All my schoolmates were there shaking with ill-concealed merriment.  Every pore poured forth perspiration, and my hair seemed to stand on end like quills upon the back of the fretful porcupine.  I thought of the experience of the first sermon by a theological student which I had recently read in a comic paper, and I trembled lest history was to repeat itself.

This theologue, like many of his cloth, was possessed of the insane impression that he was gifted with the sublime inspiration of eloquence, and being invited to preach on his return to the old home for vacation, he selected the somewhat startling text “and the dumb ass opened his mouth and spake.”  On this elevating theme he wrote a sensational sermon and committed it to memory in order that he might electrify his audience with eye power as well as by verbal flow of soul.  The awful day arrived, but when the young apostle arose to preach, stage fright banished from his mind all but the thrilling text.

“My friends,” said he, “we are informed by the holy book that this dumb ass opened his mouth and spake.”  Then pulling his hair in desperation, he repeated the text several times, when he was interrupted by the disgusted pastor, who jumped to his feet and shouted: 

“Well, friends, as the dumb ass has nothing to say, let us pray.”

This awful example well nigh converted me into another specimen of this historic animal, but at last the pent up cave of the winds was opened, and a gust of sound came forth which so stunned the listening ears of my hearers that they dazedly mistook it for eloquence.

I painted to them the picture of the incorrigible sinner “on flames of burning brimstone tossed, forever, oh forever lost.”  I did not intend to be a hypocrite; but drifted with the revival tide.

I discoursed often that summer to audiences that crowded the church to the doors.  I was but fifteen years of age, and was called:  “The wonderful boy preacher.”

One Sunday the village crank came to hear me, honoring the occasion by wearing a new stove-pipe hat of prodigious proportions, which he deposited on the seat as he arose during prayer.  When the amen was pronounced, perhaps paralyzed by the fervor, he sat down upon said stove-pipe, crushing it to a pie, then leaped from the wreck uttering a blasphemous yell which convulsed the crowd with laughter, and thus broke up the meeting without the benediction and passing of the contribution-box, much to the delight of all who “steal their preaching” on all possible occasions.

I soon found that however anxious people were to save their souls, they were unwilling to part with their “filthy lucre” to buy through tickets to the celestial city, consequently, that winter being impecunious, I was constrained to accept the offer of my cousin, the “prudential committee,” to teach the district school in Barrington, N.H., for the generous stipend of $14 per month and what board I could secure by going from house to house of my pupils.