well as the great wants of
others. I can never forget his gentle ministrations in the sick room of
my most precious mother, who was for many years his neighbor and friend.
She had been brought to a condition of great feebleness by a slow
nervous fever, and was painfully sensitive to anything discordant,
abrupt, or harsh in the voices and movements of those about her. Every
day, at a fixed hour, this good neighbor would glide in, noiselessly as
a spirit, and, either reading or repeating a few soothing verses from
the Bible, would kneel beside her bed, and quietly, in a few calm and
simple petitions, help her to fix her weak and wavering thoughts on that
merciful kindness which was for her help. Day after day, through her
slow recovery, his unwearied kindness brought him thither, and
gratefully was the service felt and acknowledged. I never knew him in
the relation he afterwards sustained to the diseased in mind, but I am
sure that his refined perceptions and delicate tact must have fitted him
admirably for his chaplaincy in the Retreat.

I retain a distinct impression of him as I saw him one day in a
character his benevolence often led him to assume, that of a city
missionary; though it was only the duties of one whom he saw to be
needed, without an appointment, that he undertook. How he found time, or
strength, with his feeble constitution, for preaching to prisoners and
paupers, and visits to the destitute and dying, is a mystery to one less
diligent in filling up little interstices of time.

I was present at a funeral, where, in the sickness or absence of the
pastor, Mr. Gallaudet had been requested to officiate. It was on a bleak
and wintry day in spring: the wind blew, and the late and unwelcome snow
was falling. There was much to make the occasion melancholy. It was the
funeral of a young girl, the only daughter of a widow, who had expended
far more than the proper proportion of her scanty means in giving the
girl showy and useless accomplishments. A cold taken at a dance had
resulted in quick consumption, and in a few weeks had hurried her to the
grave. Without proper training and early religious instruction, it was
difficult to know how much reliance might safely be placed on the
eagerness with which she embraced the hopes and consolations of the
Gospel set before her on her dying bed. Her weak-minded and injudicious
mother felt that she should be lauded as a youthful saint, and her death
spoken of as a triumpha