"Nay, not so, reverend sir; the gifts of fortune have been somewhat
sparing in my case, and I am even now conferring with my own thoughts
whether or not to take to school-keeping. Nay, perhaps, I should
incline to something better, if I could succeed in persuading myself
of my own worthiness in a vocation which, more than all others,
demands a pure mind with a becoming zeal. The law consorts not
with my desires--it teaches selfishness, rather than self-denial;
and I have already found that some of its duties demand the blindness
and the silence of that best teacher from within, the watchful and
unsleeping conscience."

"Thou hast said rightly, Alfred Stevens; I have long thought that
the profession of the law hardeneth the heart, and blindeth the
conscience. Thou wilt do well to leave it, as a craft that leads
to sin, and makes the exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly
understand thee, thou lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation
for which thy spirit yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise,
and gird up thy loins; advance and falter not;--the field is open,
and though the victory brings thee no worldly profit, and but
little worldly honor, yet the reward is eternal, and the interest
thereof, unlike the money which thou puttest out to usury in the
hands of men, never fails to be paid, at the very hour of its due,
from the unfailing treasury of Heaven. Verily, I rejoice, Alfred
Stevens, that I have met with thee to-day. I had feared that the
day had been lost to that goodly labor, to which all my days have
been given for seventeen years, come the first sabbath in the next
November. But what thou hast said, awakens hope in my soul that such
will not be the case. Let not my counsels fail thee, Alfred;--let
thy zeal warm; let thy spirit work within thee, and thy words
kindle, in the service of the Lord. How it will rejoice me to