Thank God for this sweet Pillow-land,
Where weary ones may creep,
And breathe the perfume on the strand
That girds the Sea of Sleep."

It is pleasant in this sunset of life, to recall the testimony of my
brothers that through all those troublous scenes, father and mother
were soothed and consoled by an unfaltering faith in the ultimate
triumph of the good and true, that their faces were often illumined as
they repeated to each other those priceless words of the sweet singer,

"Drifting over a sunless sea, cold dreary mists encircling me,
Toiling over a dusty road with foes within and foes abroad,
Weary, I cast my soul on Thee, mighty to save even me,
Jesus Thou Son of God."

At last the "perils by land and perils by sea, and perils from false
brethren," this long, long journey ended and we reached the promised
land. We halted in old Byfield, in the state of Massachusetts, with
worldly goods consisting of a bushel of barberries, threadbare
toilets, and the ancient equipage dilapidated as aforesaid.

After much tribulation, father took a farm "on shares," which was
found to result in endless toil to us, and the lion's share of the
crops going to the owners, who toiled not, neither did they spin, but
reaped with gusto where we had sown.

After a few years of this profitless drudgery, my father bought an old
run-down farm with dilapidated buildings in the neighboring town of