ce, and that
was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims in his
patient and mysterious search; and, indeed, no one could doubt that he
was a most benevolent and kind-hearted man. The occasion was this: He
had been to our church one day, indeed, it was his last attendance, and
as we came down from the pulpit, where he always sat, the better to hear
me, and as we were walking slowly through the broad aisle, he laid his
hand upon my shoulder, and said, "Ah, sir, this is the true doctrine!
But it wants money, it wants money, sir, to spread it, and I hope it
will have it before long."

While in Europe I had kept a journal, and I low published it under the
title of "The Old World and the New," and about the same time, I forget
which was first, a volume of sermons entitled, "Discourses on Various
Subjects." The idea of my book of travels, I think, was a good me, to
survey the Old World from the experience of the New, and the New from
the observation of the Old; but it was so ill carried out hat what I
mainly proposed to myself on my second visit to Europe, ten years after,
was to [75] fulfil, as far as I could, my original design. But my health
did not allow of it. I made many notes, but brought nothing into shape
for publication. I still believe that America has much to teach to
Europe, especially in the energy, development, and progress lent to a
people by the working of the free principle; and that Europe has much to
teach to America, in the value of order, routine, thorough discipline,
thorough education, division of labor, economy of means, adjustment of
the means to living, etc. As to my first volume of sermons, if any one
would see his thoughts laid out in a winding-sheet, let them be laid
before him in printer's proofs; that which had been to me alive and
glowing, and had had at least the life of earnest utterance, now,
through this weary looking over of proof-sheets, seemed dead and
shrouded for the grave. It did not seem to me possible that anybody
would find it alive. I have hardly ever had a sadder feeling than that
with which I dismissed this volume from my hands.

At the time of my retirement to Sheffield, the Second Congregational
Church in New York, which had formerly invited me to its pulpit, was
without a pastor, and I was asked to go down there and preach. I could
preach, though I could not write; my sermons, with their five earmarks
upon them in New Bedford, would be new in another pulpit