into carpenter work to earn money to pay his own salary, yet he said that was the happiest time of his life. Mrs. Beecher told me afterwards that Mr. Beecher often talked about those days and said that bye and bye he would retire and they would again go back to the simple life they had enjoyed so much. When he had built his new home near the Hudson, Robert Collier and I visited him. We found in the rear of an addition that clap-boards had been put up in all sorts of adjustment. Mr. Collier asked him: "Where did you find a carpenter to do such poor work as that?" and Mr. Beecher said humorously: "You could not hire that carpenter on your house." Then he said: "Mr. Collier, I put those boards on that house myself. I insisted that they leave that work for me to do. I have been happy putting on these boards and driving these nails. They took me back to the old days at Lawrenceville, where we lived over a store and our pantry was a dry goods box. But there we were so happy. I am hoping sometime to be as happy again, but it is not possible to do it while I am in the service of the public." He had promised himself and his wife some day to go back to that simple life. But his sudden death taught the same great lesson with all the examples I give of great men and women. Rev. Robt. Collier always enjoyed the circus--the circus was the great place of enjoyment outside, perhaps, of his pulpit work. It was Robert Collier who used to tell the story of the boy whose aunt always made him go to church, but after going to a circus he wrote to his aunt: "Auntie, if you had ever been to a circus, you wouldn't go to another prayer-meeting as long as you live." The love of Collier for the circus only shows the simplicity of the great man's mind. Mr. Collier is said to have paid a dollar for a fifty cent ticket to the circus, only making it conditional that he was to have the privilege of going 'round to the rear and crawling under the tent, showing what he must have done when a boy. The fact of Mr. Collier's love for the circus was one of the strange things in the eccentricities of a great man's life. Once Mr. Barnum came into Mr. Collier's church and Mr. Collier said to the usher: "Please show Mr. Barnum to a front seat for he always gives me one in _his_ circus." These simplicities often show that somewhere back in each man's life there is a point where happiness and love are one, and when, that point is passed, we go on longing to the return.