striking. About the time of the Moody and Sankey revivals, Mr. Conway gave an account of his own conversion almost unparalleled in its candor: "It was my destiny to be born in a region where this kind of excitement is almost chronic. … When the summer came the leading Methodist families—of which my father's was one—went to dwell in the woods in tents. About two weeks were there spent in praying and preaching all the day long, pausing only for meals; and during all that time the enclosure in front of the pulpit was covered over with screaming men and women, and frightened children. … While I was there women came and wept over me; preachers quoted Scripture to me. No one whispered to me that I should resolve to be better,—more upright, true, and kind. Hundreds were converted by my side, and broke out into wild shouts of joy; but I had no new experience whatever. I was not in the least a sceptic: I believed every word told me. Yet nothing took place at all. On a certain evening I swooned. When I came to myself I was stretched out on the floor with friends singing around me, and the preachers informed me that I had been the subject of the most admirable work of divine grace they had ever witnessed. I took their word for it. All I knew was that I was thoroughly exhausted, and was ill for a week." But he did not take their word for it for an unreasonable time. In 1852 his religious as well as his social ideas underwent modifications so important that he determined to betake himself to Harvard University, where the dominant theology is Unitarian. Here he graduated B.D. in 1854, having in the interval contracted lasting friendships with Emerson, Parker, Stunner, Phillips, and others, the best hearts and heads in the republic.
