erted. She used to speak of this
circumstance very often to her children, especially when any one of them
approached the age which witnessed, to use her own language, 'her
resignation of the pomps and vanities of life, and her dedication to the
service of her Saviour.' Still, notwithstanding her prayers and
painstaking, not one of them had ever been under 'conviction of sin;' at
least, none had ever manifested that agony and mental suffering which
she considered necessary to a genuine change of heart. She mourned much
over such a state of things in her household. What a scandal that not
one of _her_ children should give any evidences of saving grace! What a
subject for reproach in the mouths of the ungodly! But it was not her
fault; no, she often felt that Mr. Meeker was too lax in discipline,
(she had had fears of _him_, sometimes, lest he might become a
castaway,) and did not set that Christian example, at all times, which
she could desire. For instance, after church on Sunday afternoon, it was
his custom, when the season was favorable, frequently with a child
holding each hand, to walk leisurely over his fields, humming a cheerful
hymn and taking note of whatever was pleasant in the scene, perhaps the
fresh vegetation just bursting into life, or the opening flowers, or it
might be the maturing fruit, or the ripening yellow grain. On these
occasions, he would endeavor to impress on his children how good God
was; how seed-time and harvest always came; how the sun shone on the
evil as well as on the good, and the rain descended both on the just and
on the unjust. He, too, would inculcate lessons of diligence and
industry, agreeable lessons, after quite a different model from those of
his wife. He would repeat, for example, not in an austere fashion, but
in a way which interested and even amused them, the dramatic description
of the sluggard, from the hook of Proverbs, commencing:

_'I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man,
void of understanding;

'And lo! it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the
face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.'_

It is a memorable fact that Hiram was never in the habit of accompanying
his father on these Sunday-excursions. Not that his mother positively
interdicted him. She was too judicious a person to hold up to censure
any habitual act of her husband, whatever might have been her own
opinion, or however she might have remon