y the confidences of my later years, when she would appeal to me
for my opinion, the problem of the unpardonable sin became one of
absorbing study, which she finally laid aside in the supreme trust in
his goodness, who alone knew her intentions and desire to be obedient
to the Law.

Every one of her sons, as they were born, she dedicated to the service
of the Lord, in the ardent hope that one of them would become a
minister, and over me, the last, she let her hopes linger longest,
for, as I was considered a delicate child, unable to support the life
of hard work to which my older brothers had taken, she hoped that I
might be spared for study. Only the eldest son ever responded to her
desire by the wish to enter the service of the church, and he was far
too important to my father's little workshop to be spared for the
necessary schooling. He struggled through night schools, and in the
intervals of day leisure, to qualify himself to enter the college in
our city. Before doing so he fell under the notice of old Dr. Nott,
president of the college, who was, beside being a teacher of wonderful
ability, a clever inventor, and, perceiving my brother's mechanical
capacity, persuaded him to abandon the plan of entering the ministry,
and made him foreman of his establishment, the "Novelty Iron Works,"
at New York, for many years known as the leading establishment of its
kind in America. The next two brothers, having more or less the
same gifts, followed the eldest to New York; the next, an incurable
stammerer, was disqualified for the pulpit, and studied medicine,
being moreover of a fragile constitution; and the next, having the
least possible sympathy for the calling, also took to medicine.

With the migration of the three older brothers to New York, the
diminution of the family, and the aid the brothers in New York were
able to give the younger children at home, my mother's life took on
a new activity, in her resolute determination that the younger boys
should have such an education as the college (Union) afforded them.
This determination was opposed by my father, whose idea of the
education needed by boys did not go beyond the elements, and who
wanted them in the workshop. But it had become to my mother a
conception of her duty, that, as the relations between my eldest
brother and the president of the college led to an offer of what was
practically a free education, the younger boys should be permitted to
profit by the offer