persistent cold, and strong tea,--an almost matchless trio,--lent their
aid to give the finishing stroke.

Mr. Gray was a boarder with a gentleman who kept a grocery store, and
who was glad to employ him on certain days and hours of vacation or
recess, in taking care of the shop and waiting on his customers. Here
the tempter again assailed him, in the form of foreign fruits, raisins,
figs, prunes, oranges, dried fish, cordials, candy, etc. For some time
past he had been wholly unaccustomed to these things; they had even been
forbidden him, especially between his meals. As a consequence of his
indulgences, and his neglect of exercise, his health again declined, and
he came a second time under my care.

He was partially restored the second time, but not entirely. His labors,
which were teaching still, became more exhausting than formerly.
Cheerfulness, hope, sympathy, conscious usefulness, and the force of
many good habits, sustained him for a time, but not always. His great
labors of body and mind, with a deep sense of responsibility, and the
indulgences to which I have alluded, preyed upon him, and dyspepsia
began once more her reign of tyranny.

Doubtless he attempted too much here, for he was an enthusiast on the
subject of common schools and common school instruction. And yet, under
almost any circumstances of school-keeping, dyspepsia, nurtured as it
was by every physical habit, would most certainly have assailed him.
With regard to his food and drink he was very unwise. It contributed
largely to an extreme of irritability, which was unfavorable, and which
at the end of a single term compelled him to resign his place and seek
some other employment.

This was a grievous disappointment to Mr. Gray, and, as some of his
friends believe, was the mountain weight that crushed him. The horrors
of the abyss into which he believed he had plunged himself, were the
more intolerable from the fact that he now, for the first time, began
to despair of being able to consummate a plan by means of which both his
sorrows and joys, especially the latter, would have been shared by
another.

Yet, even here, he did not absolutely despair. Hope revived when he
found himself, a third time, my patient. I did all in my power to
encourage him till I had at length, to my own surprise as well as his,
the unspeakable pleasure of finding him again returning to the path of
health and happiness. It is indeed true, that a capricious appetite
s