slipped in, therefore, when the meeting was a little under way, and
allowed myself to be ushered up to the front seat, directly under the
eye of an intelligent looking young man who proved to be the preacher
for the occasion. After a few opening services, which embraced the usual
variety in ordinary churches, the minister took for his text the
passage, "Ask, and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and
it shall be opened unto you."

"Now," said he, when he had gotten on well with his introduction, "you
must not believe you will surely receive precisely the thing you ask for
in just the way you might like it. Let me give you an illustration from
my personal experience. When a little boy, I lived with my mother on the
southern slope of Lookout Mountain, and remember well the day that Gen.
Hooker fought his great battle up there and how he and his soldiers
marched bravely away. For a long time the children and the grown people
searched the battle-fields over, day after day, hoping to find things of
value. My mother made it her business to hunt for bullets, and at length
the number she gathered herself and took from us boys was so great that
she was able to purchase a cow with the money they brought.

"A benevolent gentleman living in New York at this time soon after
secured the Government buildings on the top of the mountain that had
been used for the sick soldiers, and fitted them up nicely for Northern
teachers, who opened a boarding-school for white students. I took milk
to the institution from our cow, every morning, and how I wished that I
might gain admittance to the school and procure an education! One day I
heard the scholars reciting in concert, 'Ask and ye shall receive, seek
and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' It came over
me most powerfully and I repeated it again and again. I said it to my
mother, and inquired of her what it meant, and why it impressed me so,