d driving these nails. They took me
back to the old days at Lawrenceville, where we lived over a store
and our pantry was a dry goods box. But there we were so happy. I am
hoping sometime to be as happy again, but it is not possible to do it
while I am in the service of the public." He had promised himself and
his wife some day to go back to that simple life. But his sudden death
taught the same great lesson with all the examples I give of great men
and women. Rev. Robt. Collier always enjoyed the circus--the circus
was the great place of enjoyment outside, perhaps, of his pulpit work.
It was Robert Collier who used to tell the story of the boy whose aunt
always made him go to church, but after going to a circus he wrote to
his aunt: "Auntie, if you had ever been to a circus, you wouldn't go
to another prayer-meeting as long as you live." The love of Collier
for the circus only shows the simplicity of the great man's mind. Mr.
Collier is said to have paid a dollar for a fifty cent ticket to the
circus, only making it conditional that he was to have the privilege
of going 'round to the rear and crawling under the tent, showing what
he must have done when a boy. The fact of Mr. Collier's love for the
circus was one of the strange things in the eccentricities of a great
man's life. Once Mr. Barnum came into Mr. Collier's church and Mr.
Collier said to the usher: "Please show Mr. Barnum to a front seat
for he always gives me one in _his_ circus." These simplicities often
show that somewhere back in each man's life there is a point where
happiness and love are one, and when, that point is passed, we go on
longing to the return.

The night after he went to hear Henry Ward Beecher's great sermon they
persuaded us to stay until the following Monday night, because there
was to be a lecture at the Cooper Institute and there was to be a
parade of political clubs, and fire works, so as country boys, easily
influenced, we decided that the school could wait for another day, and
staid for the procession. We went to Cooper's Institute and there
was a crowd as there was at Beecher's church. We finally got on the
stairway and far in the rear of the great crowd, but my brother stood
on the floor, and I sat on the ledge of the window sill, with my feet
on his shoulders, so he held me while I told him down there what was
going on over yonder. The first man that came on the platform, and
presided at that meeting, was William Cullent Bryant,