ending as they began.  The change of religious convictions which holds its own against all influences is that which comes from the healthy evolution of our own thought.  At any rate, in my own case, the rationalistic revolution completed its circle and brought me back to that simple faith to remain in which is a reproach to no man, and the departure from which, to be healthy, must be made on lines conformed to our better natures.  I felt the better for my excursion into new regions, and the freedom of movement I acquired I never lost.

As I am telling the story of a phase of human life in which the study of the religious character will be to some readers, perhaps, one of the chief subjects of interest, and as to me the whole subject is now purely objective, as a mental phenomenon in the life of another man would be, I am tempted to tell a romantic incident of this period of my evolution, because it illustrates clearly the state of mind and sentiment developed by the peculiar education and surroundings of my youth.  In one of the winter vacations of my course, my brother Paul, who was an ardent and sanguine proselyter in the Seventh-Day doctrine, charged me with an expedition up the Mohawk valley as a colporteur, to distribute Sabbath tracts, and, occasion arising, to discuss, with those who offered, the doctrine involved.  The snow was deep, and, wading in it from house to house in all the towns as far as Utica, I finished with a visit to the home at Whitestown, near by, of my old friend the former preceptress of the De Ruyter Academy, with whom I had always been a favorite, and who had taught me French (very little) and drawing (very little more), but who was a charming and poetical creature.  I had not heard of her for years, and the latest news was that she had become insane through a cruel disappointment in love,—­her lover having wantonly, and without offering a pretext, broken off the engagement just before the wedding day,—­and had been sent to a lunatic asylum.  I found her at home, a wretched shadow of her old self, listless, and in a settled melancholy, which the doctors said was incurable.  She had in fact been discharged from the asylum as a hopeless lunatic, though the violent phase of the insanity had passed.  It occurred to me that a diversion to old times would awaken her again to a sense of the present, and I tried to draw her back to the academy life by talking of it as if nothing had happened.  That something unwonted was passing in her mind soon became evident, and finally she burst out with, “Why, Willie” (she had always so called me in the old times), “didn’t you know I had been crazy?” The manner, the suddenness of the conflict between old associations and her present state, the mingling of our old affection, for I had in my boyhood held her very dear, as she had me, so overpowered me that I burst into tears, and she threw her arms around me and kissed me again and again.  What the feeling which sprang up on her part was I could never quite understand,—­doubtless