nument that bears
her name, graven on a cross, amid a cluster of white lilies, is
inscribed: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of thee." The lovely
twin brother, "Georgie" (whose sweet life story is told in "The Empty
Crib"), reposes in our same family plot, and beside him lies a baby
brother, Mathiot Cuyler, who lived but twelve days. As this infant was
born on the twenty-fifth of December, 1873, his tiny tomb-stone bears
the simple inscription: "Our Christmas Gift."

During all our seasons of domestic sorrow the cordial sympathies of our
noble-hearted congregation were very cheering; for we had always kept
open doors to them all, and regarded them as only an enlargement of our
own family. In our household joys, they too, participated. When the
twenty-fifth anniversary of our marriage occurred, they decorated our
church with flags and flowers and suspended a huge marriage-bell on an
arch before the pulpit. After the President of our Board of Trustees,
the Hon. William W. Goodrich, had completed his congratulatory address,
two of the officers of the church in imitation of the returning spies
from Eshcol marched in, "bearing between them on a staff" a capacious
bag of silver dollars. A curiously constructed silver clock is also
among the treasured souvenirs of that happy anniversary.

In April, 1885, the close of the first quarter-century of my ministry
was celebrated by our church with very delightful festivities. Addresses
were delivered by his Honor Mayor Low, Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, Dr.
Richard S. Storrs, and the Hon. John Wanamaker, Post-Master General. A
duodecimo volume giving the history of our church and all its activities
was published by order of our people.

From such a loyal flock in the full tide of its prosperity, to cut
asunder, required no small exercise of conscience and of courage. When
the patriarchal Dr. Emmons, of Franklin, Massachusetts, resigned his
church at the age of eighty, he gave the good reason: "I mean to stop
when I have sense enough to know that I have not begun, to fail." In
exercising the same grace, on a Sabbath morning in February, 1890, I
made before a full congregation the following announcement: "Nearly
thirty years have elapsed since I assumed the pastoral charge of the
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church; and through the continual
blessings of Heaven upon us it has grown into one of the largest and
most useful and powerful churches in the Presbyterian denomination. It