eirs turned up, and could n't help
it. It reminds me of what a woman of our town said, who had married a
very heinous-looking blacksmith. Some companions of our "smithess" saw
him coming along in the street one day, and unwittingly exclaimed, "What
dreadful-looking man is that?" "That's my husband," said the wife, "and
God made him."

To the Same.

SHEFFIELD, Jan. 2, 1849.

MY DEAR BELLOWS,--Your letter came on New Year's Day, and helped to some
of those cachinnations usually thought to belong to such a time; though
for my part I can never find set times particularly happy or even
interesting,--partly, I believe, from a certain obstinacy of disposition
that does not like to do what is set down for it.

As to church matters, I said nothing to you when I was down last,
because I knew nothing. That is, I had no hint of what the congregation
was about to do,--no idea of anything in my connection with the church
that needed to be spoken of. I was indeed thinking, for some weeks
before I went down, of saying to the congregation, that unless they
thought my services very important to them, I should rather they would
dispense with them, and my mind was just in an even balance about the
matter. But one is always influenced by the feeling around him,--at
least I am,--and when I found that every one who spoke with me about my
coming again seemed to depend upon it, and to be much [206] interested
in it, I determined to say nothing about withdrawing. My reasons for
wishing to retire were, that I was working hard--hard for me--to
prepare sermons which, as my engagement in my view was temporary, might
be of no further use to me; and that if I were to enter upon a new
course of life, the sooner I did so the better.

And here I may as well dispose of what you and others say and urge with
regard to my continuance in the profession. To your question whether I
have not sermons enough to last me for five years in some new place, I
answer, No, not enough for two. And if I had, I tell you that I cannot
enter into these affecting and soul-exhausting relations again and
again, any more than I could be married three or four times. The great
trial of our calling is the wrenching, the agonizing, of sympathy with
affliction; and there is another trying thing which I have thought
of much of late, and that is the essential moral incongruity of such
relations, and especially with strangers. I almost feel as if nobody but
an intimate friend had a