y their
Ladies' Aid Society in the basement of the church during the winter
had established rank among the fashionable events in Tecumseh's social
calendar.

A comprehensive and satisfied perception of these advantages was
uppermost in the minds of this local audience, as they waited for the
Bishop to begin his reading. They had entertained this Bishop and his
Presiding Elders, and the rank and file of common preachers, in a style
which could not have been remotely approached by any other congregation
in the Conference. Where else, one would like to know, could the
Bishop have been domiciled in a Methodist house where he might have a
sitting-room all to himself, with his bedroom leading out of it? Every
clergyman present had been provided for in a private residence--even
down to the Licensed Exhorters, who were not really ministers at all
when you came to think of it, and who might well thank their stars
that the Conference had assembled among such open-handed people. There
existed a dim feeling that these Licensed Exhorters--an uncouth crew,
with country store-keepers and lumbermen and even a horse-doctor among
their number--had taken rather too much for granted, and were not
exhibiting quite the proper degree of gratitude over their reception.

But a more important issue hung now imminent in the balance--was
Tecumseh to be fairly and honorably rewarded for her hospitality by
being given the pastor of her choice?

All were agreed--at least among those who paid pew-rents--upon the great
importance of a change in the pulpit of the First M. E. Church. A change
in persons must of course take place, for their present pastor had
exhausted the three-year maximum of the itinerant system, but there was
needed much more than that. For a handsome and expensive church building
like this, and with such a modern and go-ahead congregation, it was
simply a vital necessity to secure an attractive and fashionable
preacher. They had held their own against the Presbyterians these past
few years only by the most strenuous efforts, and under the depressing
disadvantage of a minister who preached dreary out-of-date sermons, and
who lacked even the most rudimentary sense of social distinctions. The
Presbyterians had captured the new cashier of the Adams County Bank, who
had always gone to the Methodist Church in the town he came from, but
now was lost solely because of this tiresome old fossil of theirs; and
there were numerous other insta