I first met him at the meetings of the "Hook-and-Ladder,"[*] a ministerial club of which we both were members. At the house of Thomas Starr King, in Boston, he read a sermon on the supremacy of the spiritual element in character, which impressed me as few pulpit utterances ever did, so fine was it, so subtle, yet so massive in conviction. Illustrations that he used stay by me now, after the lapse of more than forty years. I next heard him in New Bedford, at the installation of Charles Lowe, when, in ill-health and feeble, he gave, in substance, the discourse on Materialism, afterwards published in the volume on "Immortal Life." It struck me then as exceedingly able; and it derived force from the intense earnestness of its delivery, as by one who could look into the invisible world, and could speak no light word or consult transient effects. Many years later, I listened, in New York, to his lectures on Greek ideas, the keenest interpretation of the ancient myths, the most profound, luminous, sympathetic, I have met with. He had the faculty of reading between the lines, of apprehending the hidden meaning, of setting the old stories in the light of universal ideas, of lighting up allusions. The lecture on Prometheus I remember as especially radiant and inspiring; but they were all remarkable for positive suggestions of a very noble kind. [*] We copy from a private letter the following account of the origin of this club and of its grotesque name, which has lost, alas! its significance to the younger generation. "In the year 1844 (I think it was) a few of us young ministers formed a club, including Charles Brigham, Edward Hale, John Weiss, with one or two elders, as Dr. Hedge and, later, O. B. Frothingham, Starr King, W. R. Alger, William B. Greene, and others. We went long without a name, in spite of my urgent appeals as Secretary, till one fine day, at George R. Russell's house in West Roxbury, in an after-dinner frolic, Weiss turned the garden-engine hose upon a fellow-member and drenched him from head to foot; upon which escapade it was unanimously agreed to call ourselves the 'Hook-and-Ladder,' by which name the memory of it is fondly kept among us to this day. A similar older fraternity had gone by the name of the 'Railroad Association,' and, in imitation, when it was proposed to borrow a title from some like line of industry we, on this sudden whim, chose the fire-department."