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 He hated to be talked at, and was capable of loving his opinions as he loved his children, merely because they were his own. As the dreary anxious winter wore away, he did himself more than one ill turn by his rough handling of other people's prejudices.

One Friday evening in early April William went with his wife to prayer-meeting. He was a church member, but to Edna's chagrin he had never been able to overcome a certain reticence sufficiently to take an active part in such a meeting. It was an understood thing that he was not to be called upon, and being thus exempt he used regularly to attend on Friday evenings. It was one of the many things he did purely from a sense of duty.

The prayer-meetings of late had been particularly fervent. The community was in a state of unnatural excitement. The sense of an impending crisis brooded heavily upon all hearts, and in the strong tension of public feeling an appeal to divine aid was the natural impulse of every religious man. William had noticed with growing dissatisfaction the tendency of these meetings. The minister himself, who was a strong antislavery man, gave the tone to the proceedings. It seemed to William that a prayer-meeting should not be turned into an expression of partisan feeling. On this occasion he listened with ill-suppressed indignation to the prayers which followed each other in quick succession. Nearly