There were two steamers on Lake Erie that were twins. They were, in their time, and not so long ago, models of steamboat architecture; elegant as palaces, and in every respect as nearly alike as builders and artists could make them. Their names were Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan. The writer and "his next best friend" took passage upon one of them bound East. It was a mid-summer night. The moon at the full, and her ladyship did what all poets, since moons and poets were, have said she did—made day, "only a little paler" and lovelier, and what not. The steamer was running her sister's trip, that sister having met with an accident. The damage being repaired, it was proposed that, when the twins met on this voyage, the passengers should be transferred from each to the other, the sisters wheel about and retrace the wake they had just made, and so the advertised trips for the season would come all true again.

The sea was as nearly a sea of glass as it ever is. The moon rode high in the heavens. It was just midnight when we saw the sister coming, decked with white and colored lights alow and aloft, like a queen of "the barbaric East" in all her jewelry. The lights from two stories of windows streamed out upon the air. The music of the band was heard. It looked like a city adrift, and beautiful and airy as a dream. Our deck was thronged with passengers, who saw themselves in the approaching apparition as others saw them. They were looking upon the steamer's counterpart and double.

The two neared each other, came alongside in the middle of the sea, the planks were put out fore and aft, and the transfer of passengers and baggage began. There were two steady currents of human life meeting and passing on the gangway. Age, youth, beauty, fashion, wealth, poverty. Bright lamps shone all around, and the moon over all. People looked in each other's eyes, glanced at each other's faces, as they met for an instant, sometimes gravely, sometimes with a smile, that nevermore in all this world would meet again. Now and then a pleasant word was uttered between strangers, but generally the two processions were silent, almost thoughtful. It was a scene at once beautiful and impressive. The occupants of State Room B in the Northern Indiana found themselves occupants of B again in the Southern Michigan. The passengers in the upper cabin of the one found all unchanged in the upper cabin of the other. "The places that once knew them should know them no more forever." The transfer was effected with less confusion than in a congregation leaving a church. The bells rang a parting chime. The steamers wheeled, each upon her own route. We had died out of one world into another. It was a picture of life and of death on the moonlit sea. Such as it was, can I ever forget it?

The memory of the first steamer you ever saw comes dimly out, like a smoky old picture. Let us say it was the steamer Nile, with a bronze-faced old sea-dog for captain; the steamer Nile, with two gold crocodiles on the bow for a figure-head; the steamer Nile at her dock in Buffalo, and "up" for the City of the Straits. The rush of crowds and steam, the farm-wagons laden with household gods and goods that were backed over the broad gangway; the shy country horses that were pulled and pushed aboard; the Mrs. John Rogerses, "carrying one for every ten" by the old rule of addition; the score of sheep, frightened out of their little wits, huddled together forward; the sailors coiling lines and chains; the close, dim cabins lined with berths; "the walking-beam" working slowly up and down; the faint, hot smell of steam and oil; the wheezy way with the machinery; the little leaks of steam and water here and there that snuffed and hissed, above and below, as if everything about the craft were alive and generally uneasy.

Then came the clang of the bell and the voice of the first mate, "All ashore that's going!" The captain in position on the hurricane deck; a tinkle of bells in the engine-room; the rasp of the lines the sailors pull in with a will; a general jail delivery of steam; leviathan moves; she is off; the flags unroll to the wind; the band on deck strikes up "Charley over the Water;" the great crowd of men and women and horses and drays upon the deck gets the size of a swarm of bees on an apple-tree limb; then a mere handful of hornets; then out of sight. Every time the wheels come about, the boat shakes as CÆsar shook with that Spanish fever of his, when he called Titinius; up stairs and down stairs an incessant rumbling and tumbling that make things jingle. You are fairly at sea; the air is fresh and clear, as if just made. The Nile was a grand affair in her day, but as Egyptian as the New York Tombs. She laid her bones on the Michigan beach one terrible night; and her old commander, ill ashore, lived just long enough to hear of it.

Who were aboard? Elder Alfred Bennett, for one—not Reverend, nor yet New Jersey Bishop—but Elder Bennett, with a head like Humboldt's, and holding more of celestial geography than the great Baron knew of earthly—a lion of the tribe of Judah. Of all titles for Baptist clergymen, "minister" seems to me the simplest and most suggestive. It associates them with "the ministering spirits" of whom we read, and whom we believe in. Take a young fellow from Hamilton or Rochester, who never tarried six weeks at Jericho, and call him Elder, as his country brethren and sisters always will, and there is an amusing incongruity about it, as if the old proverb, "the child is father of the man," had come literally true, and the downy Elder's father were a little boy somewhere, about big enough to figure in the Millennial group of the leopard and the lamb.

Father Bennett was bound for Michigan. He would see that accomplished Christian gentleman, Dr. Comstock. He would see that noble preacher and large-hearted man, Rev. John I. Fulton; he would see Elder Powell, one of the Thirteen who gave a dollar apiece, and so founded Madison University. He would return to Utica, and meet that admirable Editor, Dr. A. M. Beebee, of the New York "Baptist Register;" in youth, office-mate with Washington Irving, the man of Sunnyside; in manhood, the thorough, consistent, able Christian editor. He would consult with Dr. Nathaniel Kendrick, that giant in the churches; with Professor Hascall, who took Madison University into an upper chamber, as the disciples gathered, and kept it till its name was strong enough to go abroad, and was worked for and prayed for all at once, as the "Ham. Lit. and Theo. Sem." Elders Card and Cook would come down to meet him from the North Woods; Elders Galusha and Moore and Hartshorn from the West. They would all attend some Association together, and Elder John Peck, as clean-hearted as an angel, always had a word to say. He was one of the great noble provocatives to good works, and had he never achieved anything himself but that, the "well done, good and faithful servant!" would have been the verdict. But Elder Peck never could say "Association." You can shut your eyes and hear him: "the brethren of the As-so-sa-shun will please to give their attention." All these—Elder Powell, perhaps, excepted—have gone away to the Great Convention of the church triumphant.

Are people's memories getting shorter? Does anybody remember how Dr. Kendrick used to begin one of his old heart-of-oak sermons? How he towered up behind the low pulpit, like a Lombardy poplar behind a fence? How that two-story head of his reminded you of the portrait of Oberlin! The first words came slowly and ponderously. Those silver-rimmed spectacles shone around his eyes. He laid out his work by the day, and not by the job. He told you of "the damning demerit of sin." He climbed rugged Sinai like a stout mountaineer. By-and-by away went the spectacles. He warmed and softened to the work. His words came fast. He descended Sinai and went away to Gethsemane. And when he was through, and occasionally it took him a long time, you felt that you had heard a man of remarkable power, who had yet a store of it in reserve—a man who could handle the doctrinal sledge with one hand, and never strain a muscle.

Dr. Kendrick, like many of that class of old divines—as witness Dr. Backus, of Hamilton College—had a world of ready wit, that flashed out unexpectedly from the soberest of mouths. One day of the dead days, the Doctor was conducting a class in Moral Philosophy, and he asked a student if a man could tell a lie to a brute. The student thought not, and so put his foot in it and said "not." "Once," said the Doctor, in his deliberate way, "I visited a ministering brother in the western part of this State. In the morning he took a halter, and went into the pasture to catch his horse. He hollowed an empty hand and extended it. The horse pricked up his ears at the prospect, came up, thrust his nose into the barren hand and was captured. Some time after, I was called to sit in council in that same region. The minister alluded to stood charged with having made misrepresentations to his fellow-men. I am sorry to say the allegations were proved true. I had seen him practice deception upon a quadruped. They had heard him tell a falsehood to a biped. Now," added the Doctor, "were the two acts alike, or did the hind legs of the quadruped kick out the brains of the intent?" The class laughed, but the student didn't say!