felt nothing was too good for them, we piled all the luxuries on the
table. I never completed the undertaking. At the end of six months I was
in financial despair. I found that we not only had not the surplus of
luxuries, but we had a struggle to get the necessaries.

[A] _While at Belleville Dr. Talmage married Miss Mary
Avery, of Brooklyn, N.Y., by whom he had two children--a
son, Thomas De Witt, and a daughter, Jessie. Mrs. Talmage
was accidentally drowned in the Schuylkill River while Dr.
Talmage was pastor of the Second Reformed Church of
Philadelphia._

Although the first call I ever had was to Piermont, N.Y., my first real
work began in the Reformed Church of Belleville, N.J. I preached at
Piermont in the morning, and at the Congregational meeting held in the
afternoon of the same day it was resolved to invite me to become pastor.
But for the very high hill on which the parsonage was situated I should
probably have accepted. I was delighted with the congregation, and with
the grand scenery of that region.

I was ordained to the Gospel Ministry and installed as pastor July 29th,
1856, my brother Goyn preaching the sermon from the text, First
Corinthians iii. 12, 13. Reverend Dr. Benjamin C. Taylor, the oldest
minister present, offered the ordaining prayer, and about twenty hands
were laid upon my head. All these facts are obtained from a memorandum
made by a hand that long since forgot its cunning and kindness. The
three years passed in Belleville were years of hard work. The hardest
work in a clergyman's lifetime is during the first three years. No other
occupation or profession puts such strain upon one's nerves and brain.
Two sermons and a lecture per week are an appalling demand to make upon