stic "playhouses." The
effects in the parsonage are not harmonious, of course. As a rule,
every piece of furniture in it contradicts every other piece, each
having been contributed by rival women or rival committees in the
society.

And this has its deadening effect upon the preacher's wife's taste,
else she must go mad, living in a house where, say, there is a strip of
worn church-aisle carpet down the hall--bought at a bargain by the
thrifty Aid Society--a cherry-colored folding bed in the parlor along
with a "golden oak" table, a home-made bookcase, four different kinds
of chairs, a patent-medicine calendar on the wall and a rag carpet on
the floor, with a "flowered" washbowl and pitcher on a plain deal table
in the corner, confessing that, after all, it is not a parlor, but the
presiding elder's bedroom when he comes to hold "quarterly meeting."
Still, if I had anything to do with the new-monument-raising business
in this country I would have a colossal statue raised to the living
women of the Methodist Parsonage Aid Societies.

But the worst effect of the itinerancy upon its ministers' wives is the
evil information they must receive in it about other people. If I had
to select the woman in all the world best informed about the faults,
sins and weaknesses of mankind, I should not choose the sophisticated
woman of the world, but I should point without hesitation to the
little, pale, still-faced Methodist preacher's wife. The pallor is the
pallor of hardship, often of the lack of the right kind of nourishment,
but the stillness is not the result of inward personal calm and peace.
It is the shut-door face of a woman who knows all about everybody she
meets with that thin little smile and quiet eye. The reason for this
is that the preacher's wife is the vat for receiving all the circuit
scandal actually intended for her husband's ears.

The most conscienceless gossips in this world are to be found always
among the thoroughly-upright, meanly-impeccable members of any and
every church. They are the Scribes and Pharisees who contribute most
to the building of fine houses of worship; they give most to its
causes. They are the "right hands" of all the preachers from their
youth up. They have never been truthful sinners. They were the pale,
pious little boys and girls who behaved, and who graduated from the
Sunday schools long ago without ever being converted to the church.
And there you see them, the fat, duty-doi