much dejected and troubled in mind, low and thoughtful; and, in my business, though all saw I was willing to do what I could, yet I was much confused. Being a pious man, he kept up family prayer in his house, and on several occasions he asked me to go to prayer, perceiving the Lord had blest me with some gifts, and he hoped grace also, and that I acted in all things unblamably. He once mentioned something to me respecting a public ministry. He also employed a fellow-servant, who is a God-fearing man, and who belonged to a prayer-meeting, to know my mind upon the subject. I believe I gave him some distant hint, that my mind led a little that way, but I did not consider that I had any suitable talent, nor had I any connection that could introduce me to any means, nor could I possibly see any opening in Providence; of course I could not see I was called to such a work; for I did not believe any one was called to the public ministry of the gospel, without the Lord had given him talents suited to the work for which he intended him. I am now speaking of his external call: the work of God on his soul, I intend to speak of elsewhere. My master, however, recommended me to the manager of the London Itinerant Society, who, after some conversation with me, requested me to accompany a young man into one of the villages near London, to teach children in a Sunday-school. Not knowing the nature of that work till I had embarked in it, I went for some time to Norwood, and several other places, but I was soon tired of this work. The long journies and weak body, hard labour all the week, and an empty pocket, deprived of seeing my lover for weeks together; these externals soon made me relinquish that work: and above all the loss of that ministry I so much esteemed, and those ordinances I so much enjoyed, made my chariot-wheels drag heavily on a Sunday, so many miles to hear some dull country children say their alphabet. Though this loss and trouble was sometimes made up by the godly converse of the teachers between the several services, and on the road home at night: this was a little reviving in my bondage. After continuing some months with Mr. C. in the Borough, I had still an inclination to return to my own business. Accordingly, I communicated to my invaluable master, that I had a house to work at. We parted, by mutual agreement; he gave me an excellent character, and has ever spoken most respectfully of me, amidst all the clamour, bitterness, lies, malice, and evil-speaking I have met with; and, I believe, would have done me much good in restoring me to repute, and warding off the blow of calumny, had it been possible. However, he spoke of me as he found me, and it would be well if every one did the same. I now returned to my old business of gilding, at a house in the Strand where, after I had been a little while, I was married, at the New Church in the Strand, the 22d of March, 1801, two years after I left my apprenticeship. I had