"Total abstinence at that time began to be spoken of, and Livingstone
and I, and a Mr. Taylor, who went to India, took a pledge together to
abstain[12]. Of that trio, two, I am sorry to say _(heu me miserum!),_
enfeebled health, after many years, compelled to take a little wine for
our stomachs' sake. Livingstone was one of the two.

[Footnote 12: Livingstone had always practiced total abstinence,
according to the invariable custom of his father's house. The third of
the trio was the Rev. Joseph V.S. Taylor, now of the Irish Presbyterian
Mission, Gujerat, Bombay.]

"One part of our duties was to prepare sermons, which were submitted to
Mr. Cecil, and, when corrected, were committed to memory, and then
repeated to our village congregations. Livingstone prepared one, and one
Sunday the minister of Stamford Rivers; where the celebrated Isaac
Taylor resided, having fallen sick after the morning service,
Livingstone was sent for to preach in the evening. He took his text,
read it out very deliberately, and then--then--his sermon had fled!
Midnight darkness came upon him, and he abruptly said: 'Friends, I have
forgotten all I had to say,' and hurrying out of the pulpit, he left
the chapel.

"He never became a preacher" [we shall see that this does not apply to
his preaching in the Sichuana language], "and in the first letter I
received from him from Elizabeth Town, in Africa, he says: 'I am a very
poor preacher, having a bad delivery, and some of them said if they knew
I was to preach again they would not enter the chapel. Whether this was
all on account of my manner I don't know; but the truth which I uttered
seemed to plague very much the person who supplies the missionaries with