which we have not the moral
fortitude to sustain well. In short, for myself, I may make a
respectable, and, I trust, not useless man in the law, when I could do
nothing in the circumstances which you choose. However, I respect your
feelings, and heartily wish that I could share them myself."

A few days after this conversation the young friends parted for their
several destinations--the one to a law school, the other to a
theological seminary.

* * * * *

It was many years after this that a middle-aged man, of somewhat
threadbare appearance and restricted travelling conveniences, was seen
carefully tying his horse at the outer enclosure of an elegant mansion
in the town of ----, in one of our Western States; which being done, he
eyed the house rather inquisitively, as people sometimes do when they
are doubtful as to the question of entering or not entering. The house
belonged to George Lennox, Esq., a lawyer reputed to be doing a more
extensive business than any other in the state, and the threadbare
gentleman who plies the knocker at the front door is the Reverend Mr.
Stanton, a name widely spread in the ecclesiastical circles of the land.
The door opens, and the old college acquaintances meet with a cordial
grasp of the hand, and Mr. Stanton soon finds himself pressed to the
most comfortable accommodations in the warm parlor of his friend; and
even the slight uneasiness which the wisest are not always exempt from,
when conscious of a little shabbiness in exterior, was entirely
dissipated by the evident cordiality of his reception. Since the
conversation we have alluded to, the two friends pursued their separate
courses with but few opportunities of personal intercourse. In the true
zeal of the missionary, James Stanton had thrown himself into the field,
where it seemed hardest and darkest, and where labor seemed most needed.
In neighborhoods without churches, without school houses, without
settled roads, among a population of disorganized and heterogeneous
material, he had exhorted from house to house, labored individually with
one after another, till he had, in place after place, brought together
the elements of a Christian church. Far from all ordinances, means of
grace, or Christian brotherhood, or cooeperation, he had seemed to
himself to be merely the lonely, solitary "_voice_ of one crying in the
wilderness," as unassisted, and, to human view, as powerless. With
poverty, and co