e been made in his riper years. I thought
it would not be disagreeable to the colonel to introduce to him this
odd phenomenon, which many hundreds of people have had a curiosity to
examine; and, among all the strange things I have seen in him, I never
remember any that equalled what passed on this occasion. On hearing
the colonel's profession, and receiving some hints of his religious
character, he ran through a vast variety of scriptures, beginning at
the Pentateuch and going on to the Revelation, relating either to the
dependence to be fixed on God for the success of military preparations,
or to the instances and promises occurring there for his care of good men
in the most imminent dangers, or to the encouragement to despise perils
and death, while engaged in a good cause, and supported by the views of
a happy immortality. I believe he quoted more than twenty of these
passages, and I must freely own that I know not who could have chosen
them with greater propriety. If my memory deceive me not, the last of
this catalogue was that from which I afterwards preached, on the lamented
occasion of this great man's fall: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I
will give thee a crown of life." We were all astonished at so remarkable
a feat, and I question not but many of my readers will think the memory
of it worthy of being thus preserved.

But to return to my main subject: The day after the sermon and
conversation of which I have been speaking, I took my best leave of my
inestimable friend, after attending him some part of his way northward.
The first stage of our journey was to the cottage of that poor but
religious family which I had before occasion to mention as relieved, and
indeed in a great measure subsisted by his charity. Nothing could be more
delightful than to observe the condescension with which he conversed with
these his humble pensioners. We there put up our last united prayers
together; and he afterwards expressed, in the strongest terms I have ever
heard him use on such an occasion, the singular pleasure with which he
had joined in them. Indeed it was no small satisfaction to me to have
an opportunity of recommending such a valuable friend to the divine
protection and blessing, with that particular freedom and enlargement on
what was peculiar in his circumstances, which hardly any other situation,
unless we had been quite alone, could so conveniently have admitted.
We went from thence to the table of a person of d