selling me for awhile to cease the
correspondence which was one of the few pleasures of my life, but was not
part of my duty to the higher and freer faith which we had all embraced.
With keen regret I bade them for awhile farewell, and went back to my
lonely life.

In that spring of 1873, I delivered my first lecture. It was delivered to
no one, queer as that may sound to my readers. And indeed, it was queer
altogether. I was learning to play the organ, and was in the habit of
practising in the church by myself, without a blower. One day, being
securely locked in, I thought I would like to try how "it felt" to speak
from the pulpit. Some vague fancies were stirring in me, that I could
speak if I had the chance; very vague they were, for the notion that I
might ever speak on the platform had never dawned on me; only the longing
to find outlet in words was in me; the feeling that I had something to
say, and the yearning to say it. So, queer as it may seem? I ascended the
pulpit in the big, empty, lonely church, and there and then I delivered
my first lecture! I shall never forget the feeling of power and of
delight which came upon me as my voice rolled down the aisles, and the
passion in me broke into balanced sentences, and never paused for
rhythmical expression, while I felt that all I wanted was to see the
church full of upturned faces, instead of the emptiness of the silent
pews. And as though in a dream the solitude became peopled, and I saw the
listening faces and the eager eyes, and as the sentences came unbidden
from my lips, and my own tones echoed back to me from the pillars of the
ancient church, I knew of a verity that the gift of speech was mine, and
that if ever--and it seemed then so impossible--if ever the chance came
to me of public work, that at least this power of melodious utterance
should win hearing for any message I had to bring.

But that knowledge remained a secret all to my own self for many a long
month, for I quickly felt ashamed of that foolish speechifying in an
empty church, and I only recall it now because, in trying to trace out
one's mental growth, it is only fair to notice the first silly striving
after that expression in spoken words, which, later, has become to me one
of the deepest delights of life. And indeed none can know save they who
have felt it what joy there is in the full rush of language which, moves
and sways; to feel a crowd respond to the lightest touch; to see the
faces