rs despise you. I hear that you wheeled your
wife on a wheelbarrow to the graveyard." To say the least, our
conversation that day was unique and spirited, and it led to his
becoming a most ardent friend and admirer. I have had multitudes of
friends, but I have found in my own experience that God so arranged it
that the greatest opportunities of usefulness that have been opened
before me were opened by enemies. And when, years ago, they conspired
against me, their assault opened all Christendom to me as a field in
which to preach the Gospel. So you may harness your antagonists to your
best interests and compel them to draw you on to better work. He allowed
me to officiate at his second marriage, did this mine enemy. All the
town was awake that night. They had somehow heard that this economist at
obsequies was to be remarried. Well, I was inside his house trying,
under adverse circumstances, to make the twain one flesh. There were
outside demonstrations most extraordinary, and all in consideration of
what the bridegroom had been to that community. Horns, trumpets,
accordions, fiddles, fire-crackers, tin pans, howls, screeches, huzzas,
halloos, missiles striking the front door, and bedlam let loose! Matters
grew worse as the night advanced, until the town authorities read the
Riot Act, and caused the only cannon belonging to the village to be
hauled out on the street and loaded, threatening death to the mob if
they did not disperse. Glad am I to say that it was only a farce, and no
tragedy. My mode of first meeting this queer man was a case in which it
is best to fight fire with fire. I remember also the first funeral. It
nearly killed me. A splendid young man skating on the Passaic River in
front of my house had broken through the ice, and his body after many
hours had been grappled from the water and taken home to his distracted
parents. To be the chief consoler in such a calamity was something for
which I felt completely incompetent. When in the old but beautiful
church the silent form of the young man whom we all loved rested beneath
the pulpit, it was a pull upon my emotions I shall never forget. On the
way to the grave, in the same carriage with the eminent Reverend Dr.
Fish, who helped in the services, I said, "This is awful. One more
funeral like this will be the end of us." He replied, "You will learn
after awhile to be calm under such circumstances. You cannot console
others unless you preserve your own equipoise."