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The overthrow was no ordinary blow to a man of thirty-seven with eight children, who had already trod the ways of spiritual doubt and unrest. For three or four years he seemed to flounder almost hopelessly, certainly with no settled plan or outlook. He bred race-horses till his conscience troubled him; he farmed and did some surveying; he inquired into the commission business in various lines, and still did some tanning. Then gradually he began to find himself. He was a lover of animals. In 1839 he took a drove of cattle to Connecticut and wrote to his wife: “I have felt distressed to get my business done and return ever since I left home, but know of no way consistent with duty but to make thorough work of it while there is any hope. Things now look more favorable than they have but I may still be disappointed.”^[25] His diary shows that he priced certain farms for sale, but especially did he inquire carefully into sheep-raising and its details, and eventually bought a flock of sheep, which he drove home to Ohio. This marked the beginning of a new occupation, that of shepherd, “being a calling for which in early life he had a kind of enthusiastic longing.” He began sheep-farming near Hudson, keeping his own and a rich merchant’s sheep and also buying wool on commission.