[247]Mr. Dewey had been asked repeatedly, since his retirement from New York, to take charge of Church Green, in Boston, a pulpit left vacant by the death of Dr. Young; and he consented to go there in the beginning of 1858, with the understanding that he should preach but once on a Sunday. He had an idea of a second service, which should be more useful to the people and less exhausting to the minister than the ordinary afternoon service, which very few attended, and those only from a sense of duty. He had written for this purpose a series of "Instructions," as he called them, on the 104th Psalm. Each was about an hour long, and they were, in short, simple lectures on religious subjects. To use his own words, "This was not preaching, and was attended with none of the exhaustion that follows the morning service. Many people have no idea, nor even suspicion, of the difference between praying and preaching for an hour, with the whole mind and heart poured into it, and any ordinary public speaking for an hour. They seem to think that in either case it is vox et preterea nihil, and the more voice the more exhaustion; but the truth is, the more the feelings are enlisted in any way, the more exhaustion, and the difference is the greatest possible." [248] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq. BOSTON, Sept. 7, 1858. DEAR BRYANT,-You have got home. If you pronounce the charm-word four times after the dramatic (I mean the true dramatic) fashion, all is told. It makes me think of what Mrs. Kemble told us the other day. In a play where she acted the mistress, and her lover was shot,--or was supposed to be, but was reprieved, and came rushing to her arms,--instead of repeating a long and pretty speech which was set down for her, the dramatic passion made her exclaim: "ALIVE! ALIVE! alive! alive!" Well, you are such a nomadic cosmopolitan, that I won't answer for you; but I will be bound it is so with. Mrs. Bryant, and I guess Julia too. How you all are, and how she is especially, is the question in all our hearts; and without waiting for forty things to be done, all working you like forty-power presses, pray write us three words and tell us. . . . I hope that some time in the winter I shall get a sight of you. You and the Club would make my measure full. And yet Boston is great. To Mrs. David Lane. BOSTON, Sept. 20, 1858.