HIS MARRIAGE : REMINISCENCES OF GOV. TRUMBULL. 243 



would not be obviously intelligible to a good mind. The 

 lectures, I have said, were given in the evening, and as the 

 course was begun in the spring vacation, ladies were not 

 embarrassed in coining to the college laboratory ; and the 

 precedent being once established, was easily continued into 

 the summer term. The lectures were fully illustrated by 

 experiments which were carefully prepared and successfully 

 performed. On the whole, the course itself was a decided 

 success, and I had no reason to regret that I had under- 

 taken it. I have before had occasion to observe that Provi- 

 dence often leads us in ways that we know not, and to 

 results which we are not aware of. Tins course was the 

 opening of a series of labors performed many years after- 

 wards, with popular audiences, often in large assemblies, 

 and sometimes in distant cities, as I shall in due time 

 have occasion to relate. It is also with grateful, although 

 pensive recollections, that I mark this course as one of the 

 most important crises of my life, important to my profes- 

 sional reputation, and fruitful of the most signal blessings 

 extending through many years, and I trust, connecting 

 earth with heaven. 



The hint on the preceding page will prevent surprise, 

 and the conclusion will have been already anticipated. I 

 was drawn again to Lebanon, but on a more agreeable 

 errand than in May ; and the courtesies of hospitality 

 which I then received were now most agreeably ripened 

 into the confidence of an assured friendship, without other 

 desired limits than that of life itself; and so, by God's 

 blessing, it proved. Visits of reasonable frequency shed a 

 cheering influence over the time as it passed, and I could 

 discern that earlier events, then not understood, had provi- 

 dentially guided me in a way that I then knew not, until I 

 perceived at last whither the path led. My early travels 

 in Europe the travels addressed to my brother which 

 were sent out in MS. volumes, and, by some liberty in loan- 

 ing, came under the eye of Mr. and Mrs. Wadsworth and 



