About this time, one fine cold winter morning, a merry sleigh load drove from his father's house. He, with his brothers, sisters and cousins, about eighteen in all, went to spend a few days with his uncle in West Hartford. Samuel had recently come into the possession of a fine farm. He was gay and ambitious. His companions fearing his good fortune might make him feel a "little too high minded," sought to tease him. The evening before their return, after eating nuts and apples, they agreed to have a little singing. They struck up "Hark, from the Tombs a Doleful Sound," to the tune, Bangor. They sang it slowly and solemnly, now and then casting at him glances from their mischievous eyes. He sat a silent listener, while their song, sung in fun, made an earnest impression of which he could not rid himself. Soon after his farm was sold, and at eighteen he determined to go to Litchfield and study in the Academy. As he was leaving home, his mother's anxious heart could not let him go without enquiring for his soul's health. Other mothers know the pain she suffered, when he told her "for two years I have been sorry God ever made me." She replied to him as her wise heart prompted her, and sent him on his way. She went where all mothers of boys must so often go, to her knees, alone with God. He had not gone far on his journey when he met a Friend. It was the Good Shepherd, whom that mother's urgent prayer had sent searching for the wanderer. It was as if he had met Christ in his path. He looked up at the great trees and down at the blossoms, and in everything saw God. He became so impressed with the perfections of the Holy One he had so long resisted, that he lost sight of himself. He sat down in the woods to wonder and to pray. It was not until some time after that he realized any change in himself, and not until he returned from Litchfield did his father perceive it. His conversion was thorough. Not only was he turned about,--his face God-ward instead of self-ward,--but he was impelled toward "those sitting in darkness." In his childhood, from his mother's lips, he often heard stories from the lives of Brainerd, Eliot, and other missionaries. He heard her prayers for them and their great undertakings. Once he heard her say, "I have consecrated this child to the service of God as a missionary." Now it was his joy to follow those noble examples, and to fulfill his part in the plans of God and his mother for him. His parents approved of his determination, though the thought of separation tore their hearts. His mother said to him, "I cannot bear to part from you, my son." When he reminded her of her vow, she burst into tears, and never after made complaint. To his father he said that he could "not conceive of any course of life in which to pass the rest of his days, that would prove so pleasant, as to go and communicate the gospel of salvation to the poor heathen."