. Could I at any time be required to drink tea
out of a coarse delf cup and sleep in such a bed? Luxuries I wanted
none; but a china cup, silver spoon and soft blankets were necessaries
of life. As I lay, uncertain always whether I slept, I seemed to sit on
a projecting rock on the side of a precipice draped with poisonous
vines. There was no spot on which I could place my feet, while out of
holes, snakes hissed at me, and on ledges panthers glared at me with
their green fiery eyes, and the tips of their tails wagging. Far below
lay a lovely green valley, walled on both sides by these haunted
precipitous banks, but stretching up and down until lost in vista. I
knew that to the right was north--the direction of home; and to the
left, south--the way out into the great unknown. If I could only reach
that lovely valley and the clear stream which ran through it; but this
was a vain longing, until there appeared in it a young man in a grey
suit and soft broad-brimmed black felt hat. He came up the precipice
toward me, and a way made itself before him, until he held up his hand,
and said:

"Come down!"

I saw his face, and knew it was Christ. After seeing that face, all the
conceptions of all the artists are an offense. Moreover, the Christ of
to-day, in the person of his follower, has often come to me in the garb
of a working man, but never in priestly robes. He led me down the
precipice without a word, pointed northward and said:

"Walk in the valley and you will be safe." He was gone, and I became
conscious that I had been seeking popularity, money, and these were not
for me; I must go home, but first I would try to repair the loss
incurred by that agent. I lectured in a small town, a nucleus of a Seven
Day Baptist settlement, and was the guest of the proprietor, who had
built a great many concrete walls. Coming out into a heavy wind, I took
acute inflammation of the lungs. My hostess gave me every attention; but
I must go home for my symptoms were alarming, so took the train the next
morning, with my chest in wet compresses, a viol of aconite in my
pocket, and was better when by rail and schooner I reached the house of
the good Samaritan, Judge Wilson, of Winona.

Here I was made whole, lectured in Winona and other towns, and got back
to St. Paul with more money than when I left. I started for home one
morning in a schooner. At one the next morning our craft settled down
and refused to go farther. The snow was three fe