“_Oct. 29_ [1835].—... You said last night that I was never made for a minister. If a minister were made to wear a lachrymose face and never to enjoy or make mirth, you said truly and I was not born to it. There are, in fact, three classes of divines—the ascetic, the neuter, and the sunshiny; the first conceive the chief end of man to consist in a long face, upturned eyes, a profound sanctimonious look.... I must plead guilty if you mean that I was not born to the rank of these worthy personages. Far be it from me to believe that _religion_ makes ridiculous dunces. And though I think many such are truly pious men, yet such endowments are the deformity and misfortune, not the ornament, of their piety. The second class I call neuter because they (like the Chinese leaf by which character is told) quirl and roll just according to the party with which they are.... I must confess I have too many opinions of my own to be whirled about by every change of company. And though it is proper and decent that one should conform to the nature of different occasions, so as not to jest at a funeral, laugh at church, or dance in a hospital among the sick, the dead and dying; and though one should respect the conditions of his company, so as not to obtrude upon age the buoyancy of youth, ... yet I am sure neither old age nor old reflections ... shall make me disown mirth.... Now for the third class, the glorious, sunshiny ones. I envy them, I emulate them. These are they who think there is a time for relaxation and elegant enjoyment. Too much is to be done to allow them long seasons of gayety.... But while they labor hard, think and write, and preach and visit, weeping with those who weep, they conceive by the same authority that they may unbend and refresh the mind by laughing with those who laugh.... To be mirthful is part of our constitution, and I believe God never gave us that which it is a sin to exercise.... None but those who feel it can tell how hard it is to restrain a disposition which sees everything in the most ludicrous point of view. But God knows that if I have a good deal of mirth I compensate for it in secret; and although now I look for different times, yet till now I have had enough of anything but joy to make mirth acceptable to me. You said what you did in jest, but I lay awake all night thinking of it. God will bear me witness that I love the ministry, and if it be necessary for me to lay aside even my constitutional gayety that I may be more useful, I will cheerfully do it....” From a “catalogue of books in my possession” we learn that on December 2, 1835, he had 42 volumes of theological works, 71 volumes of literary, 10 scientific, and 12 miscellaneous, making a grand total in all of 135 volumes—not a bad showing for one who had earned every book, either by labor or severe economy, and, what is more to the point, had read and studied them all.