elf, to whom he had, until the meeting of Classis,
been a total stranger.

I stood at his funeral in the crowd beside a poor woman with a faded
shawl and worn-out hat, who was struggling up to get one look at the
dear old face in the coffin. She was being crowded back. I said, "Follow
me, and you shall see him." So I pushed the way up for her as well as
myself, and when we got up to the silent form she burst out crying, and
said, "That is the last friend I had in the world."

Dr. Hardman lived on. He lived to write a letter when I was called to
Syracuse, N.Y., a letter telling a prominent officer of the Syracuse
Church that I would never do at all for their pastor. He lived on until
I was called to Philadelphia, and wrote a letter to a prominent officer
in the Philadelphia Church telling them not to call me. Years ago he
went to his rest. But the two men will always stand in my memory as
opposites in character. The one taught me a lesson never to be forgotten
about how to treat a young man, and the other a lesson about how not to
treat a young man. Dr. Scott and Dr. Hardman, the antipodes!

So my first settlement as pastor was in the village of Belleville, N.J.
My salary was eight hundred dollars and a parsonage. The amount seemed
enormous to me. I said to myself: "What! all this for one year?" I was
afraid of getting worldly under so much prosperity! I resolved to invite
all the congregation to my house in groups of twenty-five each. We [A]
began, and as they were the best congregation in all the world, and we
felt nothing was too good for them, we piled all the luxuries on the
table. I never completed the undertaking. At the end of six months I was
in financial despair. I found that we not only had not the surplus of
luxuries, but we had a struggle to get the necessaries.

[A] _While at Belleville Dr. Talmage married Miss Mary
Avery, of Brooklyn, N.Y., by whom he had two children--a
son, Thomas De Witt, and a daughter, Jessie. Mrs. Talmage
was accidentally drowned in the Schuylkill River while Dr.
Talmage was pastor of the Second Reformed Church of
Philadelphia._

Although the first call I ever had was to Piermont, N.Y., my first real
work began in the Reformed Church of Belleville, N.J. I preached at
Piermont in the morning, and at the Congregational meeting held in the
afternoon of the same day it was resolved to invite me to become pastor.
But for the very high