Page:Letters of Life.djvu/180

168 faire playe in this worlde. Be kinder to her, my masters, and take some pains to improve her talents. Then shall ye be better able to say truly what ye catte is, and what she is not.

Another variety of mental employment to which I took a fancy was the composition of serious Essays, or Meditations, with a text prefixed, which I called my sermons. This exercise originated in those epochs, very rare in my early history, when I was detained from public worship on Sunday. It then became a habit to write and read aloud in my solitary chamber two of these productions, or an additional one if a third service was desired, compose the usual number of hymns, and sing them in the old, established tunes, of which I knew a great variety. Thus my secluded Sabbaths kept up some shadow of the privileges of the sanctuary, and occasionally there came over my soul a sweet, hallowed calmness, like a premonition of that clime where praise is perpetual.

From a mass of these manuscripts on coarse gray foolscap paper, the ink faded by time, I select two or three specimens for your friendly perusal: