“Indeed, sir, I didn’t think of it at all—­I’d been used from the time I was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in class, and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick.  But I had felt no call to preach, for when I’m not greatly wrought upon, I’m too much given to sit still and keep by myself.  It seems as if I could sit silent all day long with the thought of God overflowing my soul—­as the pebbles lie bathed in the Willow Brook.  For thoughts are so great—­aren’t they, sir?  They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it’s my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words.  That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts are full and we can’t help it.  And those were always times of great blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people.  But, sir, we are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not.  I was called to preach quite suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me.”

“But tell me the circumstances—­just how it was, the very day you began to preach.”

“It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged man, one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps—­that’s a village where the people get their living by working in the lead-mines, and where there’s no church nor preacher, but they live like sheep without a shepherd.  It’s better than twelve miles from Snowfield, so we set out early in the morning, for it was summertime; and I had a wonderful sense of the Divine love as we walked over the hills, where there’s no trees, you know, sir, as there is here, to make the sky look smaller, but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent, and you feel the everlasting arms around you.  But before we got to Hetton, brother Marlowe was seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of falling, for he overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and praying, and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as carrying on his trade of linen-weaving.  And when we got to the village, the people were expecting him, for he’d appointed the time and the place when he was there before, and such of them as cared to hear the Word of Life were assembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest, so as others might be drawn to come.  But he felt as he couldn’t stand up to preach, and he was forced to lie down in the first of the cottages we came to.  So I went to tell the people, thinking we’d go into one of the houses, and I would read and pray with them.  But as I passed along by the cottages and saw the aged and trembling women at the doors, and