ories are of my ministry in their main purpose. And to tell the clean truth, I think I was never a very good blacksmith, not nearly so good as my father; for to do anything supremely well you must give your whole mind to it, yes, and your heart, and these for me were given to the books. Still, as manager of the forge after the old master died, I could command the highest wages and believe I gave worth for worth, while one bit of work that I can lay my hands on is still to be seen. I must make a pair of iron gates. This sort of work is done by the whitesmith; but I took the job with no proper tools or skill for that work, and the result was a pair of gates as homely as a barn door,-so homely that I would dream of them after I came to this new world, and say to myself, If I can ever afford the money, I will ask to have a new pair made by some skilful man over there, and the old things sold for scrap iron.

But just a touch of satisfaction came to me on my last visit to the homeland a few years ago, when the humor took me to go and have another (and it may well be the last) look at the gates I had made just fifty years before. The touch of satisfaction lay in the fact that not a rivet had sprung in the clanging back and

forth through all the years.

Those on the lock had sprung, but that was set by another man. So I said, I have so much to the good in any case. And when I came home, being in Chicago on a visit, President Harper asked me to come and speak to some of the students; and I wove in the story of my gates, of which the moral was, "No matter how homely your work may be in this world, look well, my boys, to the rivets."

V

In 1849 I had made up my mind to emigrate to this new world. I had dreamed for some years of doing this when I was able. My father and mother had made up their minds to come when they were married; but the panic of 182324 had struck England like a bolt from the blue and slain their hope, while among my earliest memories this still stays clear of sitting by the fireside and listening as they would talk of their dead or dying hope. They had heard from Tom Ross, one of my father's shopmates, who had come here and was doing well. They would talk of Tom and then of their regret. So I think the seed was sown then which came in good time to the harvest.

When it was known that I was to emigrate, a gentleman of note came to see me and said, "You will go to Canada of course, and I will give you letters to friends in Montreal or in Australia, if you choose to go there." But, thanking him, said I was going to the United States. "You have friends there," he said,

But I answered, "I do not know a soul there." And no doubt he thought I was standing in my own light.

But this was the truth: the light lay on these States, the inward light I must mind without debate, and have followed these many years. I was alone. The great sorrow I touched in one of these memories rested in the death of my wife eighteen months after our wedding. We were of those who marry young. I was in no haste to marry again; but now the time had come to find a helpmeet and the woman who was to be by far my better half through more than forty years, how well I know this now!

And just for the humor of it, when we talked of our life together, I would say I won her heart through a sermon from the text, "The spirit and the bride say, Come," while she would answer, "I could have no great opinion of the woman you would win by that sermon."

We made the sacred vows in mid April, 1850, and went at once to Liverpool to take our passage for New York on the old liner Roscius, where we landed in four weeks to the day. I had read all the books I could find about this strange land to me the prospect for good work and wages-but wanted to know more

about the people, their spirit and temper, and if they were what we call "folksy." So I had walked some miles to see a kinsman of my wife who had come over three times to seek his fortune, but had by no means found it, poor fellow! I told him my errand, and of our intention to emigrate and make a new home in this new world. "I hear you have been there three times. Please tell me all you can about the people you found there. Are they kind and well disposed toward an Englishman, a working man and a stranger?" "No," he answered in his broad Yorkshire," they are nayther. Wha, they'll tak the varry teeth out o' yer heead if ye doant keep yer moath shut!" I noticed he had lost some, so this was not quite encouraging; but there we were after four weeks at sea, drawing up to the wharf in New York, and must go ashore and run our risk. We stood ready to land when I heard a man speak to another in our own tongue broad Yorkshire -and, speaking to him, I found he kept a tavern and was seeking guests. He asked us to go there, and we were glad to go; for we knew your Yorkshire man down to the ground.

In the night my wife was taken ill, and in the morning I went out to find the medicine she