man we love,
His heart is the heart of a lion,
His soul is the soul of a dove.

It is--Ho!--to the Captain we honor,
Salute we the man and the day,
On his brow are the snows of December,
In his heart are the bird songs of May.

The Scripture passage from which I discoursed on the next Sabbath
morning, January 12th, in our Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit--"At
evening time it shall be light"--seems especially appropriate to an
autobiography penned at a time when the life-day is already far spent.
There are some people who have a pitiful dread of old age. For myself,
instead of it being a matter of sorrow or of pain, it is rather an
occasion of profound joy that God has enabled me to write in my family
record "Four score years." The October of life may be one of the most
fruitful months in all its calendar; and the "Indian summer" its
brightest period when God's sunshine kindles every leaf on the tree
with crimson and golden glories. Faith grows in its tenacity of fibre by
the long continued exercise of testing God, and trusting His promises.
The veteran Christian can turn over the leaves of his well-worn Bible
and say: "This Book has been my daily companion; I know all about this
promise and that one and that other one; for I have tried them for
myself, I have a great pile of cheques which my Heavenly Father has
cashed with gracious blessings." Bunyan brings his Pilgrim, not into a
second infant school where they may sit down in imbecility, or loiter in
idleness; he brings them into Beulah Land, where the birds fill the air
with music; and where they catch glimpses of the Celestial City. They
are drawing nearer to the end of their long journey and beyond that
river, that has no bridge, looms up the New Jerusalem in all its
flashing splendors.

In a previous chapter I have told the story of our bereavement when God
took three of our precious children to Himself; but to-day we can chant
the twenty-third Psalm, for the overflowing cup of mercies that sweeten
our home, and for the two loving children that are spared to us. Our
eldest daughter, Mary, is the wife of Dr. William S. Cheeseman, an
eminent physician in the beautiful city of Auburn, the County-seat of my
native County of Cayuga. It is the site of one of our principal
Theological Seminaries, from which have graduated many of the foremost
ministers in our Presbyterian denomination. One of the earliest
professors of that institution was the