The dynamo may be run long after the circuit is broken, and the light has gone out. I ran mine for many years. The minister's wife previously referred to was doing the same thing. Many students reported to Professor Leuba that they continued to pray, through habit or sentiment, but that God had so faded from their minds that prayer no longer meant anything to them. Many learned scientists revealed the "broken circuit" of their thoughts by giving their crude conceptions or no conceptions of God. These men have long since ceased to run their religious dynamo. If the lights refuse to come on, after a while one grows tired of stoking the furnace merely to keep the dynamo running. Therefore, in the succeeding chapters my aim will be to show how I mended my circuit. After continuing my fruitless struggle for two years I became desperate. For one thing, I had no religious young people with whom to associate. When not alone, I worked with vile men who never allowed much time to elapse without indulging in obscene conversation. Living in a community where we had never seen a railroad, or a piano, or an organ, I found little to entertain or comfort me. And my religion added greatly to my burden. There was just work and privations and fruitless prayers. So it is not strange that at the end of two years I wished that I might die. This feeling came to me with such force one day, when I was working in a distant, lonely place, that I gave audible expression to the wish. Not that I wanted to die on that particular day! I have never seen the time when I wanted to die to-day. But hoping that I might die in ten years, I resolved anew that I would just stiffen my neck, and grit my teeth, and pray on until the end came--which I hoped would not be too distant. During these two years I was very faithful to every known Christian duty. Once I even tried to pray in prayer meeting, but broke down with fright in the middle of the first sentence. I regularly bore testimony, however, to my determination to go forward in the Christian life.