solitary place or object that looks like the past. No amount of recollection could stir one pleasurable sentiment associated with other days. We hastened out of the village into the country. The farms were there; they are real estate; they stay, and the homes in which the stalwart old farmers lived were unchanged, except as the lapse of more than half a century had given them more of age. But the sons and daughters were thrifty, and the old places improve from year to year.

One of them was famous for its orchard of cherries, and once a year, when the fruit was in perfection, it was a grand holiday for us parents and children to go out to Seymour King's and spend a long summer day in gathering them, returning home at night with baskets and pails full, which were made into preserves for the next winter's use.

Another farmer, six miles away to the east, was Joseph Stewart, at whose place we all went every autumn when the nuts were ready to fall, and laid in a great store, walnuts, chestnuts and butternuts. This often occupied us two or three days and was considered the grandest frolic of the year.

In similar work and play most pleasantly blended we gathered apples and indeed all the fruits of the year in their several seasons, making each visit a time of wonderful enjoyment for the good friends who invited us, and who gathered the neighbors to meet us and have a good time generally.

This is the house where Daniel Wells, a soldier of the Revolution, held me a willing captive boy for at least a week every winter, while in the daytime he told me stories of the war and fought his battles over and over for my annual entertainment. In the evening in the large kitchen before the big blazing fire we popped corn, cracked nuts, made candy, and played all sorts of innocent, lively and noisy games, making the rafters ring with the merriment, while the old folks looked on and partook of the apples and cider which were then the best of good cheer.

And so we rode over the whole country-side, enjoying the lovely weather, the brilliant autumn scenery, and stirring up

old memories long thought dead, but now fresh as yesterday as we passed the places that gave them birth.

I met many gentlemen in the midst of business, and somewho are now old men, who were the companions of my youth, now the pillars of the congregation, men and women who knew and honored my father as the pastor of their childhood: their fathers and mothers are all dead and gone, but I lived among them as friends of my early days. At a little teaparty in the evening we met the Rev. Mr. Teller, the recently settled pastor, and his young wife, with both of whom we were greatly pleased, and we came away assured that the good people of the new White Meeting-house have a man eminently fitted to be a rich blessing to that important and most interesting congregation. "For them our prayers ascend." Very full of interest was this visit, and yet it is true that none can enter into its secret who have not known what it is to revisit the scenes of one's childhood after a lapse of many, many years.

DR. GRIFFIN'S COLLEGE BOYS.

A VERY few weeks after entering Williams College, I was invited by the President, Rev. Dr. Griffin, to come to his study at eight o'clock in the evening. Conscious of no specific wrong-doing, and scarcely known to him individually, I was at a loss to know why I had been asked to what seemed a private interview. But when the time came to put in an appearance, one and another of the students joined me, having had similar summons. As we reached the door, the company was increased to about a round dozen, and we entered with a feeling of apprehension, if not of positive fear.

He

The President was the most majestic man I ever saw, and he then appeared more majestic than he would now. received us with great kindness of manner, but with dignity

that filled us with veneration and awe. He was more than six feet high, and of such proportions as to make him a giant among men. There is no man in the American pulpit of this day of his commanding presence, of whom I have knowledge. His pulpit eloquence was then so remarkable that he was called the Prince of Preachers. His stature was so great, his walk so like that of a military commander,proud of his position and anxious to appear great,—that we who were very young felt the mighty distance between us and him. With this sense of his greatness and our littleness, we entered his study. A bright wood-fire burned on the brass andirons. His study-lamp was too much for his eyes, which were protected with a green shade. This he removed as he turned toward us, seated in a half-circle around the room. As he wheeled about in his chair, he sat in the midst of us, as a father surrounded by his children. And then he spoke. With exceeding tenderness in his tones, and words of loving-kindness on his lips, he said he had invited us, out of all the students who had recently entered college, because our parents were his personal friends. As many of us had not recovered from the first attack of homesickness, this allusion to the old folks at home took us where we were tender. In an instant he had not our ear only, but our hearts. He then went on to say that all our parents were praying for us, and anxious lest in the new life we had begun we should be led away from the lessons and the loves of our childhood, and be tempted into evil ways. He set before us in eloquent and impressive words the importance of seeking earnestly the Lord, giving our hearts and lives to him now at the very outset of our college career; the danger of delay; and then he unfolded with great clearness the way of life by Jesus Christ. He conversed with each one of the twelve in the hearing of the rest, inquiring minutely into our plans and purposes with reference to religious duties, and gave such instruction as each case required. Then he prayed with us,-fervid, importunate, mighty with God; wrestling as Jacob with the angel; and so full of love and pity, himself in tears, and moving us to tears in sympathy,

as he prayed for those we loved at home, and for us who felt as orphans or as exiles,-who were now finding a father and friend. Then he told us to come to him at any hour of the day or night with whatever trouble or care we had, and his door and heart would be always open for us to enter.

That was the beginning of what in those days was called a revival of religion. Not one of the dozen boys (men they are called now-college men) had a serious thought about "getting religion" when we went to the President's study. But we all came away under the deep conviction that the one thing needful for us was to have religion. And of that number several were hopefully converted during the winter, and a general seriousness pervaded the college. The most of those who professed to be saved at that time were the children of pious parents. They had been well taught at home, and now parental prayers were answered, the seed planted in much tearfulness springing up to eternal life.

At that time there were in college several very wild young men, whose parents, as a forlorn hope, sent them there that they might be brought under the power of religion. They were not touched by the Spirit. They scoffed at those who were serious. They blasphemed openly, and many other dear youth were seduced by them into sin and shame. These profligates went on from bad to worse, became hardened in iniquity, and tenfold more the children of the devil than they were before. As if God had said of them: "Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone." And all of them went to the bad. On that set of dissipated, profane and rowdy fellows, the discipline, instruction and influence of college life were powerless for good. Most of them died early. Some lived to bring their parents with sorrow to the grave, and then perished.

A college in which religion is a living force is a good place for Christian parents to send their children. The temptations to evil are not greater than they are in any city or village, nor in most rural parishes. The restraints are greater. The hourly influences of good are strong. Prayer at home is a power in the college. The sweet associations of the family

circle and altar are not lost from memory in the midst of study or play. The probabilities are all in favor of a young man who goes to college with good principles. He will probably come out with firmer convictions of truth and duty, perhaps with new purposes and holier aims.

But it must be a college where evangelical religion is the supreme power. The spirit of unbelief, the scepticism of infidelity, I mean just that, the scepticism of infidelity: the religion of doubt-that agnosticism or know-nothingism now prevailing in circles where philosophy asserts itself against revelation,—is dangerous to the everlasting souls of young men. The atmosphere of such a college is foul. No system of ventilation will improve it. Send a son to the swamps to cure him of malarial fever; to jail to mend his morals; to the desert of Arabia to grow corn, before you send him to such a college to learn to do well. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And those colleges which ignore the gospel as the power and wisdom of God, are not the places where the sons of godly parents should go for knowledge of the Truth.

RETURNING AFTER FIFTY YEARS.

THE first Chief Justice of the United States was John Jay, of Bedford, Westchester County, N. Y. He was a large landed proprietor there, and on a height commanding one of the finest inland views in the country he built a spacious mansion, in which he died in 1829. He has a reputation as a patriot and statesman of the Revolution second only to that of Washington. His son William Jay, a distinguished Christian, philanthropist and jurist, succeeded his illustrious father in the enjoyment of this magnificent estate. I frequently met him in Bible and other meetings when I was a young man. He died in this ancestral house in 1858, and was succeeded by our honored fellow-citizen, John Jay,