At the time of my retirement to Sheffield, the Second Congregational Church in New York, which had formerly invited me to its pulpit, was without a pastor, and I was asked to go down there and preach. I could preach, though I could not write; my sermons, with their five earmarks upon them in New Bedford, would be new in another pulpit, and I consented. I was soon [76] invited to take charge of the church, but declined it. It was even proposed to me to be established simply as preacher, and to be relieved from parochial visiting; but as the congregation was small, and could not support a pastor beside me, I declined that also. But I went on preaching, and after about a year, feeling myself stronger, I consented to be settled in the church with full charge, and was installed on the 8th November, 1835, Dr. Walker preaching the sermon. The church was on the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets; a bad situation, inasmuch as it was on a corner, that is, it was noisy, and the annoyance became so great that I seriously thought more than once of proposing to the congregation to sell and build elsewhere. On other accounts the church was always very pleasant to me. It was of moderate size, holding seven or eight hundred people, and became in the course of a year or two quite full. The stairs to the galleries went up on the inside, giving it, I know not what, a kind of comfortable and domestic air, very social and agreeable; and last, not least, it was easy to speak in. This last consideration, I am convinced, is of more importance, and is so in more ways, than is commonly supposed. A place hard to speak in is apt to create, especially in the young preacher just forming his habits, a hard and unnatural manner of speaking. More than one young preacher have I known, who began with good natural tones, in the course of a [77] year or two, to fall into a loud, pulpit monotone, or to bring out all his cadences with a jerk, or with a disagreeable stress of voice, to be heard. One must be heard, that is the first requisite, and to have one and another come out of church Sunday after Sunday, and touch your elbow, and say, "Sir, I could n't hear you; I was interested in what I could hear, but just at the point of greatest interest, half of the time, I lost your cadence," is more than any man can bear for a long time, and so he resorts to loud tones and monotonous cadences, and he is obliged to think, much of the time, more of the mere dry fact of being heard, than of the themes that should pour themselves out in full unfolding ease and freedom. I have fought through my whole professional life against this criticism, striving to keep some freedom and nature in my speech, though I have made every effort consistent with that to be heard. I have not always succeeded; but I have tried, and have always been grateful, a considerable virtue, especially when the hearer was himself a little deaf to every one who admonished me. This is really a matter