My ambition was to learn some kind of a trade. But I had wrought enough with my father at the anvil not to choose that. It was hard work, and not over-clean work. Something else would suit me better, I thought. About that time my sister Harriet married William McLaughlin, who was a well-to-do harness-maker in Steubenville. This suited my ideas of life better. But that sister died soon after her marriage, and my father removed from that part of the country to the southern part of the State. There in Ripley a Latin school was opened about that time, and the Lord appeared to me in a wonderful manner, making discoveries of himself to my spiritual apprehension, so that from that time and onward my path lay in the line of preparation for such service as he should call me unto. My father, as he said many years afterward, had intended to educate my younger brother James; but he was taken away suddenly, and I came in his place. Thus the Lord opened the way for a commencement, and by the help of friends I was enabled to continue until I finished the course at Jefferson College, and afterward spent a year at the Western Theological Seminary at Alleghany. Mary had been educated for a teacher. She was well fitted for the work. And while she was still at Ipswich, a benevolent gentleman in New York City, who had interested himself in establishing a seminary in Southern Indiana, sent to Miss Grant for a teacher to take charge of the school near Bethlehem, in the family of Rev. John M. Dickey. It was far away, but it seemed just the opening she had been desiring. But a young woman needed company in travelling so far westward. It was at the time of the May meetings in New York. Clergymen and others were on East from various parts of the West. In several instances, however, she failed of the company she hoped for, by what seemed singular providences. And at last it was her lot to come West under the protection of Rev. Dyer Burgess, of West Union, Ohio. Mr. Burgess was what was called in those days "a rabid abolitionist," and had taken a fancy to help me along, because, as he said, I was "of the same craft." And so it was that during his absence I was living in his family. This is the way in which the threads of our two lives, Mary's and mine, were brought together. A year and a half after this I was licensed to preach the gospel by the Chillicothe Presbytery, and we were on our way to her mountain home in Massachusetts.