best platform speakers,
though not, perhaps, what the multitude consider eloquent; for, at the
best, he was only argumentative and earnest and clear and convincing, in
his highest manifestations.

Of his career after this, I cannot say anything as I wish, without the
risk of saying too much. He had one of the wealthiest and most liberal
congregations of New England. He was their idol. He was in every way
most agreeably situated, with a large family flowering into usefulness
about him, and hosts of friends, enthusiastic and devoted.
Nevertheless, believing that, as a servant of God, he had no right to
preach smooth things where rough things were needed, and that
acknowledging other people's transgressions would not satisfy the law,
he came out boldly, with helm and spear, against two of the worst forms
of human slavery,--the slavery of the body and the slavery of the soul,
the slavery of the wine-cup, and the slavery of bondage to a master.
Whether his beloved people would hear or whether they would forbear,
being all the more beloved because of their danger, he must preach what
he believed to be the truth, and the whole truth. It was like a fire
shut up in his bones. He persisted, and they remonstrated, or rather a
part of them did so; and the result was a speedy and hopeless
alienation, followed by years of strife and bitter controversy at law,
and a final separation; though by far the larger part of the church and
congregation, if I do not mistake, upheld him to the last, and adhered
to him through good report and through evil report,--Deacon Samuel May,
a host in himself, being of their number.

During this protracted and sorrowful controversy, he became a
phrenologist,--a believer in phrenology,--at any rate, following the
lead of Spurzheim; and after many years, a Spiritualist,--in which faith
he died,--one of his last, if not the very last, of his appearances
before the public being as President of a convention held by the leading
Spiritualists of the land at Philadelphia.

He could not be a materialist; and having faith in the evidence of his
own senses, and being as truly conscientious a man as ever breathed, and
accustomed to the closest reasoning, what was he to do? There were the
_facts_. They were not to be controverted; they could not be explained;
they could not be reconciled to any hypothesis in physics. If he was
given over to delusion, to be buffeted by Satan, whose fault was it?
That he was by natur