denial of his parents, he saw his own external pietism sink into worthlessness. His old cheerfulness came back to him; his merry laugh rang out once more; the half-forgotten stories were revived; the flute that had been laid aside was hunted up; the feet that loved to dance right well tripped to the dear old measures, and he became almost himself again.

Almost, but not entirely. It was a long, long time before that could be said of him. The iron had entered too deeply into his soul.

During the year he spent in Mendon after leaving Westfield, he broke his evangelical connections, and became a member of the Unitarian Church. He also made up his mind to study for the Unitarian ministry. But it was not till he was more than half way through his course at Meadville, that he succeeded in unlearning what the Westfield revivalists had taught him. Long before this he had unlearned the doctrines of Trinity and Atonement and Depravity; but after he had done this he kept on trying to be religious in the orthodox way, and making himself miserable because he could not succeed, as we shall see hereafter. In one respect his orthodox experience was a great advantage to him in after years. It enabled him to speak of orthodoxy at first hand; and if, so speaking of it, he spoke of it at times with terrible severity, the fault was not in him, but in the system that had so marred his growth. His reaction from it was not sudden, but it was profound. A burnt dog dreads the fire. He hated it. He never forgot how it had unmanned him. He never forgave it that treatment. Perhaps in after years his friends sometimes regretted the way in which he buffeted the monster that had so frightened him in his youth. But perhaps, too, they did

not know what recollections edged his sarcasm, what gross imposition had been practiced upon him. Had it been a person he was dealing with, he would have been much more forgiving. But he did not think the command, "Forgive your enemies," applied to systems of theology that were the enemies, not of his fame or fortune, but of his life.

But it was a good day for the Westfield revivalists when they made a convert of Staples, such influence did he have with others, so intense was his ardor, so contagious his conviction. Years afterward, when he was at Lexington, one of the Westfield scholars found him out, and told him what a good and lasting influence his earnestness had had upon him. But it is quite terrible to think what a good revivalist he would have made, what multitudes of excellent people he would have convicted of sin, and enraptured with the promise of a future heaven much inferior to the present one they were enjoying before he met with them.

In estimating the value of this juvenile religious experience, it must be borne in mind that this experience was not the dawn of his religious life. Had it been so it might be more kindly spoken of. But no; the dawn had risen long before, and this Westfield experience was but a cloud that overcame its brightness, a cloud that held his sunny heart enshrouded in its gloom for years, which added to him nothing; all of the beauty of its own tangled fringes being that of the life behind them, a life it could conceal but no more quench than any cloud that vails the sun can quench its burning heat.

But whatever the Normal School did for him on his religious side, there can be no question that on the intellectual side he made, while there, great improvement. It

was there that he discovered that it was a joy for him to write. The " compositions" were no burden, but were looked forward to with sincere pleasure, and were written with all possible care. Having finished his course, he obtained a position as teacher in Mendon village. As a teacher he was eminently successful, and had great power .over, and influence with, his scholars, many of whom still remember him well, and speak of him with deep reverence and affection. He seemed to instill into his pupils his own sensitiveness to praise or blame. His journal at this period takes an exceedingly practical turn, dealing with railroads, the world's fair, and state politics; showing a lively interest in the anti-slavery movement, and recording with admiration a saying of Theodore Parker's at the May meetings in Boston, wherein he told one of his fellowministers that he had the gun his grandfather had used at Lexington, and that if he should come into his house to hunt for fugitive slaves, he would do for him what his grandfather did for the British. The germ of his later radicalism in theology is in these sentences. For it was his absolute certainty that Parker was right on the slavery question, that led him to suspect that he might be right on questions of theology. His political radicalism in general was the vestibule of his theological radicalism, inasmuch as he saw that the hunkers of politics were too frequently conservative in their theology, and vice versa, to admit of any doubt that here was no mere coincidence, but a truly logical connection.

II.

LIFE AT MEADVILLE.

THE personal influences that determined, Mr. Staples to go to Meadville, were mainly those of his brother, who had preceded him there by a few months, and Rev. Samuel Clarke, of Uxbridge, a man who recognized his fine natural talents earlier than any other person, and did more to inspire him with confidence in his own abilities. He watched over his career with a true fatherly solicitude, but permitted to behold except

"With larger, other eyes than ours,"

was not

the fulfillment in him of his generous predictions of success and usefulness. Another early personal influence of which he always spoke with gratitude, was that of one of his teachers, Sylvester Scott; but this influence was upon his character in general, rather than upon his choice of a profession.

He arrived at Meadville, September 3d, 1851, and went to work at once with great earnestness. During the three years that he remained there his journal is almost never interrupted, and affords an ample index to his pursuits, his feelings, the sources and the measure of his growth. Other records of the same period are numerous letters home, the most of them written to his younger sister, Rachel, between whom and himself there was always a most tender and beautiful relation. From first to last his dealing with him

self in his journal is frank and resolute. There are many passages which would not bear the test of the apostle: "So fight I not as one who beateth the air." A great deal of his fighting was of this sort. But it was real enough to him for the time being. And mingled with it, and every day growing more prominent, was fighting of a very different sort, with obvious faults of character, obvious to him if not to those who knew him from without. No one ever tried harder than this man to be religious in the orthodox way, but he was continually applying the test of his daily life to his religion. It would not be fair to take him at his word concerning his own growth in culture or in character. the stars seem much more distant seen from a mountaintop than when we gaze up at them from the plain, so the greater his intellectual and moral elevation the farther off appeared the heaven of his hope and aspiration. In judging of himself he never seemed to consider—and it was best that he should not-that his horizon retreated just in the measure of his ascent. And so it was that while to others he was a marvel of growth, and grew more rapidly every year of his life, the very last being no exception, he was never satisfied with himself. He was beset behind and before. On the one hand, it seemed to him that he never could make up for his loss of early training; on the other hand, there seemed so many things to read and study, that a moment's rest burdened him like a sin. "Have done but little to-day, as I intended; but do not feel just right about it. It seems to me I never am in a condition that justifies me in resting." This feeling always haunted him, and often kept him at his tasks when he should have been in bed or in the fields. "If I can speak a word sincerely, or breathe a prayer in faith, let it be this-that I may look