These varied experiences of joy and sorrow in the home-life of this period; this variety of occupation—now studying and attending lectures in the Seminary, lecturing on temperance and phrenology, drilling in the “Hallelujah Chorus,” painting the old family mansion, accompanying his father in his attendance upon presbytery and synod, now a constable and anon an editor—all contributed to give him a broad culture, had much to do with the variety of labor which he undertook in after-life, and fitted him for that easy, natural, and familiar mingling with all kinds and conditions of men which was in him so marked a characteristic. Of what he did, read, and thought at this time we are fortunate in having another source of authentic information from his own pen. Upon the unruled blank leaf of a letter-book, as large as a commercial ledger and heavily bound in leather, is written in a large hand, large enough to cover the whole page: JOURNAL OF EVENTS, FEELINGS, THOUGHTS, PLANS, ETC., JUST AS THEY HAVE MET ME, THUS GIVING IN PART A TRANSCRIPT OF MY INNER AND OUTER LIFE. BEGUN JUNE, 1835, AT LANE THEOL. SEMINARY. On the first page, “Begun three days after birthday,” June 27. “I have tried times without number to keep a diary or a journal of my religious feelings. I have never succeeded.” 1. “I am not enough contemplative to make a record of reflections and feelings very definite.” 2. “I never could be _sincere_. The only use which I distinctly know that I have derived from it is a knowledge of my being very averse to saying just what my feelings were. I could not help feeling: ‘_This_ will, perhaps, be seen.’ And why should I not so feel? One object in keeping a journal is to look back upon your mind as it reflected itself at different periods past, and if you _keep_ one no one can pretend to have enough of prospective wisdom to save it from the hands of others.” After half a page of reasons why this possibility—which has indeed been realized—may take place, he says: “Can I conceal it all from myself, and feign to myself that that which I am disclosing and giving form and permanence to, my most secret feelings, none will see? And when I feel secretly that they will be seen, is it possible to go through honestly a narration of those emotions from the disclosure of which I shrink in my inmost soul?” In view of this possibility, he decides upon a modification of his ideal: