ise the next day,--that is,
last Wednesday,--when a neighbor called to consult me about a place
for you to preach in!"

But it was time for service. There was the same thronged attendance
and absorbed attention as in the morning. How delightful to proclaim
the tidings of great joy to those who are hungering for the word of
life! How different from ministering to fashionable worldly hearers,
who gather in the house of God for intellectual entertainment, or from
motives of custom, respectability, or ostentation, and who are
hardened by the very abundance of spiritual instruction!

At the close of the services, with the social freedom of western
intercourse, I was introduced to most present, and they all seemed
anxious that I should make a home in their neighborhood. How different
it would be to settle with this new people, on the precarious
subsistence which I might get for my family here, preaching, and
perhaps keeping house, in a log cabin, from the situation I must fill,
should I accept the call extended by the large and wealthy church in
N. A frontier parish on a prairie, on the outskirts of civilization,
and a city parish,--what a contrast! But my heart is strongly drawn
towards this people. Should I remain with them, what would my
money-loving, place-seeking, eastern friends say?

* * * * *

I have passed another delightful Sabbath, notwithstanding certain
trifling violations of the proprieties of worship as observed in
eastern assemblies.

It struck me quite ludicrously, at first, to see mother's listening to
the preaching while nursing or dandling their infants. Yesterday a
fat, burly baby, who, by some singular good fortune, had an
apple,--for we never see that fruit here,--let it drop from his fat
fist, and it rolled nearly to my feet; and the mother, not in the
least disconcerted, gravely came and picked it up, and returned it to
her boy. Nobody, however, was disturbed by the incident; all appeared
to take it as a matter of course. And I confess I like this absence of
fastidious conventionalities. Why should the mother be kept from the
house of God because she may not bring her child with her? "Suffer the
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," said the great
Preacher when the disciples would drive out of _his_ congregation the
mothers and their infants. Is the servant more particular than his
Lord?

Then, too, the uncouth garments of many of my l