But I was much discouraged even then with the _impediment in my speech_, which I inherited from my family, and which still attends me. Sometimes I absolutely stammered, and my anxiety about it was the cause of much distress to me. However, like St. Paul’s _thorn in the flesh_, I hope it has not been without its use. Without some such check as this, I might have been disputatious in company, or might have been seduced by the love of popular applause as a preacher: whereas my conversation and my delivery in the pulpit having nothing in them that was generally striking, I hope I have been more attentive to qualifications of a superior kind. It is not, I believe, usual for young persons in dissenting academies to think much of their future situations in life. Indeed, we are happily precluded from that by the impossibility of succeeding in any application for particular places. We often, indeed, amused ourselves with the idea of our dispersion in all parts of the kingdom after living so happily together; and used to propose plans of meeting at certain times, and smile at the different appearance we should probably make after being ten or twenty years settled in the world. But nothing of this kind was ever seriously resolved upon by us. For my own part, I can truly say I had very little ambition, except to distinguish myself by my application to the studies proper to my profession; and I cheerfully listened to the first proposal that my tutor made to me, in consequence of an application made to him, to provide a minister for the people of Needham Market in Suffolk, though it was very remote from my friends in Yorkshire, and a very inconsiderable place. When I went to preach at Needham as a candidate, I found a small congregation, about an hundred people; under a Mr. Meadows, who was superannuated. They had been without a minister the preceding year, on account of the smallness of the salary; but there being some respectable and agreeable families among them, I flattered myself that I should be useful and happy in the place, and therefore accepted the unanimous invitation to be assistant to Mr. Meadows, with a view to succeed him when he died. He was a man of some fortune. This congregation had been used to receive assistance from both the Presbyterian and Independent funds; but upon my telling them that I did not chuse to have any thing to do with the Independents, and asking them whether they were able to make up the salary they promised me (which was forty pounds per annum) without any aid from the latter fund, they assured me they could. I soon, however, found that they deceived themselves; for the most that I ever received from them was in the proportion of about thirty pounds per annum, when the expence of my board exceeded twenty pounds.