ever acknowledge our faults, only our divine
possibilities; so, when I left the academy, my parents, with strong
yearning and with tears, entreated me to become a minister. I had
not the heart to disappoint them and as one hypnotized, on a Sabbath
morning during that summer, the clergyman immersed me in the river,
while a wondering crowd watched from the shore. The very waters seemed
to protest, for as I gasped for breath at the cold backward plunge,
I imbibed copious draughts of the briny deep, and was well-nigh
strangled. I survived the ordeal, and that afternoon preached in the
church to nearly the entire population of the town on the "Final state
of the impenitent dead."

Oh, the terrors of this my first sermon, horrors to preacher as well
as to "preachees." As I sat in the pulpit beside our pastor, listening
to the tremulous tones of the organ which followed the prayer, and
gazing at the sea of upturned faces, they seemed taunting me with all
the wild pranks of my boyhood, and crying "Oh fool and hypocrite."

All my schoolmates were there shaking with ill-concealed merriment.
Every pore poured forth perspiration, and my hair seemed to stand on
end like quills upon the back of the fretful porcupine. I thought of
the experience of the first sermon by a theological student which I
had recently read in a comic paper, and I trembled lest history was to
repeat itself.

This theologue, like many of his cloth, was possessed of the insane
impression that he was gifted with the sublime inspiration of
eloquence, and being invited to preach on his return to the old home
for vacation, he selected the somewhat startling text "and the dumb
ass opened his mouth and spake." On this elevating theme he wrote a
sensational sermon and committed it to memory in order that he might
electrify his audience with eye power as well as by verbal flow of
soul. The awful day arrived, but when the young apostle arose to
preach, stage fright banished from his mind all but the thrilling
text.

"My friends," said he, "we are informed by the holy book that this
dumb ass opened his mouth and spake." Then pulling his hair in
desperation, he repeated the text several times, when he was
interrupted by the disgusted pastor, who jumped to his feet and
shouted:

"Well, friends, as the dumb ass has nothing to say, let us pray."

This awful example well nigh converted me into another specimen of
this historic animal, but at last the pent up cave of th