the Board ready to send him than he was prepared to go.  The day for leaving home came.  Father Talmage and the older brothers accompanied John.  They left the house in three carriages.  A younger sister (Mrs. Cone) recently said:  “When we saw the three carriages driving down the lane it seemed more like a funeral than anything else.”  Silent were those who drove away.  Silent, silent as they could constrain themselves to be, were mother and sisters as they stood by the windows and got their last look of the procession as it wound down the road.  To go to a foreign land in those days signified to those who went, lifelong exile,—­to those who tarried, lifelong separation.  The only highways to the far East were by way of the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn.  The voyages were always long and often perilous.

When on board the ship Roman, bound for Canton, David Abeel wrote:  “To the missionary perhaps exclusively, is the separation from friends like the farewell of death.  Though ignorant of the future he expects no further intercourse on earth.  To him the next meeting is generally beyond the grave.”

The hour of departure was not only saddened by parting from parents and brothers and sisters, but the young woman in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, to whom he had given his affection, could not join him.  Once it had been decided that they were to go together, but during the last days the enfeebled widowed mother’s courage failed her.  She could not relinquish her daughter to what seemed to her separation for life.  Mr. Talmage had to choose between the call of duty to China and going alone, or tarrying at home and realizing his heart’s hopes.  He went to China.  By a special Providence it was not much more than two years after he set sail that he was again in the United States.  The mother of Miss Abby Woodruff had died, and the union was consummated.

Mr. Talmage kept a diary of the voyage.  A few extracts will prove interesting.

“Left Somerville April 10, 1847, via New York to Boston.  Sailed from Boston in ship Heber, April 15th.  Farewell services on board conducted by Bishop Janes, of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  The Heber is a ship of 436 tons, 136 feet long, 27 wide.  Among the passengers are Rev. E. Doty and wife, and Rev. Moses C White and wife, and Rev. I. D. Collins.  The three latter are Methodist missionaries bound for Foochow (China).”  They were the pioneers of Methodist missions in China.

On Thursday evening, the cay of sailing, he writes:  “I am now upon the bosom of the mighty deep.  But I cannot as yet feel any fear.  I am in the hands of the Being ‘whose I am and whom I serve.’  In His hands there is safety.  I will not fear though the earth be removed.  Besides, there are Christian friends praying for me.  Oh, the consolation in the assurance that at the throne of grace I am remembered by near and dear friends!  Will not their prayers be heard?  They will.  I know they will.  The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much!  When I took leave of my friends, one, and another, and another, assured me that they would remember me in their prayers.  Yes, and I will remember them.”