"My reason for desiring the missionary work is a desire for the salvation of the heathen. My mind has been directed to the subject for a long time, yet I have not felt at liberty to decide the question where duty called me to labor until the last month. In accordance with this decision I now offer my services to the Board to labor in my Master's service among the heathen. As a field of labor I prefer China." Owing to deficiency in funds the Board could not send him that year. He accepted an invitation to assist Dr. Brodhead, then pastor of the Central Reformed Church of Brooklyn. Dr. Brodhead was one of the great preachers of his day. In Philadelphia, an earlier pastorate, "he preached to great congregations of eager listeners, and with a success unparalleled in the history of that city and rare in modern times." John Van Nest Talmage might have been his successor. But no sooner was the Board ready to send him than he was prepared to go. The day for leaving home came. Father Talmage and the older brothers accompanied John. They left the house in three carriages. A younger sister (Mrs. Cone) recently said: "When we saw the three carriages driving down the lane it seemed more like a funeral than anything else." Silent were those who drove away. Silent, silent as they could constrain themselves to be, were mother and sisters as they stood by the windows and got their last look of the procession as it wound down the road. To go to a foreign land in those days signified to those who went, lifelong exile,--to those who tarried, lifelong separation. The only highways to the far East were by way of the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. The voyages were always long and often perilous. When on board the ship Roman, bound for Canton, David Abeel wrote: "To the missionary perhaps exclusively, is the separation from friends like the farewell of death. Though ignorant of the future he expects no further intercourse on earth. To him the next meeting is generally beyond the grave." The hour of departure was not only saddened by parting from parents and brothers and sisters, but the young woman in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, to whom he had given his affection, could not join him. Once it had been decided that they were to go together, but during the last days the enfeebled widowed mother's courage failed her. She could not relinquish her daughter to what seemed to her separation for life. Mr. Talmage had to choose between the call of duty to China and going alone, or tarrying at home and realizing his heart's hopes. He went to China. By a special Providence it was not much more than two years after he set sail that he was again in the United States. The mother of Miss Abby Woodruff had died, and the union was consummated. Mr. Talmage kept a diary of the voyage. A few extracts will prove interesting.