as those were considered who became serious in their attention at the meetings.  This was recognized by the preachers as the “fear of the world,” and was the object of attack of the most eloquent adjurations.  Once carried away by this hysteria, one had no longer any of this shame or fear of the taunts of his irreligious companions, which was very heavy with a nervous and sensitive boy like myself.  But though I had all through my attendance on the revival meetings earnestly desired to attain to that exaltation, and considered it an indication of my graceless state, that I was so insensible to the “spirit,” which was another term for the frenzy, I found it impossible to provoke it.  It is a curious subject, this usurpation of the reasoning faculties by the irrational, which is permitted when religion becomes emotional, either in the revolutionary condition of the revivalist or that of the conservative and decorous ecclesiastical forms.

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