4, and at another ten thousand dollars by
endorsing for a friend. His old acquaintance, poverty, again took up
its abode with him. In addition, he was heavily in debt. Those were
black days, days that taught him how unstable were the things of this
world--money, position, the ambitions that once had seemed so worthy.
The only thing that brought a sense of satisfaction, of having done
something worth while, was the endeavor to make others happier, to put
joy into lives as desolate as his own. Such work brought peace.

To forget his own troubles in lightening those of others, he went
actively into religious work. He took a class in the Sunday School of
Tremont Temple, that very Sunday School into which Deacon Chipman had
taken him a runaway boy some twenty years before. The class grew from
four to six hundred in a few months. He preached to sailors on the
wharves, to idlers on the streets, in mission chapels at night. The
present West Somerville, Massachusetts, church grew from just such
work. He could not but see the fruits of his labors. On all sides it
grew to a quick harvest.

The thought that he was thus influencing others for good, that he
was leading men and women into paths of sure happiness brought him
a spiritual calm and peace such as the gratification of worldly
ambitions had never given him. More and more he became convinced it
was the only work worth doing. The strong love for his fellowmen, the
desire to help those in need and to make them happier which had always
been such a pronounced characteristic, had set him more than once
to thinking of the ministry as a life work. Indeed, ever since that
childish sermon, with the big gray rock as a pulpit, it had been in
his mind, sometimes dormant, breaking out again into strong feeling
when for a moment he stood on some hilltop of life and took in its
fullest, grandest meaning, or in the dark valley of suffering and
sorrow held close communion with God and saw the beauty of serving Him
by serving his fellowmen. That the inclination was with him is shown
by the fact that when he was admitted to the bar in Albany in 1865, he
had a Greek Testament in his pocket.

As soon as his means permitted after the war, he gathered a valuable
theological library, sending to Germany for a number of the books. In
1875, when he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the
United States, he delivered an address that same evening in Washington
on the "Curriculum of the Sch