excitement. Hence the addresses on occasions like this are
generally stiff and studied, half-an-hour orations. This feeling
prevents their turning the voluntary principle, in the support of their
religious societies, to so good an account as they otherwise might. At
the close of this meeting, there seemed to be a fine state of feeling
for making a collection; and yet no collection was made. This society
is one of great value and importance. It is designed to tell in the
promotion of evangelical truth on the Catholic countries of Europe and
South America. In those countries, it employs a hundred colporteurs in
the sale and distribution of religious publications.

The next morning I addressed a breakfast meeting of about 400 people,
in a room connected with the Tabernacle. This was a new thing in the
New World. It was, moreover, an anti-slavery breakfast, under the
presidency of Lewis Tappan. It was charming to see the whites and the
coloured so intermingled at this social repast, and that in the very
heart of the great metropolis of America.

At 10 the same morning a meeting of the American Tract Society was held
at the Tabernacle. I had been engaged to speak on that occasion, but
was obliged to go and see about the vessel that was to take us away.

In the evening I was pressed, at half an hour's notice, to speak at the
meeting of the American Home-Missionary Society. The Rev. H.W. Beecher
of Indianapolis, one of the sons of Dr. Beecher, made a powerful speech
on the claims of the West and South-west. In my own address I
complimented the Directors on the ground they had recently taken in
reference to slavery, and proceeded to say that there was an important
sense in which that society should be an anti-slavery society. This
elicited the cheers of the few, which were immediately drowned in the
hisses of the many. The interruption was but momentary, and I
proceeded. The next morning one of the Secretaries endeavoured to
persuade me that the hisses were not at myself, but at those who
interrupted me with their cheers. I told him his explanation was
ingenious and kind; nevertheless I thought I might justly claim the
honour of having been hissed for uttering an anti-slavery sentiment at
the Tabernacle in New York!

This society has an herculean task to perform; and, in consideration of
it, our American friends might well be excused for some years, were it
possible, from all foreign operations.

"Westward the star of e