"The most pleasing part of his life was his serene old age. The writer of this remembers him well when he was forty years of age. Ten years afterwards, the writer entered his family to pursue a course of studies for the ministry. Mr. B.'s mind at fifty seemed never at rest. If not reading, he was busily engaged in mental effort. Often, when he was walking in the streets, have we seen his lips move, as if he were talking. At his home, he would sit frequently with his eyes closed, his lips moving, as if holding conversation with some invisible person; and when he apparently came to some crisis in his meditations, he showed some outward sign of his feelings, sometimes by a smile, at others by suppressed laughter, at others by a sigh. "A mind thus active is in danger of disturbing, if too much indulged, the proper action of the digestive powers, which, in their turn, react upon the mind, and produce lowness of spirits and gloom. Mr. Ballou at fifty was troubled in this way. His heart had an affection sympathetic with the stomach, and its action was irregular and intermittent. At this point of his life, he had lived but three or four years in Boston; and he had had occasion to perform a large amount both of mental and physical labor. He had preached three times almost every Sabbath; had edited, for two years, the 'Universalist Magazine;' had visited many parts of the country to preach the gospel, sometimes under very animating circumstances; and these complicated labors were too much for him. His most sagacious friends then had fears either that he would not live to old age, or, if he did, that his later years would be unquiet. "We remember, with very great satisfaction, the exceeding gentleness and amiability of his wife, in the days of which we speak. While this excellent lady still survives, it is not proper for us to express all that may be justly said of her. She presided over her household with a fidelity, a blandness, a kindness, steady as the current of a river, and unruffled as a lake in the calmest day. This season of intermixture of health and sickness, joy and sadness, light and shade, continued for some half dozen years, when it was very gratifying to Mr. B.'s friends to see that each change denoted that his life might be protracted perhaps to old age, and that, peradventure, his old age should be as serene as his earlier days had been laborious and useful. Such proved to be the fact. He died in his eighty-second year, and his life grew more and more serene unto its close; like the sun, obscured somewhat by passing clouds at noon, but shining clearly during the rest of the day, making its course through the western sky, and passing away from the earth, as it were, into the boundless heavens beyond.