He must have been a precocious child, or else his religious sensitiveness must have been induced by his mother's teaching, influenced by the great doctrines of the Methodist revival. We are not now accustomed to hear a child of six years of age, bewailing his lost state in language suggestive of Bunyan's condition, when he was under deep conviction of sin. He tells us that when he was five years old he had some serious impressions, and God's Spirit began to operate upon his mind, and when he was six, he often wished that he was a toad or a serpent, because they had no soul, and were not in danger of being lost forever. Again he says, that many times before he was ten years old, he "would have overturned God's government and dethroned the gracious Author of my being." He enumerates his early vices and lashes his soul in despair. Such religious sentiments in one so young seem to mark him as one who had in his soul the elements of a monk, and we should not have been surprised had he become a zealous disciple of Saint Francis of Assisi. Like John Wesley, whose escape from perishing in the burning of the Epworth parsonage is noted as a remarkable providence, William Black had a narrow escape from drowning in a large trough when a child, and this circumstance made a lasting and favorable impression on his mind. In his mature years he recalled the event with gratitude to God. Several years of his childhood were spent with his maternal uncle, Mr. Thomas Stocks, at Otley, where he was placed at school. There he remained until he was about thirteen years of age, when the disciplinary rules of the school, and very likely a severe castigation, so annoyed him, that he left his uncle's care and returned to his father's home. His father was at that time making preparations for his voyage to Nova Scotia, and deemed it prudent to allow the lad to remain with his mother, though he had decided objections to his apparent ingratitude and stubbornness, in leaving the home of his uncle. Under the influence of his mother's teaching and prayers, his religious impressions were deepened, but the jests of his companions at school made him stifle his convictions, and continue his career of youthful carelessness and sin.