hite sky. The cover was turned
down, and I was permitted to kiss a baby-sister, and warned to be good,
lest Mrs. Dampster, who had brought the baby, should come and take it
away. This autocrat was pointed out, as she sat in a gray dress, white
'kerchief and cap, and no other potentate has ever inspired me with such
reverential awe.

My second memory is of a "great awakening" to a sense of sin, and of my
lost and undone condition. On a warm summer day, while walking alone on
the common which lay between home and Squire Horner's house, I was
struck motionless by the thought that I had forgotten God. It seemed
probable, considering the total depravity of my nature, that I had been
thinking bad thoughts, and these I labored to recall, that I might
repent and plead with Divine mercy for forgiveness. But alas! I could
remember nothing save the crowning crime--forgetfulness of God.

I seemed to stand outside, and see myself a mere mite, in a pink
sun-bonnet and white bib, the very chief of sinners, for the probability
was I had been thinking of that bonnet and bib. It was quite certain
that God knew my sin; and ah, the crushing horror that I could, by no
possibility conceal aught from the All-seeing Eye, while it was equally
impossible to win its approval. The Divine Law was so perfect that I
could not hope to meet its requirements--the Divine Law-giver so alert
that no sin could escape detection.

Under that cloud of doom the sunshine grew dark, and I did not dare to
move until a cheery voice called out something about my pretty bonnet,
and gave me a sense of companionship in this dreadful, dreadful world.
Rose, a large native African, had spoken to me from her place in Squire
Horner's kitchen, and I went home full of solemn resolves and sad
forebodings.

This is probably what evangelists would call my conversion, and it came
in my third summer. There was a fire in the grate when mother showed Dr.
Robt. Wilson, our family physician, a pair of wristbands and collar I
had stitched for father, and when they spoke of me as not being three
years old--but then I had in my mind the marks of that "great
awakening."

To me, no childhood was possible under the training this indicates, yet
in giving that training, my parents were loving and gentle as they were
faithful. Believing in the danger of eternal death, they could but guard
me from it, by the only means of which they had any knowledge.

Before the completion of that momen