I feel incompetent for the great work I have undertaken. It always was hard work for me to write out my thoughts or speak before my superiors, and many there are whom I esteem better than myself, yet, however good my neighbors may be, they cannot do my duty nor stand in the judgment for me. I remember of asking my dear mother, many years ago, how old I was when she took me by the hand and walked along by the side of the wall, and from thence to the old log-house, where lay a young lady asleep in death. Mother informed me that I was then three and a half years old. I speak of this because it was the first person that I saw a corpse, and to show that early impressions upon the tender mind are hard to be eradicated. I have just been speaking of things that transpired in 1816, and, as it is true that one thing leads to another, my mind is called to think of my beloved parents, and the early trainings they gave their children; the beloved words of our Saviour is, "train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." At this early day of my life neither of my parents were joined to the Saviour by a public profession; they were eastern people brought up strictly under the Presbyterian order. I am very thankful they taught their children to strictly keep the Sabbath and read the Holy Scriptures, for they are the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentiles, and the Saviour said, "they are they which testify of me." Old as I am, never have I heard one of my father's family use a word of profane language, so far as I know, not one intemperate drinker. But we are not a family without faults. In early life I became sensible that I was a sinner; when but ten or twelve years of age the spirit of the Lord strove very powerfully with me, and from time to time I grieved its gentle influences from my heart, saying, like Felix, "go thy way for this time," promising, that when I had a more convenient season I would seek the salvation of my soul. I often felt sorry that I was not a Christian, and many a time the tears would trickle down my cheeks in penitence when but a child.