“Books were not only pleasing to me, but were my passion. Give a young man or maiden a passion for anything,—for books, business, painting, teaching, farming, mechanics or music, I care not what, and you give him or her a lever with which to lift their world, and a patent of nobility, if the thing they do is noble. So I call my reading my college course. It was not an adequate college nor an adequate course, and there have been times when I felt a trifle sad that there should have been no chance for me at a good, all-round education. But there is a chance in the everlasting hunger to read books, and it is with reading as it is with eating,—you grow choice when there is a plenty. You instinctively learn to distinguish what is sweet and wholesome and what is neither, and then you read as you eat,—only the best. “A great sorrow came to me in 1849. As a result of it, I found my way into a Methodist meeting house, and began to express what I felt. From a few words, uttered standing by my seat in the meeting, I began to preach at irregular intervals; and when I did, it became the custom, after a while, for some one to go through the village, ringing a bell and calling out: ‘The blacksmith is going to preach this morning.’ The working people came to hear me because I was one of themselves. Then they would have me preach regularly,—at nothing a Sunday and find myself. “Sometimes I would forget the flight of time and preach for two hours or more. As I look back upon the poor mortals who sat under my ministrations for such a length of time, I am reminded of the judge who, when asked how long a sermon ought to last, replied: ‘About twenty minutes, with leanings to the side of mercy.’” THE LIGHT THAT LED OVER THE SEA. “My only worldly ambition was to make my way as a blacksmith, but one day there came to me in a flash the thought that I must go to America, where I would have to bow to no class, but would be as good a man as any. Many times in my life these sudden burstings of light, half thought, half feeling, have come to me; and, when they do come, I cease to reason about the matter. I simply obey the impulse with all the power of my will. It would have taken tremendous difficulties to have kept me from embarking for this country after the flash came, and so, one fine spring morning in 1850, I and my little family, with our small store of worldly goods, went aboard the old ship ‘Roscius,’ made ourselves as comfortable as we could in the steerage, and a month later were in New York.