wife of another. In the meantime, I continued to keep the store and to follow my trade. I rose at four o'clock in the morning and. made nails until eight; I then opened the store, where I remained until eight in the evening, when I shut up, and went to nailmaking until twelve; thus getting but a short four hours' sleep in the four-and-twenty. But the Lord was working with me, and lessened the privation, and lightened the toil.

My nail-shop-window opened into the yard of the house where I boarded and where Rebecca lived; and after I came from the store in the evening, she used to come like a dove to the window: I helped her in, where she stayed, sewing or knitting, till midnight—I working and courting,-killing two birds with

one stone.

CHAPTER IX.

As when some snowy mountain's heavenward brow
Beams with the glory of the solemn moon,
Her forehead shone with holiness.

THE great Dr. Mason was at this time in the fulness of his power; the vehement dresser of the Lord's vineyard in Cedar-street. It was with his watering-pot that my brother and I, from the time of our arrival in New York, were watered, and it was his pruning-hook that pruned in us the tendrils of worldly affections.

By our persuasion, Rebecca went with us to hear him, and having once tasted the delicious clusters of his preaching, her heart, on every new visit, longed for them more and more, until it was accomplished that she was ordained

to be taken within the hedge-and a day and an hour was set, the Friday before the appointed occasion of the Lord's Supper, for her baptism; for as yet, like many in those days, she was unsanctified by that ordinance.

As I considered myself to have been an instrument in bringing about this sacred event, I was greatly lifted out of myself on the occasion, and I resolved to be present at the solemnity.

The evening service being the time appointed, I shut up my store at an early hour, and went to the church, that I might choose a seat where I could obtain a full view of the holy ceremony. Often my eye turned towards the door, and my heart fluttered because she yet tarried. At last she entered, and my spirit was filled with awfulness and joy.

When I beheld her tall, slender, and erect form, with slow and measured steps, move up the middle aisle, dressed in a white robe in maidenly simplicity; when I saw her stand serene in the midst of a vast congregation, and give the regular tokens of assent to the vows which Dr. Mason, in a solemn and affecting voice

laid upon her, while all the congregation seemed hushed in the stillness of death; when I saw her untie the black ribbon under her chin that held on her hat, whilst the minister was descending from the pulpit to administer the ordinance; when I saw her hands hanging straight by her sides, one holding her hat, and the other a white handkerchief; when I saw her turn up her face to Heaven, and calmly close her eyes as the minister prepared to pour the consecrated symbol of grace; and when I saw her wipe the pearly drops, I thought that her gentle countenance shone as with a glorious transfiguration, and I swore in my heart, that with the help of the Lord, nothing but death should part us.

On our return home, she said in a sweet soft voice, that she might thank me as the means which had been employed for what had come to pass that night-I then told her, for the first time, of the fervour that was in my bosom, and added, in the words of Ruth to Naome-"Entreat me not to leave thee; where thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my

God!" such was the declaration, but the battle was yet to be fought.

She looked with pity and sorrow in my face, and turned away with a sigh. In the course of a few days I learned the cause of this sigh, and it awakened all my fears; from herself I learned it.

It was caused, she said, by the pain it would give me, when she was obliged to let me know that she had been addressed by a young man for nearly two years, to whom she was all but engaged. I had seen this young man twice or thrice in the house, but I had no apprehension he was a rival. He was, indeed, so far above her in fortune, that a match between them was a thing I could never have imagined. He kept a rich jewellery store, had houses in Broadway, and was computed to be worth at least fifty thousand dollars. What a temptation to a poor girl and her mother, whose whole property was not worth a hundred; and how hopeless for me to contend with a man of such substance! I a stranger, a humble nailer, without aught to win favour in woman's eye, and