"It was in the stillness of the world without and of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard--so that I well remember I used to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamps, _was peculiar to Saturday evenings_. I don't know that anything could give a clearer idea of the quieting and subduing effect of the old habit of observance of what was considered holy time, than this strange, childish fancy." Had all the clergymen who visited the parsonage been as true to their profession as his own dear father, the thoughtful, impressible boy might, very possibly, have devoted his brilliant talents to the ministry. "It was a real delight," he says, "to have one of those good, hearty, happy, benignant old clergymen pass the Sunday with us, and I can remember one whose advent made the day feel almost like 'Thanksgiving.' But now and then would come along a clerical visitor with a sad face and a wailing voice, which sounded exactly as if somebody must be lying dead up-stairs, who took no interest in us children, except a painful one, as being in a bad way with our cheery looks, and did more to unchristianize us with his woebegone ways than all his sermons were like to accomplish in the other direction. I remember one in particular who twitted me so with my blessings as a Christian child, and whined so to me about the naked black children, that he did more in that one day to make me a heathen than he had ever done in a month to make a Christian out of an infant Hottentot. I might have been a minister myself for aught I know, if this clergyman had not looked and talked so like an undertaker." An exercise written while at Andover, shows at what an early age he attempted versification. It is a translation from the first book of Virgil's Æneid, and reads as smoothly as any lines of Pope. The following extract shows the angry god giving his orders to Zephyrus and Eurus: Is this your glory in a noble line, To leave your confines and to ravage mine? Whom I--but let these troubled waves subside-- Another tempest and I'll quell your pride! Go bear our message to your master's ear, That wide as ocean I am despot here; Let him sit monarch in his barren caves! I wield the trident and control the waves. CHAPTER IV. OTHER REMINISCENCES. In his vacations the inquiring mind of the young student had made "strange acquaintances" in a certain book infirmary up in the attic of the gambrel-roofed house.