My mother was also haunted by the dread of God’s wrath at her loving her children more than she did Him, for, with all the fervency of her gentle devotion, she never escaped the ghastly Hebrew conception of God, always in wrath at every omission or transgression of the Law, who, at the last great day, would demand of her an account of every neglect of duty, every idle word and thought, and especially of the manner in which she had taught her children to obey his commandments.  She seemed to scan her life continually to find some sin in the past, for which she had not specifically repented, and, at times, as I knew by the confidences of my later years, when she would appeal to me for my opinion, the problem of the unpardonable sin became one of absorbing study, which she finally laid aside in the supreme trust in his goodness, who alone knew her intentions and desire to be obedient to the Law.

Every one of her sons, as they were born, she dedicated to the service of the Lord, in the ardent hope that one of them would become a minister, and over me, the last, she let her hopes linger longest, for, as I was considered a delicate child, unable to support the life of hard work to which my older brothers had taken, she hoped that I might be spared for study.  Only the eldest son ever responded to her desire by the wish to enter the service of the church, and he was far too important to my father’s little workshop to be spared for the necessary schooling.  He struggled through night schools, and in the intervals of day leisure, to qualify himself to enter the college in our city.  Before doing so he fell under the notice of old Dr. Nott, president of the college, who was, beside being a teacher of wonderful ability, a clever inventor, and, perceiving my brother’s mechanical capacity, persuaded him to abandon the plan of entering the ministry, and made him foreman of his establishment, the “Novelty Iron Works,” at New York, for many years known as the leading establishment of its kind in America.  The next two brothers, having more or less the same gifts, followed the eldest to New York; the next, an incurable stammerer, was disqualified for the pulpit, and studied medicine, being moreover of a fragile constitution; and the next, having the least possible sympathy for the calling, also took to medicine.

With the migration of the three older brothers to New York, the diminution of the family, and the aid the brothers in New York were able to give the younger children at home, my mother’s life took on a new activity, in her resolute determination that the younger boys should have such an education as the college (Union) afforded them.  This determination was opposed by my father, whose idea of the education needed by boys did not go beyond the elements, and who wanted them in the workshop.  But it had become to my mother a conception of her duty, that, as the relations between my eldest brother and the president of the college led to an offer of what was practically