23 It caused me serious reflection then, and often has since, how very strange it was that an obscure ^aboy, of a little over fourteen years of age, and one, too, who was doomed to the necessity of obtaining a scanty maintenance by his daily ^blabor, should be thought a character of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of the most popular sects of the day, and in a manner to create in them a spirit of the most bitter ^cpersecution and ^dreviling. But strange or not, so it was, and it was often the cause of great sorrow to myself.