_Noonday._ He mused with it, gathered admirers about it and discovered that it entered into partnership with other streams as men and women enter into the partnerships of life. He listened to its whispered songs by day and sought its harmonies by night, he sympathized with its fault-finding because of the impurities which flowed into it from cities and villages, admired it when it became a broad expanse, and enforced the lesson of man’s journey through life.
_Evening._ Standing on the shore of the ocean, the tide receding, he gazed far out toward the horizon, and in descriptive beauty I cannot reproduce, saw the river meet and mingle with the sea, losing its identity; saw the streets of shining gold, the great white throne and the crown for those who are faithful unto death.
The outline of one other of Father Kellogg’s great sermons still lingers in my mind and attracts my thought. Paragraphs from it are discoverable in the stories he wrote late in life. It was prepared for the purpose of presenting the cause of the Seaman’s Friend Society before a great convention in the Boston Music Hall. He was to speak to a cultured audience of men and women from all parts of the state, and in the presence of some of the best scholars and thinkers in his own profession. He felt that he would be criticised in comparison with other speakers, and was therefore determined to do himself and his alma mater credit, and withal present his cause, so as to reach the hearts and pocketbooks of his hearers. I did not hear the sermon at its original delivery, but later he used it for the same purpose in the churches. I heard it at Park Street, and was so attracted and impressed by its beauty of language and eloquence when spoken by him that I went to the Mount Vernon Church when he delivered it there. This gives the impression it left upon my mind.
Through the career of one sailor, learn of many. He pictured the child in the cradle, the love and hope of a doting mother; followed him to school, saw him develop in mind and muscle; sailed cat-boats, set lobster-traps, and dug clams with him. He talked and dreamed with him about other lands and climes beyond the boundary of their vision, and entered into his hopes and ambition to become the master of a ship. Passing briefly over his coasting voyages, he portrayed him in port surrounded by sharks and bad women, and in the whirl, where if he listens and yields to the tempter, he becomes lost to himself and a sorrow to the mother who bore him. He spoke of his needs, of the associations that should environ him, the necessity for a snug harbor home in every port, and then, when an able seaman, he accompanied him on a voyage to a foreign land.