Our home-life here for the past forty-two years has been a record of perpetual providential mercies and unfailing kindness on the part of my parishioners and fellow townsmen.

Brooklyn, although removed from New York (for I cannot yet twist my tongue into calling it "Manhattan") by a five minutes' journey on the East River Bridge, is a very different town in its political and social aspects.

New York is penned in on a narrow island, and ground is worth more than gold.

It is therefore piled up with very fine apartment houses for the rich, or tenement houses for the poor to more stories than the ancient buildings on the Canongate of Edinburgh.

Here in Brooklyn we have all Long Island to spread over, and land is within the reach of even a parson's purse.