Children now know nothing of what "'Lection" was in those days, the annual period, that is, when the newly elected State government came in. It was in the last week in May. How eager were we boys to have the corn planted before that time! The playing could not be had till the work was done. The sports and the entertainments were very simple. Running about the village street, hither and thither, without much aim; stands erected for the sale of gingerbread and beer,--home-made beer, concocted of sassafras roots and wintergreen leaves, etc.; games of ball, not base-ball, as now is the fashion, yet with wickets,--this was about all, except that at the end there was always horse-racing. Having witnessed this exciting sport in my [20] boyhood, without any suspicion of its being wrong, and seen it abroad in later days, in respectable company, I was led, very innocently, when I was a clergyman in New York, into what was thought a great misdemeanor. I was invited by some gentlemen, and went with them, to the races on Long Island. I met on the boat, as we were returning, a parishioner of mine, who expressed great surprise, and even a kind of horror, when I told him what I had been to see. He could not conceal that he thought it very bad that I should have been there; and I suppose it was. But that was not the worst of it. Some person had then recently heard me preach a sermon in which I said, that, in thesis, I had rather undertake to defend Infidelity than Calvinism. In extreme anger thereat, he wrote a letter to some newspaper, in which, after stating what I had said, he added, "And this clergyman was lately seen at the races!" It went far and wide, you may be sure. I saw it in newspapers from all parts of the country; yet some of my friends, while laughing at me, held it to be only a proof of my simplicity.