"There sleep now, within the sound of my voice, the bones of a man who once stood up in the revolutionary battles for his country. In one of them, he told me, [65] when the little American army, ill armed, ill clad, and with bleeding feet, was drawn up in front of the disciplined troops of England, General Washington passed along our lines, and when he came before us, he stopped, and said, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.' And when I heard that," said he, "I clasped my musket to my breast, and said, Damn 'em; let 'em come!" "The immortal Chieftain" [said the orator] "is looking down upon us now; and he says, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.'" And now, on the whole, what shall I say of my life in New Bedford? It was, in the main, very happy. I thought I was doing good there; I certainly was thoroughly interested in what I was doing. I found cultivated and interesting society there. I made friends, who are such to me still. In the pastoral relation, New Bedford was, and long continued to be, the very home of my heart; it was my first love. In 1827 I was invited to go to New York. I did not wish to go, so I expressly told the church in New York (the Second Church); but I consented, in order to accomplish what they thought a great good, provided my congregation in New Bedford would give their consent. They would not give it; and I remained. I believe that I should have lived and died among them, if my health had not failed. But it failed to that degree that I could no longer do the work, and I determined to go abroad and recruit, and recover it, if possible. [66] This was in 1833. The Messrs. Grinnell & Co., of New York, offered me a passage back and forth in their ships, one of the thousand kind and generous things that they were always doing, and I sailed from New York in the "George Washington" on the 8th of June. It was like death to me to go. I can compare it to nothing else, going, as I did, alone. In London I consulted Sir James Clarke, who told me that the disease was in the brain, and that I must pass three or four years abroad if I would recover from it. I believe I stared at his proposition, it seemed to me so monstrous, for he said, in fine: "Well, you may go home in a year, and think yourself well; but if you go about your studies, you will probably bring on the same trouble again; and if you do, in all probability you will never get rid of it." Alas! it all proved true. I came home in the spring of 1834, thinking myself well. I had had no consciousness of a brain for three months before I left Europe. I went to work as usual; in one month the whole trouble was upon me again, and it became evident that I must leave New Bedford. I could write no more sermons; I had preached every sermon I had, that was worth preaching, five times over, and I could not face another repetition. I retired with my family to the home in Sheffield, and expected to pass some