The movement at Plainfield, finding me in different surroundings from those in my native place, and under the influence of deliberate and sober-minded people, put the religious question under another light, but, still under the persuasion, the natural result of my life's training, that some special emotion or spiritual change, recognizable as such, was an indispensable sign of the "change of heart" which was desired, I was unhappy that no such sign appeared. I can distinctly remember that the desire to satisfy my mother's passionate longing for what she considered my regeneration was a large part of my desire to meet the change, and, if I might, provoke it. I did not in spite of my efforts really understand the view which my mother, in common with most evangelical Christians, took of the work of regeneration. The calm, rational conviction that all men are sinners, was clear enough to me even in my youth, and the necessity of turning from what we call "the world," to the cultivation of the higher and spiritual development of character was equally clear, though not so in all points was the distinction between the things condemned as worldly and those approved as religious, the theatre, games of chance, dancing, and frivolous amusements in general being all in the index of those severe theologians. As I remember my extreme youth I was, in spite of occasional falsehoods,--mainly the consequence of the severity of the parental discipline and the desire to escape the punishments I had to endure when transgressing the sometimes whimsical injunctions laid on me,--morbidly conscientious. I was absent-minded and often forgot my duties, feeling, however, always the sting of remorse for any omission, but, beyond taking apples or nuts for my own eating, I do not think that I ever transgressed a commandment deliberately or knowingly; I was, in fact, regarded by the boys of the neighborhood as hopelessly "goody." I could not understand why the desire to go to a dancing-school and dance should be a moral transgression, though when I asked permission of my father to accept the offer of an ex-dancing-master for whom I had been able to do some work in the workshop, to give me preparatory lessons so that I might appear less clumsy on entering the class, I was sternly brought to a sense of the enormity of the matter by my father's replying, "William! I would rather see you in your grave than in a dancing-school." I could only understand that I had not been lifted by the divine grace from the condition of total depravity in which I had been born, and I knew that the preternatural indication of my redemption, which would be recognized in the descent of the spirit in the form of the revival frenzy, was wanting. I longed for it, prayed for it, and considered myself forsaken of God because it would not come, but come it never did, and it seemed to me that I was attempting to deceive both my mother and the church when I finally yielded to the current which