my life!"

"I am that boy and I have come to thank you for the inspiration you
were to me so long ago." She looked at me intently, perhaps searching
for the boy as I had been searching for the girl.

"There was a wide gulf between us then," she said. "In these long
years you have crossed to where I was and I--I have crossed to where
you were, and the gulf remains."

CHAPTER XVI

NEW HAVEN AGAIN--AND A FIGHT

In December, 1901, the New Haven Water Company applied for a renewal
of its charter. The city had been getting nothing for this valuable
franchise, and there was considerable protest against a renewal on the
same terms. The Trades Council asked the ministers of the churches to
make a deliverance on the question, but there was no answer. I was
directly challenged to say something on the subject. I attended a
hearing in the city hall. It was the annual meeting night of our
church, and I closed the church meeting in the usual manner.

As quickly as possible I made my way to the public hearing. The
committee room was crowded; on one side were the labouring men and on
the other the stockholders and officers of the company. Several
prominent members of my church, whom I had missed at the annual
meeting, were in the committee room.

When called upon to speak, I asked the committee to hold the balance
level. "We tax a banana vendor a few dollars a year for the use of
the streets," I said, "then why should a rich corporation be given an
infinitely larger use of them for nothing?"

This provoked the rich men of the church, for most of them were
stockholders in the company, and two of them were officers.

The thing was talked over afterward in the back end of a small store
where all the church policies were formulated. One of the members was
sent to the parsonage to question and warn me. My visitor spoke of
former pastors who had been "called of God" elsewhere for much less
than I had done. Another man came later, and asked for a promise that
I would keep out of such affairs in the future.

This was the first fly in the ointment, the first break in the most
cordial of relationships between me and the church.

The church had been organized fifty years when this incident occurred.
We were preparing to celebrate the golden jubilee.

I gathered the officers together, and we went over the articles one by
one. Not a man in the church believed in "everlasting damnation," but
they voted unanimously to leave the