XI

Now I must dwell on some memories which are only and always full to me of a sweet satisfaction, and will be to the end. I had made up my mind that I should never stand in one of those pulpits again. The old mother had done with me for good or bad- and all, and it may well be the brethren thought so too that day. I am now close to the memories of our life in Chicago, where for more than twenty years I was the minister of the Second Unitarian Church. The church was burned in the great fire in 1871, and the home we owned, as well as almost all the homes in our parish. These must all be restored as they were, our home among them; and then in the winter of 1872-73 I went into the lecture field, which was very fertile in those days, and lectured for six months from Belfast in Maine to far away in Minnesota, earning the money thereby to lift the mortgage on the home.

While lecturing in Philadelphia, I went out to stay over Sunday with our old friends, James

and Lucretia Mott, who lived near the old home church, where I had been suspended from my ministry. I told them on the Sunday morning I would go to the church, and my hostess said, "I will go with thee." I went to our own pew, while Mrs. Mott sat near the door on the women's side; and, as the minister then in charge passed up the aisle, she " gave me away,"

told him who I was sitting in that pew,

and he came round, held out his hand, and invited me most earnestly to take the sermon, and, if I pleased, the whole service, because he knew the people would be most glad to hear me. He knew about the old trouble, of course, but did not care. I did not want to preach

that morning, and said so.

Then he said, "Will

you come up and speak to them when I am through? This I would do gladly; and,

when the sermon closed, he said, " An old friend and long-time member of your church is with us this morning, who has promised to speak to you, and I am sure you will be glad to hear him." They wist not who I was, and looked at me, as I still remember, with a touch of wonder in their eyes; but, when I began to speak, there was a rustle as when the summer's breath passes over the ripening wheat. How

happy I was to speak to them once more from the old pulpit! There was no word or whisper of the break between us some fourteen years before. I spoke to them of our life together in the old time, and then on my memories, all sweet and good now, of

"The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet, Who walk with us no more,"

and their hearts answered to mine as face answers to face in a mirror. Then there was the last hymn, and the prayer and benediction, and, when I came down, there was the good warm greeting first of all from an old Englishman and dear friend who rushed up to me with the tears in his eyes and said, "When ye got up to speak, I did not know who it wer; but, when I heerd your voice, I knew you right away, and said, 'That's brother Collyer.""

Nor was this a mere flash in the pan. After we came to New York they wrote me to say they wanted to raise some money, and would I come over and give them a lecture in the church; and I was glad to say "Aye," gave the lecture on the old terms of the local preacher, and got them quite a little pot of money. Some years after this my good Albert Engle

died, and Mrs. Engle, with the family, would fain have me come over to take the service at his funeral. Albert, you will remember, was the man who said, "Come to my store for all you need," in the panic of 1857. The score had long ago been closed of debt, but not my debt of gratitude. I went over, took the services, and told the people, who had come from far and wide for he was held in great esteem

what he had done so long ago for me and mine. I stayed over the Sunday, and went in the morning to our old home church, to find it was their communion service, at which the minister asked me to give the address. I was glad to do this; but, as I looked over the congregation, I saw only one of my contemporaries together with the old friend who had been my near neighbor when I must leave the church. The rest had fallen on sleep." Yet I saw many faces I had loved to see there so long ago, not with my eyes, but my heart sight, as we all do. I was in full fellowship again in the old home church. Those I had left as children were mature men and women now in homes of their own, and I was still Brother Collyer.

There, in the church-yard, were the stones of memorial over the graves, and very near

where I stood the dust of the little maid, who was taken to dwell with the angels fifty years ago now our first great sorrow our angel Agnes from that time; and the twins which were born after lay there also: they were only a day old when they were taken. So, when we set up our stone of memorial over the little graves, we had given them no names, and had engraven on the stone these "whose names are written in heaven." One memory more must close this, shall I call it, chapter.

I was on the Sound steamer last summer, going east, and, sitting by a gentleman who lives in the South, we talked about many things, and among them some word was said about Ogontz, once Shoemakertown, where we had lived so long. He did not even suspect who I was, and began to tell me things about myself, asking me if I knew this ego. I said I had known him a long while, had indeed lived there once for some time. And he told me he was quite apt to go there when he came North, that some little children of mine - Mr. Collyer'swere buried in the church-yard at Milestown, and he always went to look at their graves. So I must needs tell him who I was, and say some fitting word out of my heart to the good