“Thou shalt forbear all witness against thy neighbor; lest thy time be consumed needlessly in the public service, and he afterwards, also, witness against thee.
X.
“Thou shalt acquire so much by the foregoing commandments, as not to covet thy neighbor’s house and lot, nor any other real or un-real estate of his whatsoever.”
Settling up the property which my father had accumulated, although disregarding this code, and unsettling myself, I roamed abroad long and widely; practically dog-earing in Europe, Asia, and Africa the leaves of that illuminated volume of travel which I had all my life been intent to own.
Then came marriage,—religious convictions,—studying for the ministry,—children in the house,—studying them, and how to feed them,—ordination,—a call to a rus-urban congregation in the vicinity of New York,—only a short hour’s ride on a rail, and well feathered, without tar, by plentiful dust,—preaching to an assemblage, gathered from behind sharp counters on week-days, to measure my discourses critically, and to secure their money’s worth on Sundays,—and all the nameless little experiences that roll over the cog-wheels of a suburban parson’s life. Two bronchial attacks commissioned me to look up a better throat,—once in a journey to South America, and once across the prairies to California.
These experiences, added to their predecessors, have accumulated, with my readings, the materials for a history which the leisure half-hours, paragraphed between the compact duties of my thirty years of ministerial work, have permitted me to put together, and which now, dear reader, I place, as my cor cordium, in your hands.
It is the cream, skimmed from my carefully kept dairy; or rather the condensed milk of my very being, left at your door, to make your tea pleasanter, and your pudding sweeter and richer.
As you may be curious to possess, and I am most happy of an opportunity to get off my latest photogram, I add, as an item serving to assist you in making up the sum of my qualifications, this
External View of the Author’s Head,