Among the visitors at the Springs was one who was a very wealthy man, a large slaveholder, and a very great invalid. He was a cripple, with one limb much shorter and smaller than the other, and was compelled to use two crutches to walk at all. As I saw him mingling with the visitors, I observed that he was profane, rollicking, genial, and exceedingly social in his nature. I do not now remember how I became acquainted with him, or whether or not I was introduced to him at all. But from the first he attached himself to me, and sought my company. If I sat down alone upon the piazza, he would come and take a seat near me, and we engaged in long conversations. I explained to him in the greatest detail the work in which I was engaged, and the operations of the American Bible Society at home and abroad. I described to him the Bible House in New York, and the process of making Bibles--commencing with the printing of them in the higher stories, and passing them through different hands from story to story below, until they reached the depository, well-bound and beautiful specimens of the art of book-making. I told him of the wealth and business character of the men who acted as managers of the society, and gratuitously supervised and controlled all its operations. Thoroughly irreligious in all his training and associations, my statements were new to him, and he was greatly interested in them. He thought the whole thing was "grand" and "magnificent," and was enthusiastic in his commendations of me and my work. When I was absent for a day or two for the purpose of meeting the people of some neighborhood at a week-day appointment, he was among the first to meet me on my return to the hotel, and inquired with the greatest interest as to the success of my labors. In our repeated interviews I talked with him frankly, freely, and fully, in regard to his own spiritual condition, urged him to make religion a personal matter, yield his heart to Christ, and live henceforth for the glory of God, and the good of his fellow-men. The openness of his nature and the frankness of his expressions upon this subject were remarkable. His belief in the Bible was implicit. He did not seem to have a shadow of doubt in regard to its truth. He told me that, from the nature of his disease, he was liable to die at any moment, and if he died he knew he should be lost. He did not seem to have a particle of doubt on this subject. Sometimes, in deep consciousness of the struggle within him, he would say: "The trouble with me, sir, is, that I have no stability--I just go with the crowd I am in. When I am with a man like you, I wish I was a Christian. I would give the world to be a Christian. But when I am with W---- and G----" (naming the chief gamblers at the hotel) "and their crowd, I am just carried away with them. I can't help myself. If I could always be in the company of men like you, I believe I could be a good man and a Christian."