John Yard, Jr., was much smaller in figure and of quiet dignity. Joseph B. Sheppard, always very neatly dressed, I associated with manly repose, fine language, and a most attractive store on Chestnut street, where beautiful lustrous Irish linens were sold. Somehow in my childish memories, there are blended with Mr. Sheppard's name and personality, memories of those elegant tea parties, made elegant, I mean, by the sparkling wit and grace of the guests who gathered in my father's home, and over which my mother presided with such ease. I can truly boast that our modest dwelling was often irradiated by those we were able to attract to it. At one of these occasions, on April 30, 1855, "The Young Ladies' Association" presented their "Directress", at the hands of the pastor, with a handsome copy of "The Republican Court"--a book which tells much of Philadelphia society in the days of President Washington, and of those men and women of national fame, whom not a few of the very elderly persons in our congregation remembered. As a little boy, I always enjoyed the permission accorded me of coming in, after the best part of the supper was over, and listening to the conversation of the gentlemen and ladies, who seemed to me like so many princes and princesses, and from whose intellectual conversation, I am sure I often profited. My mother taught during many years, a large Bible class of young ladies, which met in the Sunday School room at the right of the pulpit, between that and the northwest door. It afterwards grew so large that teacher and pupils had to occupy a separate room. Looking along the perspective of years I can think of no faces more lovely or countenances more animated; no dresses prettier and no hats smarter than those of these young maidens of marriageable age or near it. To see them and their teacher when the pastor came around for his morning greeting and handshake with the "Directress" was a sight worthy of a painter. I fear that my readers will charge me with putting undue emphasis upon the material loveliness of what I saw and felt, but then we were all taught by the grand man to be happy. He used to insist that God wanted us to enjoy everything, and for the good reason that He had made all things richly for us to enjoy. He believed in love and marriage, and in happiness as a thing to be pursued and cultivated. He taught also that the richest, deepest, most constant enjoyment was most certainly found in a holy Christian life, and that a fruitful human career redounded to God's glory. The blessings of the 128th Psalm were often insisted on. He said, when fifty years a pastor: "I have married 2,329 couples. I was not responsible for their future happiness, but I believe and trust that in the main they have all been happy. If they were not happy the fault is their own. There is no reason why men and women cannot be happy when they ought to be".