stribution.
What remains but to send it upward until it finds her to whom it belongs
by right of concentration through more than forty years."

"I will not speak, my brother, of my pain--let that be; it is the
discipline of love, having its fruit in what is to be. But I will tell
you how a gracious Father fills this cloud with Himself--and covering me
in it, takes me into His pavilion. It is not what I would have chosen;
but in this dark cloud I know better what it is to be alone with Him;
and how it is best sometimes to put out the earthly lights, that even
the sweetest earthly love may not come between Him and me. It is the old
experience of love breaking through the darkness as it did long ago
through the terrors of Sinai and the more appalling gloom of Calvary. I
have this to thank Him for, the greatest of all His mercies, and then
for this, that He gave her to me so long. The memories of almost half a
century encircle me as a rainbow. I can feed upon them through the
remainder of a short, sad life, and after that can carry them up to
Heaven with me and pour them into song forever. If the strings of the
harp are being stretched to a greater tension, it is that the praise may
hereafter rise to higher and sweeter notes before His throne--_as we bow
together there._"

CHAPTER XV

SUMMERING AT SARATOGA AND MOHONK.

_Bishop Haven.--Dr. Schaff.--President McCosh_.

To the laborious pastor of a large congregation some period of
recuperation during the summer is absolutely indispensable. The cavalry
officer who, when hotly pursued by the enemy, discovered that his
saddle-girths had become loose, and dismounted long enough to tighten
them, was a wise man, and affords a good example to us ministers.

It was my custom to call a halt, lock my study door (stowing away my
pastoral cares in a drawer) and go away for five or six weeks, and
sometimes a little longer. A sea voyage was undertaken during half a
dozen vacations, but during a portion of forty-two summers I "pitched my
moving tent" in salubrious Saratoga, and a part of twenty-one summers
was spent on the heights of Mohonk.

As this volume is issued in London as well as in New York, I will
mention some things in this chapter for my British readers with which
many of my own fellow-countrymen may be already familiar. There were
several reasons that induced me to select Saratoga early in my ministry
as the best place to spend a part of the summer vacation. It