ining a position. But the door
of Providence did not open yet: Philadelphia was not that door: his path
led farther.

So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny. He went
to Frederick: still the invisible finger pointed on. At last there was
but one more step. He secured a seat in the stage going down the
Frederick road to Washington.

Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far
different prospects! But this was his first visit. It was at the close
of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city. The
last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky. The dreary twilight
was setting in. Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills. The
trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast. Gloom was
shutting down upon the capital. The city wore a dismal and forbidding
aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the
extreme. Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it
descended the hills. Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray,
cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night. Between this mud and
that water what was there for him? Yet here was his destination.

Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a
power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe
also,--his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of
friends. But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth. Of
all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul. There was no one to
dispense favors to _him_,--to receive _him_ with cheerful look and
cordial grasp of the hand. A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit,
as the darkness settled upon the hills. Here he was, alone and
unknown,--a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity
by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves
into notice. Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting
and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him!

But he was not disheartened. From the depths of his spirit arose a hope,
like a bubble from a deep spring. That spring was FAITH. There, in that
dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence
take hold of his. And a prayer rose to his lips,--a prayer of earnest
supplication for guidance and support. Was that prayer answered?

The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted
streets.

"Wh