can you hear me, sir, up there?" He moved his head with emphasis the right way. I thanked him. There was a broad smile all over the place, and I went on to the end, with no more fear about that which is high. And they thanked me with effusion; you may trust Boston for that leastwise I do and have done these forty years and I went home rejoicing. I had been heard in Music Hall.