“Forte dux fel flat in guttur.”

To another he would give this problem, from ancient Dilworth:—­

“If a herring and a half cost three-halfpence, how many will eleven pence buy?”

Persons who are too stately to stoop to this way of pleasing childhood, have very little idea of the magic influence it exerts, and how it opens the heart to receive “the good seed” of serious admonition from one who has shown himself capable of sympathy in its pleasures.

Those whose privilege it has been to know Mr. Gallaudet in his own home, surrounded by his own intelligent children, have had a new revelation of the gentleness, the tenderness and benignity of the paternal relation.  Many years since I was a “watcher by the bed,” where lay his little daughter, recovering from a dangerous illness.  He evidently felt that a great responsibility was resting upon a young nurse, with whom, though he knew her well, he was not familiar in that character.  I felt the earnest look of inquiry which he gave me, as I was taking directions for the medicines of the night.  He was sounding me to know whether I might be trusted.  At early dawn, before the last stars had set, he was again by the bed, intent upon the condition of the little patient.  When he was satisfied that she was doing well, and had been well cared for, he took my hand in his, and thanked me with a look which told me that I had now been tried, and found faithful and competent.

Not only was he a man made of tender charities, but he was an observant, thoughtful man, considerate of the little as well as the great wants of others.  I can never forget his gentle ministrations in the sick room of my most precious mother, who was for many years his neighbor and friend.  She had been brought to a condition of great feebleness by a slow nervous fever, and was painfully sensitive to anything discordant, abrupt, or harsh in the voices and movements of those about her.  Every day, at a fixed hour, this good neighbor would glide in, noiselessly as a spirit, and, either reading or repeating a few soothing verses from the Bible, would kneel beside her bed, and quietly, in a few calm and simple petitions, help her to fix her weak and wavering thoughts on that merciful kindness which was for her help.  Day after day, through her slow recovery, his unwearied kindness brought him thither, and gratefully was the service felt and acknowledged.  I never knew him in the relation he afterwards sustained to the diseased in mind, but I am sure that his refined perceptions and delicate tact must have fitted him admirably for his chaplaincy in the Retreat.

I retain a distinct impression of him as I saw him one day in a character his benevolence often led him to assume, that of a city missionary; though it was only the duties of one whom he saw to be needed, without an appointment, that he undertook.  How he found time, or strength, with his feeble constitution, for preaching to prisoners and paupers, and visits to the destitute and dying, is a mystery to one less diligent in filling up little interstices of time.