haps than was prudent for so young a beginner, were opened to him. His engagements were constantly up to the full measure of his strength and his time. In the best pulpits of the city his services were accepted, and in the best society of the city his company was eagerly sought. The name he bore was hallowed to the people. They were prepared, for his father's and mother's sake, to listen to his words and to love his character. But he was every thing in himself that was attractive—one of the most engaging youths who ever stood in a sacred desk or moved among a circle of friends. There was a freshness and healthfulness of physique, an openness of physiognomy, a spiritual beauty, a ripeness of culture, a manifest piety, a gracefulness of movement, and a native eloquence which won all hearts; and from this early day until his death there was no minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church who could draw together a larger crowd of ardent, admiring hearers in the city of Baltimore than Alfred Cookman. A halo invested him from the beginning to the end of his career.

CHAPTER VII.

THE YOUTHFUL PASTOR.-HIS FIRST CIRCUIT.

BUT the time had now come when plans for the more regular and permanent exercise of his ministry began seriously to agitate him. We have already seen from his last letter that thoughts of a collegiate course had been entertained and discussed. It appears that the counsels of his father's closest friends were adverse to this, and favorable to an immediate entrance upon the itinerant ministry.

The question may have come to others as to myself: Why did not Mrs. Cookman settle in Carlisle after the death of her husband, where she could have had for her sons the training of Dickinson College? She had lived there-cherished many pleasant memories of the town and its people-had a scholarship of five hundred dollars-and it was proposed to her to go there; but her health was too feeble to allow it. When residing there she was nearly disabled by the climate, and she could not venture to live in it again. Why, then, did she not send Alfred? Simply because her purpose was fixed not to separate her children while they were in process of education. She wished them all at home, and at that time she needed Alfred as really as he needed her. She thought and acted for herself in the matter. She was afraid to trust her boy at college away from her, and since she could not accompany him, it was decided he must do the best he could with such facilities as Baltimore afforded. Mrs. Cookman honored learning much, but she reverenced goodness more. She may have taken counsel of her fears, but the wisdom of her decision none can presume to question till the records of the son's life are unfolded in eternity.

Certainly the results of his ministry are not such as to leave room for many regrets on the ground of greater possible usefulness. What he was we know; what he might have been with the influences of the broader culture which comes of the studies and associations of the college we can not fully conjecture. A more liberal education, prosecuted at greater length, would probably have rendered him different, in some respects, from what he was as a man and as a preacher, but it is extremely doubtful if it could have rendered him more intense in his personal and ministerial influence. In the cry for scholars, we are too apt to forget that it is not so much ideas as their application; not so much new truths as the practice of old truths; not so much thinkers as actors-men of deeds-that the great world needs. A man to move and mould the people must be a man of positive convictions, be the circle of his knowledge never so small, rather than a critical investigator.

Alfred Cookman was capable of becoming a scholar of a high order, but he chose to narrow the sphere of his studies to the subjects which nourished his own soul satisfactorily, which he felt would make him most useful as a pastor, and it was the thoroughness with which his intellect grasped these, and the heartiness with which he believed them, that gave him in his domain so marked an ascendency over the minds of the people. So that I am frank to acknowledge that if a collegiate education (taking education in its multiplex sense) would have made his ministry different from what it was, I can scarcely see how it could have made it more useful. I fear the contrary might have been the result. Upon the whole, it is quite safe to assume, where the sincerest efforts are made by those who have the shaping of Christ's chosen instruments, that their course is about such as God orders, and in the outcome is the best for them and for His Church.

The point being settled that the young evangelist should at once make full proof of his ministry by entering the regular pastorate, the next question for decision was, "What conference

REASONS FOR REMOVING TO PHILADELPHIA.

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shall he join?" Some of his friends urged him strongly to seek admission into the Baltimore Conference, while others as strongly urged the advantages of the Philadelphia. It would have been natural for him to remain where he was, but the reasons for going to Philadelphia were controlling. His former and much-beloved teacher, the Rev. Robert Pattison, had joined that conference; several of his young associates, such as Charles J. Thompson and Adam Wallace, preferred it; his father had first united with it, and he wished, as far as possible, to follow in his footsteps.

But, as usual, the mother's judgment turned the scales. There were better schools and better opportunities of business in Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania was a free state. Her repugnance to slavery made her adverse to rearing her children in contact with it. There was another consideration which weighed with her possibly more than all others: she felt the time had come when she must give herself more fully to the care of her children. So numerous and pressing were her social and religious engagements, that she found it quite impossible to impart the instruction and sympathy which their increasing years demanded. She was expected to be prominent in every benevolent movement of the ladies, to attend all their prayer-meetings, to be present at their social entertainments-indeed, to be foremost in every good word and work, and with only very limited means at her command; to superintend personally a large family of children, all of whom were boys but the youngest-these must be paragons of neatness, propriety, and intelligence—and she must be universal mother and sister in the fellowship of joy and in the fellowship of pain to all who needed her counsel or sought her sympathy. It could not be: she must go back again to the old position, when she elected to fashion men rather than to be a missionary. While, therefore, her heart was deeply attached to Baltimore and to its loving, noble Christians, she determined that, for her family's sake, she must cut herself loose from their

companionship, and seek, in another city and amid new scenes, to enter upon a course of more exclusive devotion to home nurture.

Early in the autumn of 1846 the household goods were stored in a canal-boat and shipped to Philadelphia. The family soon followed, and within a few weeks were snugly at housekeeping on Race Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Streets. Alfred had already been requested by the Rev. James McFarland, presiding elder of one of the Philadelphia districts, to supply the place of Rev. D. D. Lore, who had been appointed missionary to Buenos Ayres, on Attleboro Circuit, Bucks County, under the charge of the Rev. James Hand. He accepted the invitation, and so soon as the family were settled, and he had procured the necessary outfit, he started for the "appointment.” His horse he named "Gery," in honor of his friend Gershom Broadbent of Baltimore. Gery became a great pet with him and with all the brothers and the little sister. Alfred and Gery were much talked about at home, and their joint arrival on a visit was henceforth hailed as the brightest day which could dawn on Philadelphia. Many were the caresses which Gery got from little Mary, and George, Frank, Will, and John were not slow to test the mettle of their brother's faithful companion.

It was a proud hour when the young preacher, leaving his mother's door, with her blessing on his head and her warm kiss upon his lips, springing into his saddle, hied away over the hills to his first pastoral charge. What a pang it must have cost him. to part with that loving parent, to leave brothers and sister, who had clung to him as a father, and to go off among total strangers! But though young, and sensitive even to feminine delicacy, he had the hopes of youth to cheer him. His heart was full of zeal for the Master's glory, and the romantic interest which belongs to an earnest nature in the first commencement of a chosen and chivalrous career. On the mother's part, his devotement to the work was one of pure self-sacrifice; and